M
ust have been born under a lucky
star, this one,” mutters the gnome
pushing the cart that carries your
dead body. His voice is leaden with
irony. Your luck extends only to the
fact that your corpse is in one piece. A fat lot of good
that’ll do you on your way to the incinerator.It’s an opening most reminiscent of Planescape: Torment,
the classic RPG that begins in similarly macabre
circumstances. But it also evokes The Elder Scrolls- namely the census taker who processes your entry to
Morrowind, and mentions that you were born under a
certain constellation. In that game, it’s a detail that
contributes to a sense that you’re favoured by the gods,
and fated for great things. Here, in Kingdoms of Amalur:
Reckoning, it’s a winking reference that acknowledges the
Bethesda pedigree of lead designer Ken Rolston, as well as
the fact that things will be different this time.
Rather than fated, you are fateless. Returned from the
dead by gnomish experiments, you are the only living
individual in Amalur whose story in the great tapestry of
destiny has already concluded. That makes you both an
exciting and dangerous figure: able to lay down your own
path, and knock the fates of others off course.
KINGDOM COME
Behind this premise, and the fiction of Amalur, was the
American fantasy author RA Salvatore. The Drizzt creator
directed his writers to research creation and destruction
myths, and to find patterns in folklore. He circulated short
stories about key characters around the office at 38
Studios, where Amalur was first conceived as the
backstory of an MMO. But that MMO would never come
out, and Amalur wouldn’t live beyond its first reckoning.
Fittingly, given all this talk of constellations, 38 Studios
was fuelled by star power. It was founded by baseball
legend Curt Schilling, a rare MMO nerd with the means
to get his dream project up and running – having earned
more than $114 million over his two decades in the sport.It was Schilling who recruited Todd McFarlane, a friend
and comic book artist known for Spider-Man and Spawn,
as art director, and who called Salvatore out of the blue.
“The way he presented it to me was that he was
putting together the 1927 Yankees, and he wanted me in
his batting order,” Salvatore told Gamasutra in 2007.
“When our names came on board, then the real talent
came in. He’s a pretty persuasive guy, and his batting
average is pretty good on the people he pulled in. He got
most of the people he wanted.”
EverQuest II lead designer Travis McGeathy joined up,
and with the acquisition of Big Huge Games, so did
Rolston. The intention was to use Big Huge Games’ engine
to power 38 Studios’ MMO – and in the meantime, put out
a single-player RPG set in the same world.
The latter became Reckoning, which launched with
EA’s backing in 2012. There was plenty there for Elder
Scrolls fans to latch onto – from the tumbler-twisting
lockpick minigame, to the NPCs who could be tapped
for training in specific skills, to the guards who gave you
the choice between prison, fine, and resisting arrest
when they caught you stealing.
Dialogue harked back to Rolston’s work on Oblivion,
driven by keywords that allowed you to ask a village
drunk’s opinion on a distant war if you so desired. And
cave networks tended to end with a cliff, meaning they
could only be explored in one direction – an old ElderINSIDE BASEBALL
How 38 STUDIOS’ failed MMO gave us Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
RIGHT: The game
received a recent
remaster, with the
dreadful name
Kingdoms of Amalur:
Re-Reckoning.
RECK YOURSELF
The worst remake titles of all timeSNATCHER CD-ROMANTIC
Hideo Kojima was committing
crimes of nomenclature long
before Die-Hardman came along.RED FACTION GUERRILLA
RE-MARS-TERED
The same studio that remastered
Reckoning did this one too.DARKSIDERS
WARMASTERED EDITION
Fans suggest the improved
resolution make up for the pun.DARKSIDERS II
DEATHINITIVE EDITION
Please, you have to stop. This is
an intervention.NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT“