killed any hope of outside investment in a game which
had become wildly expensive. The following day
employees discovered they hadn’t been paid for the
month. A little over a week later, the studio was finished.
Just last year, former employees of 38 Studios were
finally seeing some money in lieu of their final paycheques- the result of almost a decade of
litigation, and a fraction of what they
were owed. Schilling himself was
“tapped out” after putting $50 million
of his personal fortune into the
company. In recent years he’s become
a right-wing talking head, losing work
over transphobic memes. He publicly
supported the pro-Trump mob which
attacked the United States Capitol. It’s
difficult to imagine Schilling leading a revival of the studio
named after his jersey number.
Reckoning, however, has enjoyed a second life – revived
by THQ Nordic in 2020, and re-released with a brand
new expansion. Must have been born under a lucky star.
Jeremy Peel
Scrolls trick, used to ensure that a dungeon had a clear
narrative shape, a beginning and an end.
FINAL FANTASY
Between Rolston and Salvatore, it’s perhaps no surprise
that Reckoning struck a very earnest, Tolkienesque tone.
As much as its campaign challenged social division and
encouraged you to speak out against it – another Salvatore
staple – its fiction was also comfortingly old-fashioned.
Found books bore titles like The Words of Solen Reimgar
as Chronicled by Parthalan, while standing stones in the
wild delivered lore poems over strummed lyre – a slightly
corny fantasy backdrop to an unusual premise.
Yet the Reckoning team pulled no punches in its aim to
punt the RPG genre even further into the mainstream. Its
combat hinged on combo moves learned as you level up,
and offered convincing heft. It’s hard not to like a game
that asks you to collect gold by smashing vases with a
hammer the size of a giant’s croquet mallet. That
appealing immediacy extended to satisfying, cut-and-dry
questing, too – with a mission’s end
rarely far from where it began.
What’s strangest about Reckoning
in retrospect are its MMO trappings
- its chunky, brightly coloured world
and the question marks that hover
above the heads of NPCs. They’re a
reminder that this was to be the
overture to Project Copernicus, the
MMO that 38 Studios was making.
But fate, or financial woe, intervened.
The US state of Rhode Island had offered the company
a $75 million loan guarantee in exchange for 450 local
jobs over three years. But in May 2012, governor Lincoln
Chafee told reporters his goal was simply “keeping 38
Studios solvent”. That ominous public announcement
WHAT’S STRANGEST
ABOUT RECKONING IN
RETROSPECT ARE ITS
MMO TRAPPINGS“As far as the eye could
see, you could go,” said
Schilling of his MMO.LEFT: This is a rare
RPG that’s better
played with a
gamepad.NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT