Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning

Being huge fantasy geeks, we can’t help being excited by the arrival of a new RPG like Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning. This sprawling open-world RPG is being designed by a team at 38 Studios led by an all-star line up.

People like Ken Rolston, the lead designer behind the classic Oblivion; Todd McFarlane, the legendary comic artist who created Spawn; and RA Salvatore, the New York Times bestselling fantasy novelist.

With all those nerdy rock stars behind it, we’re screaming like teen girls at a boy band gig, helped by the fact that Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning is brimming with potential.

Set in a fantasy world in which every person has an unchangeable fate, at Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning's start you find yourself waking up on a pile of bodies.

You’re the first person to be brought back from the dead with a magical resurrection device called the Well of Souls, and as you’d expect, your first order of business is to find out who killed you.

Having been dead, you’re a clean slate, which will let you craft your character from scratch – and, more importantly, you’re the one person in the world with no fate.

That’s something that throws the Fate Weavers – a group that tracks every person’s fate – into disarray. After all, as a murdered man with no fate, you can change the course of the whole world, and who knows what you’ll do?

38 Studios is using both these ‘blank slate’ and ‘fateless’ concepts to drive Reckoning’s character progression system. Rather than having classes, Kingdoms Of Amalur uses three ability trees (sorcery, might and finesse), and as you level up you can invest your character points as you see fit on different skills and weapons from each.

Whether to become a jack-of-all-trades or explore one branch is entirely up to you. With real-time combat and the RPG mechanics hidden under the bonnet, Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning feels like a cross between a fighting and adventure game.

As you kill enemies with spectacular attacks you absorb their ‘fate’, which translates into even more powerful finishing moves for your character.

With an interesting RPG premise, exciting real-time combat and a progression system that promises to allow tons of player choice, Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning is looking like the kind of RPG that fantasy fans can and should get excited about. Whether it all comes together remains to be seen, but we’re excited to find out.