Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Interview
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Did you have a specific goal when you set out to work on Kingdoms of Amalur? Something in particular you wanted to achieve?
TM: Very early on we sat down and I knew I was working with some people who had already worked on some big games or, at the worst, were big fans of those games. So we said, okay, what's out in the marketplace from an RPG point of view? Let's see if we can put a list together of the twenty cool things we really admire, and then a list of the things we wish we would have seen in some of those games, or at least that we wish maybe had been polished a bit better. So once we had that list, it was easy for us to move forward.
I sat with my 15 people and said, here's what I need from you: Each one of you needs to give me one percent more than what is out in the marketplace. If you're going to try to lose 20 pounds, try to lose it one pound at a time, 20 times. It's way easier. So I said if I can get that one percent more from 15 of you, I can have a 15 percent upgrade. I said I don't need it all from just one of you. None of you has to be the guy that has to carry this burden on their shoulders. Everybody give me just a little bit more visually, at least and we're going to rock and roll here. Once you glue it all together, if we've all done our jobs, then the whole is going to be even better than the parts.
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For your part, what do you hope the gamer gets out of their experience with Kingdoms of Amalur?
TM: We hope that they feel our game did some things that were unexpected. There are some surprises in it. If we delivered enough of them, maybe they'll phone up their buddy and go, (Hey, Fred, I just played this game and you've got to see it. It's kind of cool, man.) If we can get that word of mouth going, then there's a big potential for us to succeed and maybe have a sequel come out someday.
