Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning "Visionary" Newsletter #3
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In games, art is more than just pretty pictures. It's a world you can believe in.
When I first joined 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, I told Curt Schilling I didn't just want to join as a concept artist. I could have given him names of 20 guys who could do that job. But, I said, if you give me a chance to have a hand in all visual aspects of the game lighting, spells, architecture, cinematics, you name it that's a different story. At the end of the day, that's what the gamer is going to judge. Even if one or two of those aspects are spectacular, that's not enough to make a great game. It's our job to get as meticulous with each of those areas as possible. We've all seen movies where one or two of the actors gave brilliant performances, but the movie as whole didn't work.
R. A. did the heavy lifting when it comes to storytelling. My part is to bring clarity. Bob tells a hell of a tale, but if no one can see it and everything looks washed out and unclear, then I'm crushing his story. When I'm talking to the guys about where to place architecture, or where to put the trees and rocks, I tell them it's not just about placing things in the world. It's about movement and discovery. It's about creating moments.
Imagine yourself meandering beneath a canopy of trees. As the trees begin to thin out, you glimpse a castle in the distance. You turn to round a corner, and you find that it was only a part of the castle. Twelve more steps and you pass under a bridge to realize it was only half of the structure. That's the magic we're trying to bring to Reckoning. It's part of bringing the world to life.
I didn't get worked up at the beginning of this process saying, (It has to look like Todd.) That's another game. As much as I like myself, there are a lot more people who don't know me than who do. That's a way bigger pool. Let's give them what they expect, and then make it as sexy as possible.
Here's what you should see first and foremost quality. You're not necessarily going to be gasping, (Oh, that's Todd!) What it should be is, here's a guy who went and did comic books and then took on toys and was able to look at toys and tweak it a little bit, then he did a little animation with HBO and it was the same thing. It doesn't have to be as obvious as when I'm drawing every line of the comic book myself. What you see with your eyeballs is important, but it's bookended by all the hard work of everyone else. In a bizarre way, if I've done my job right there shouldn't be any domination by my input.
My best day is when I'm the dumbest guy in the room. And I'm pretty good at what I do. So when I feel like that, that's a good thing. When 38 Studios bought Big Huge Games, there was an existing framework there. So what ended up happening was that I gave way more comments on art direction at the beginning of the process. And I have a list of about 12 things I repeat over and over again.
So the artists would turn their stuff in, and I would give comments, and as we went down the line they started to self-edit. They'd end up saying, "There's no sense giving this to Todd because we know what he'll say. So why don't we just fix it internally?" That was at the beginning. But eventually, they started showing me stuff and I just said, (cool.)
Everybody has their own style, but you have to have consensus. We got there pretty quickly with BHG because of what we had pre-created at 38 Studios. But, we didn't want to mirror that look. Instead, we did our Big Huge versions of those things.
We made a conscious choice that we didn't want our game to be overrun with browns and blues. I get that if I'm watching a two hour movie like Braveheart I need two hours of blue. But I don't necessarily want 100 hours of it. I understand that for the most part, if you suck out most manmade things, there isn't a lot of color on Earth. Most natural things on our planet don't pop color. Most of those things are manmade that shirt you're wearing, or the car that just drove by that's canary yellow.
An RPG is a videogame smorgasbord. No gamer is going to put every single thing on their plate. If you don't like spells you don't have to use them. If you like brightly colored environments, gravitate toward those and stay away from some of the darker dungeons. Just take things, put them on your plate and play what you want. The pressure on us, then, is that everything has to be good. We had to give equal value to each one of those elements.
But you can over-think art too much. Sometimes we're in a room and people will say, (We want to make sure it's consistent, that it all makes sense, and that everything melds.) Then I come in and say, (I live in reality. I'm going to go out and get a blowfish. Now put a blowfish next to me. What is the consistency between the two things?)
What needs to be consistent is the way shadow and light falls, and the way foliage grows. But even when you get into architecture, in the real world you can go from caves and adobe houses to skyscrapers. If you let go of that artistically you can create an unbelievably large range of looks. Just let it rip. When you're making a game I think it's necessary to surprise the player from time to time. Better that we get too crazy and have to pull back than say, "No, no, all these dots have to be connected." Connecting dots is more R. A.'s problem.
Of everything I've done in my career so far -- movies, TV, comics, toys -- this game has the widest breadth of possibility. Unlike those other mediums, where I get 100% say in what it is you're about to experience, with the RPG (especially given the fact that, in Reckoning, you have a character who has no prior fate), once we've spent four years directing this thing, we essentially hand it over to you and say, "Here. You're driving now. The car is yours."
Now, in some ways, the responsibility is yours. Put what you want on your plate, whether it's action, exploration, spells or whatever you're into. Now you get to play as crazy or as passive as you want to. And if we did our job, you're going to have a hell of a ride. You may never go to the coolest places I've been. Or you may go there and never look up. But hopefully, if you like the game, you get to take half the bow.
