Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Preview
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Amalur's development at Big Huge Games - which was owned by THQ for a spell before being incorporated into 38 Studios, an ambitious company owned by MMO enthusiast and former baseball star Curt Schilling - has been led by Ian Frazier (Titan Quest) and Ken Rolston, an Elder Scrolls veteran who was lead designer of both Morrowind and Oblivion. It's not exactly a pretender to Skyrim's throne, however.
The game unfolds in a more structured, less naturalistic or open-ended manner than an Elder Scrolls; its very large open world is made up of quite neatly defined and thematically discrete play fields, connected by disguised corridors. Game flow is clearly more important than total freedom to Big Huge Games, and the same is true of its approach to storytelling.
There's certainly a wealth of narrative detail and background lore here, and quests are framed in a familiar style, with conversation options and talking-head exposition. But fans of BioWare's intricate interactive fictions (regular and observant readers will know I don't really count myself among them) might be disappointed. Meaningful choices or forks in the tale are rare (making a lot of the dialogue redundant, it has to be said), and progress through the game is defined less by story than it is by exploration.
Your main quest and a choice of faction quests lead you from one location to the next, with a starburst of optional side-quests around each hub. Recovering WOW addicts like yours truly will find themselves soothed by the structure of this particular offline methadone. (It also bears comparison to Wii gem Xenoblade Chronicles.) Quick travel and a very detailed map keep things manageable, but while this certainly feels more like a video game than an untamed wilderness, it's not without a sense of scale and adventure - and, pleasingly, there are plenty of secrets to find.
