Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Interview
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TGL: So is this an RPG in the traditional sense or is this an action RPG?
KR: Unambiguously because I don't like action games! I didn't say I wanted to make an action game I just said I wanted good combat and it turns out if you're going to make good combat if nothing else you have to begin with a language, some kind of a syntax to talk to people. So you look at God of War and what you learn when you do that is that it's all about animations and frame timing and stuff like that. And its stuff that fighting games and action games understand. So you get some good people from that milieu and you get them in the development process and they start teaching us what that's all about. But the point is we're not trying to make an action game because I don't particularly like action games. There's no exploration in them, their narratives are kind of narrow, not that they can't be powerful like a film but they're not a game narrative to me. They're just an execution of great fighting moves and I don't mean to denigrate it but if I'm going to make an RPG I'm going to make one that I like and I'm not going to make one that's just an action game!
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TGL: Do you think that a good combat system makes an RPG more accessible to people who wouldn't traditionally play them?
KR: It could be but the angle that I'm taking on that from my own experience and the reason I don't enjoy God of War is because there's no story there. And by the way, we do know some things about entertainment; we haven't missed the point of why these things sell so well! Their best sellers. So we're going to offer this entertainment and if it also has fun narrative and exploration and I think actually Morrowind and Oblivion were in many ways examples of games that entered into a console space that had not before been colonised by RPGs. So maybe it's not all that different than the first time.
