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coaxmetal

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (Big Huge Games memorial thread)

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I recently picked up the game (Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, henceforth referred to as "reckoning" or "the game") on a steam sale, and decided to give it a whirl. I ended up enjoying it far more than I expected to. 

 

For those unfamiliar with the backstory behind the "Kingdoms of Amalur" "franchise", it was initially made as the world that the MMO being made by 38 studios, the studio founded by Kurt Schilling with money from the Rhode Island govt, and there was the whole debacle of them running out of money and not paying off loans and getting shut down and never shipping the mmo they worked on for like 7 years or something.

 

Anyway, at some point, they purchased the studio Big Huge Games, who had previously shipped several games, including Rise of Nations, and I think were owned, at the time, by THQ. Big Huge Games made reckoning, the only amalur game to see the light of day. Rerportedly, they had brought in a lot of heavy hitters to write millenia of backstory for this universe, minds such as the esteemed R.A. "Bob" Salvatore, of Drizzit fame, and one of the elder scrolls guys I think. Reckoning benefited from all this backstory, but the game was made, and presumably written, by BHG.

 

So, the game. I had seen coverage of it around when it was released, a few years ago, and was largely unimpressed. It has the cartoonish artstyle of something like Fable, though a bit less exaggerated I think, which is a style I am generally not fond of. They had talked about its incredible scope as comparable to an elder scrolls game, but the bits and pieces I heard made it sound as though it was large, but mostly empty. I never played it at the time. Now that I have started playing it, and quite enjoying it, those criticisms, while true to an extent, don't seem so damning. 

 

I still am not a big fan of the style, but I can deal. The game itself, is quite well made, the combat system in particular, though simplistic, is a lot of fun. All the backstory writing seems to have paid off as well, as, despite the cartoonish and stereotypical fantasy nature of the world, if feels as though it has history, that there is some depth there -- something that Fable as I mentioned above as a comparable, felt lacking in, though I didn't notice it at the time. The main quests, and faction questlines are fun, and somewhat compelling. Sidequests, however, while sometimes entertaining, are so common and so frequently not rewarding that I stopped doing them at all.  Still, they made a good game and I enjoy it, and a sequel would have been able to address a lot of the complaints. I think there is a lot more to this game than people gave it credit for.

 

Unfortunately, because of the mismanagement at 38 studios (and perhaps the fact that they were trying to make an MMO when the market had moved one), they were shut down, and since big huge games had been purchased by them, they went down with that ship despite the fact that they were a separate studio who had shipped games before, and were the only part of 38 that shipped one. That part is a real bummer, had they not been purchased, they likely would have remained as a studio and still able to make good games.

 

 

So uh. Anyone else played this game?

 

e: as an addendum, if anyone worked there or knows stories about it, and how that went down and where people ended up, I'd like to hear it

e2: thanks to Dinosaurs for informing me that the "one of the elderscrolls guys" I referred to was Ken Rolston (Lead on Morrowind, one of my favorite games)

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I haven't played Reckoning so I don't have much to add, but I did follow the 38 saga pretty closely. If you want to read a little more detail about just what went down (and why) this Boston Magazine article was the most in-depth investigation of what happened that I saw, including some quotes from Schilling and a bunch of employees.

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Big Huge Games actually survived after the 38 Studios collapse for about another year. Epic acquired them and renamed them Epic Baltimore, then shut them down about a year later.

 

As for Reckoning, I played it on PS3 shortly after its release and enjoyed it for what it was. I remember also being impressed with the combat mechanics. I had planned to finish the game on my last naval deployment, but ran into an issue which prevented me from loading my (single player) save games without the game polling back to some server to verify that I owned the preorder DLC items associated with the saves, so I never ended up finishing it.

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I really enjoyed Reckoning. As long as you don't get bogged down in trying to complete every quest (there are a ton of them, and a lot of the sidequests are boring) it's a very solid 30-40 hour RPG.

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Big Huge Games actually survived after the 38 Studios collapse for about another year. Epic acquired them and renamed them Epic Baltimore, then shut them down about a year later.

 

As for Reckoning, I played it on PS3 shortly after its release and enjoyed it for what it was. I remember also being impressed with the combat mechanics. I had planned to finish the game on my last naval deployment, but ran into an issue which prevented me from loading my (single player) save games without the game polling back to some server to verify that I owned the preorder DLC items associated with the saves, so I never ended up finishing it.

 

Oh did they really? I thought they went down with 38. Bummer they got shut down anyway though.

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I really enjoyed Reckoning. As long as you don't get bogged down in trying to complete every quest (there are a ton of them, and a lot of the sidequests are boring) it's a very solid 30-40 hour RPG.

Same here. I also played it to completion (rare for me) suggesting it was among my most enjoyed games that year. I also second the recommendation to go light on the sidequesting as it could probably make the game unpleasant with how boring most are.

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I thought with their lore and story setup they provided a novel reason for why you of all the people in the world is the one charging around and changing things.  Beyond that, it felt like a bit of a mish-mash of Fable and an Elder Scrolls game.  And not necessarily mashed together in the best way possible.

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I finished it, and completed probably 90 percent of the sidequests (I shouldn't have...so many quests).  The game as a whole was very uneven for me.  I thought the combat system was great, up until it got way too easy.  It went from being an interesting challenge to just button mashing over and over to slog through each area, with very little if any risk.  I eventually just broke it as much as possible by creating a bunch of gear that guaranteed every other hit was a critical just to make it go by faster. 

 

I remember absolutely nothing about the story.  Like, I remember a fighting arena?  A town with spiders?  Something about crossing the sea towards the end.  That's it.  I don't even know who my character was or why I was fighting.  Which is a bit odd for me, I can usually at least remember the basic story of a game.  It all just felt like a paint by numbers fantasy adventure to me.

 

What sold me on buying the game was actually the demo.  You got some extra piece of gear for ME3 by playing the demo of Reckoning, so I downloaded and played it.  The demo was completely rad.  I finished it and immediately wanted more.  And that's what I got, was more.  The demo had shown everything the game had, and the rest of it was just another 30+ hours of that.  Which it turned out wasn't what I wanted at all.

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I finished it, and completed probably 90 percent of the sidequests (I shouldn't have...so many quests).  The game as a whole was very uneven for me.  I thought the combat system was great, up until it got way too easy.  It went from being an interesting challenge to just button mashing over and over to slog through each area, with very little if any risk.  I eventually just broke it as much as possible by creating a bunch of gear that guaranteed every other hit was a critical just to make it go by faster. 

 

I remember absolutely nothing about the story.  Like, I remember a fighting arena?  A town with spiders?  Something about crossing the sea towards the end.  That's it.  I don't even know who my character was or why I was fighting.  Which is a bit odd for me, I can usually at least remember the basic story of a game.  It all just felt like a paint by numbers fantasy adventure to me.

 

What sold me on buying the game was actually the demo.  You got some extra piece of gear for ME3 by playing the demo of Reckoning, so I downloaded and played it.  The demo was completely rad.  I finished it and immediately wanted more.  And that's what I got, was more.  The demo had shown everything the game had, and the rest of it was just another 30+ hours of that.  Which it turned out wasn't what I wanted at all.

The other reason not to do the sidequests is that you quickly outlevel the content.

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I thought this game was pretty OK. The side quest stuff was kind of weird, on one hand they had a ton of BS quests that put me off doing them but then they had hand crafted cut scenes and VO for certain side quests which made me want to try to complete more of them. 

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