Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Community Q&A #21
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Q: A game like Skyrim is visually stunning, but the repetitiveness of npc's, their dialog, textures, etc is a turn off with as big as everything is. Did you guys consider tweaking things to make them stand out? Can we expect diversity in npc's and humanoids throughout the world? From early peeks here and there is looks more that way, but even minor tweaks like changing hair styles and colors on bandits go a long way. By Falkon
A: When I started working on Reckoning, one of my first thoughts was that you don't see games like this anymore. Part of what makes Reckoning special is that the content is lovingly hand-crafted, individually placed, and contextually customized. Artists created countless pieces of weapons, armor, character and environmental art, effects and animations to bring Amalur to life. The world builders devoted much of their time to ensure each space feels unique: from the painstaking details of each and every individual tree in Dalentarth and Klurikon to the breathtaking vistas of Detyre and the Plains of Erathell. Level and content designers did the same for indoor spaces and encounters, and systems designers manually populated merchant inventories, loot tables, and weapon and armor stats among many other things.
Similarly, our narrative is not procedurally generated. As far as the NPCs are concerned, Amalur is as diverse a place as you'll find. Associate Narrative Designer Rachel Morgan did a polish pass on NPCs using our proprietary "paper-doll tool" to further paper-doll (customize) their appearance from their clothes down to any tattoos or piercings they might have. In other words if you see NPCs that look alike (e.g. mother and son Coriana and Mallion of the Anwon House), it's deliberate.
In regards to dialogue, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning's recording budget was generous. With roughly the equivalent of ten novels worth of words, the Narrative Designers were able to craft NPC dialogue to the level of depth desired, rather than be limited by word counts. After dialogue was written, Narrative Designers went through responding to feedback and adding flavor bits. For example, one specific task I had was to triple the number of greetings in Rathir. Then, copy editors gave the dialogue another pass, which of course involved identifying and removing redundancy and errant repetition.
I hope you enjoy exploring all of this enormous diversity in Reckoning next month! By Alex "xael" Horn, Narrative Designer
Q: How is the bounty system handled? Let's say I steal some cheese, and I resist arrest and return after a few in-game days, will the guards of had completely forgotten or would they open a dialogue with me or attack on site? Does the severity of the crime affect this? By Artificer
A: When you commit any crime, if you get out of town without going to jail and manage to avoid anyone associated with that group for a few in-game days, then when you return the guards will no longer be actively looking for you. They won't have entirely forgotten though, you will still have the same bounty meaning that if you commit a second crime and are caught for it, you'll have to answer for both the first crime and the second. So depending on what crimes you've committed that could really add up! (Stealing a piece of cheese would result in a much lower bounty than murdering an innkeeper.)
Keep in mind that crime is tracked by what we call "factions." Sometimes this may be a story-based faction (like the Warsworn or House of Ballads), but other times it can be simply the people of a particular village. This means that if you commit crime against people of a world-wide faction, you'd best watch out where you go next! By Andrew "Andre" Frederiksen, Producer
