Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Previews

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Written by BuckGB on October 3rd, 2011

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The skill trees in Reckoning also offer a wide array of choices. You can play one of three archetypes: the warrior uses a lot of melee weapons; the rogue uses dagger and ranged weaponry; the wizard uses staves and casts a lot of spells. Each archetype has a uniqueskill tree, leaving it up to you to decide how to allocate points gained by leveling up. If you want to specialize you can throw them all in a magic tree, or you can create an elaborate hybrid class that gets a little bit of everything, while specializing in nothing. You can further specialize your character by setting his "destiny." Each destiny has stats associated with it, and as you level up you unlock new ones that help solidify the type of class you're playing. For instance a melee hero might take a warrior destiny, giving them increased defense, while a mage hero might take a caster destiny, giving them increased magic damage. Like skill trees, you're given the option to change these regularly.

In a RPG the choice over what powers you choose is important, but far more important is what you do with them. Running down what amounts to a virtual treadmill takes away from the uniqueness of your character, so Reckoning instead tosses you into the world and leaves you to find your way. If you want to pursue the main story immediately you can, or you can develop your character's backstory through side quests. Perhaps you're the explorer compelled to venture into every undiscovered cave, the saintly type who has to save those in need, or the bastard who is only out to service selfish needs you can be any and all of those people in Reckoning, depending on what sort of story you want to tell. Like most games, the main quest line is pre-determined to a large extent, but the life you lead outside of that is yours to live.

Users are given a basic character creation tool as well. After choosing from the four available races and deciding on a "God" for them to follow - basically another bonus stat that boosts certain abilities - you can re-design your avatar by sifting through the character presets.

The tutorial takes you through every type of combat available in the game, ranging from magic to ranged weapons and stealth take-downs to melee attacks. You're a free agent in the game, who can switch between every combat stance at will. Similarly, you can choose to specialise in different class types at any point in the game by selecting from a list and gaining bonus stats based your class choice. Skill Points are accumulated as you level and can be added into any of the three Melee, Finesse, and Sorcery categories, each of which has their own ability tree.

It's well known that our playable hero follows the videogame trope of being a resurrected warrior, but we haven't had the chance to witness how this Lazarus moment plays out until now, let alone get hands-on time with this early part of the game. This rise from the dead is the gnomes doing, who have built the Well of Souls to learn the secret to immortality. Clearly, they're in the beginning stages of this learning process since our playable protagonist is the only example of this resurrection working so far. The fact that this is a warrior with a (clean slate) and tied to no fate is related to the overall narrative itself as much still needs to be learnt as to why this specific warrior was revived.

Getting to experience this starting point for the first time also allowed me to appreciate how the quest system aggressively branches out with missions outside the main quests. In fact, our two-hour session only afforded me time to play two main quests, compared to the eight or so side missions I accepted thereafter. And that doesn't even include the various faction quests you can come across; these become available depending on how you choose to interact (or not interact) with others.

We mentioned Fable earlier, and that's mainly because of the combat system. It's not as simplistic as Fable III became, but it's not far off. Tapping buttons and timings determine what attacks you do (provided you've unlocked the skill). Like all progressive games, everything starts of very basic, but the more skills you learn, the more you can do during combat. Because of this though, we actually preferred playing this game on the console over the PC. Personally, we felt the PC controls were a tad fiddly and needed some getting used to, but then again you could always just hook a game pad up.

Reckoning's whole 'thing' is the fact that you're some kind of freak of nature that can change destiny. Apart from important plot stuff, what this basically means is a power bar with a super-special awesome attack. Once you fill it up, you go into Reckoning mode where everything goes into slow motion and you get to just slap some bitches up. You can also do a special 'Fate shift' attack, which are mini QTE's that seem to involve a lot of punching to the face and ripping people apart with threads of energy. They are surprisingly brutal for a game that's no more offensive than a Lord of the Rings film.

Here's where Amalur's greatest strength lies: freedom in the RPG aspects. Despite the game's action-oriented combat (which I will delve into in a short while), there's an incredibly deep RPG system at the core of Amalur. You don't choose a class at the beginning of the game; you simply distribute your skill points amongst three different trees one with warrior-like talents, one with magic spells and skills, and another with rogueish abilities. They're not so dissimilar from (expanded) World of Warcraft skill trees, but here's the big kicker: it doesn't hurt to put your points wherever you want. Unlike many games, which require the fleshing out of a single tree, Reckoning offers a variety of Destinies (classes) that are unlocked based on the amount of skill points dumped into a tree.

The brilliant thing is that there are classes based around just about every combination just a few points in mage, but a lot in rogue? There's a class for that. Straight out warrior? There's a class for that. Even across the board? There's a class for that. The classes aren't just one-out for each type of skill because the more points put into the trees, the more classes that unlock. What's nice is that these classes don't restrict weapons or armor they simply give bonuses that compliment the types of skills chosen. Warrior-type classes get defense bonuses, rogues get ranged damage, mages get magic power, and combination classes get less powerful bonuses, but more of them. It's a great compliment to the well-built skill trees, which is where most of the customization comes from.

Where many RPGs see players spending as much time chatting up NPCs as hacking through hordes of nasties, Amalur's adopting a more action-oriented approach. Sure, you'll spend plenty of time bantering with busty barmaids, but when it's time to bring the pain, you'll do so in a fashion more in-line with a dedicated action game. Incorporating a seamless combination of magic and melee combat, battles will be dynamically-driven, visceral affairs more evocative of epic boss battles than the usual encounters with oversized rodents.

When it comes to looting, leveling, and laying waste to dungeon-dwelling monsters, RPG's are great at delivering the goods. That said, storytelling and setting rarely receive the same attention as these core genre components. To avoid putting players in yet another generic fantasy world on the brink of destruction, the developers left the visual direction and storytelling to accomplished artist Todd McFarlane and bestselling author R.A. Salvatore. If their previous work is any indication, Reckoning promises to immerse players in an absorbing narrative anchored in a richly realized universe. At the very least, it won't be another Lord of the Rings-wannabe.

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