Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Interviews
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Strategy Informer: You mentioned how you've got your all-star leads on this project, especially Salvatore... were there any differences working with a published author as opposed to someone who's just being hired to write the story for a game?
Ken Rolston: No, because... we're both hardcore D&D guys... the real challenge for "real" authors is building a world that is meaningful... I mean he has some other skills that I don't have. Like, I know how to make a great world, and I know how to make a great game world -In fact I think I'm better at that than he is. [Salvatore] also makes great game worlds because he understands them, but he also understands characters, and how to make them vivid. And the charming way about how Todd McFarlane fits into that is that he can visualise these characters in a very kinetic way - he would say visceral, which is probably true as well but I'm more interested in the fluidity of it.
It's a great collection of people with different skill sets, different masteries, but also a desire to actively acquire what the other guy knows as well.
And then AusGamers brings us a bit more to chew on:
AG: Ok, we're running short on time now, so last question: Cooperative multiplayer of course is an incredibly popular element for action-oriented role playing games, to a point where it's almost unusual to see a game in the genre that doesn't include that. Usually when they don't, there's a really good reason for that. What do you think that Reckoning's really good reason is? And is that something that you had wanted to include but haven't been able to for any reason?
Ken: No. I would rather go to hell and be dead than include cooperative multiplayer. Because I don't think that we could do it as well as we'd do the singleplayer experience. It's interesting in that we have both a massively multiplayer game and a singleplayer game. I want to have the singleplayer game as opposed to this other game, because it's a tailored experience for you.
I celebrate co-op; I celebrate it in particular for games that don't have any dialogue. One thing that I don't believe has been solved to my satisfaction is the experience of a co-op group going through all that is necessary to have in an RPG. So I think that if you happen to be an RPG player and you have fans that happen to say (Where's my multiplayer co-op?), I'd like to point out that -- you may not know but -- Battlespire was a Elder Scrolls game and an action role-playing game, but it had multiplayer co-op and it was a total disaster technically in every way. I think it was even broken technically when you got to the fifth level of it.
But we explored that, and we realised what an extra-bad experience it was by comparison to. So I think that's an unsolved... how to say.... no-one has even taken on the problem; it isn't even unsolved yet. You don't even have bad experiences to start with. So I don't know where -- it won't be me -- and I don't know who I can imagine would do a good job at making that. Wasn't that possible to do in Neverwinter Nights? The original, did you play that?
