Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Previews
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IGN talks about the lack of classes:
By not constraining you to a specific style of gameplay, Reckoning actually gives you more choices than most other RPGs. You can truly make your character into the type of character you want. You can focus on becoming an expert in one skillset or choose to be more well-rounded and learn them all. You can wield any weapon you want and don yourself in your choice of armor. You're only limited by how you choose to play.
This completely undefined character is also cleverly woven into the story, as you play as someone who's been resurrected, thus negating any destiny you had in life. After rising from the grave, you have no fate, and actually pull threads of fate from your defeated enemies, which becomes a core element in the main story.
While GameInformer writes down what they thinkare the reasons you should be paying attention to the game:
An absurd amount of content: RPGs are arguably the lengthiest of any genre of games, but in this generation of single-player games averaging six-to-eight hours of playtime, even role-playing titles have become shorter affairs. Not so with Reckoning. Big Huge Games is promising five distinct geographical regions that are stuffed full of NPC-packed towns, hundreds of sidequests, and (no joke) 120 dungeons. Best of all, those dungeons aren't cut-and-paste like in some RPGs Big Huge Games created some easy-to-use tools that allow them to quickly put together deep, interesting, hand-crafted dungeons.
Factions: One of my favorite systems from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was factions. Working through the various quests and storylines of the thieves, warrior, and mages guilds kept my attention even more than the main story. Oblivion lead designer Ken Rolston is heading up the Reckoning team, and he's carried over the idea of these factions. In the demo, I watched a run-through of a quest for the Warsworn faction. This group of warriors for hire originated as a religious order that existed to fight a horrific race known as the Niskara. This once-extinguished enemy has returned to the world of Amalur, and throughout the Warsworn quest, they will have to reconnect with their roots.
Open-ended class system: Rather than the RPG norm of choosing a class at the beginning of the game and being stuck with it till the end, Reckoning employs a unique class system known as (destinies.) As you level up and make ability and stat choices, you unlock non-traditional classes such as Wayfarer, Shadowcaster, and Slayer. You'll be able to upgrade and change destinies as you progress, making for satisfyingly open-ended character progression.
Gaming Nexus has a more traditional "impressions" piece:
You start out creating a character from four races along with a plethora of options to adjust how your character look. From facial structure to types of tattoo and piercings, there are a ton of ways to create a character just how you would like them to look. Unlike most RPGs, you don't select a class to play but rather develop into one based on how you play.
Reckoning has a ton of places you can check out. There are five distinct environments to traverse through, over 125 dungeons, 4 large cities, and plenty of towns to visit. Suffice to say, there will be plenty of areas to discover and walk around. Since your character is unique in the world in that he's been brought back from the dead, you'll see some of the environment react to you. For example, some plants were shown to glow and grow when the character pass by them adding some life to the world.
The action is fast and furious and there were some great combos displayed with the character fighting some of the monsters shown. As the character performed some intricate sword swinging combos, he followed up with a spell that grew stalagmites out of the ground in various successions to finish off the enemy.
And finally, Examiner highlights how easy it is to skip the "talky-talk":
The Story The story begins with your character being resurrected by a bizarre, arcane device. Unfortunately, you also have amnesia, but quickly learn that you are a) the first person ever successfully resurrected by the mysterious device; and b) it has imparted to you a unique ability in the world of Amalur: the ability to choose your own destiny.
Frazier didn't have much time to dive into the story beyond this brief introduction, so he went straight to the action as a warrior type character dressed in spiky plate mail. He enters a large cave-like area, where he meets and converses with another similarly clad NPC and speaks to him.
One interesting tidbit Frazier pointed out at this point is how the conversation system highlights conversation choices that propel you as quickly as possible through all the talky-talk and into the monster cleaving. If you want to chat about lore and back story you can, but if you want to skip the chit-chat and cut to the part where you kill things and loot corpses, the (conversation) path to it is lit for you.
