Although the content doesn't scale to your level as it does in Bethesda's games, levelling is brisk and steady, and there's far more to do than you need to keep pace with the main storyline. It's the freedom to pick and choose from an absurd wealth of content, all of it bursting to the seams with XP, gold and loot. You're then awarded a permanent stat boost, given a pat on the back and set firmly back on the rails.įreedom follows a different model in Reckoning, and this one is borrowed from another major influence, World of Warcraft. There are occasional major ones - "Twists of Fate" - that tend to arrive suddenly before bringing whatever episode you're following to an equally abrupt end. There are plenty of minor choices that have next to no impact. You can't simply do whatever the hell you like the way you can in Skyrim. You can't manipulate a complex story matrix of cause and effect the way you can in Dragon Age: Origins. Whilst it's designed by Elder Scrolls veteran Ken Rolston (Morrowind, Oblivion) and has many features you'll recognise from BioWare's and Bethesda's games (an obsession with the arts of conversation and thievery, for example), Amalur isn't so flexible. The thing is, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning doesn't really do that. In conversation, your mute and supremely bored-looking character can say anything you like - as long as it's acquiescent, stroppy or mean. While a Zelda or Final Fantasy is about ensuring the time-honoured legend reaches its foregone conclusion, the American role-playing dream is to hand you a complex world and let you bend it to your will. But to give creator 38 Studios its due, it's also a pretty elegant metaphor for the promise that makers of Western RPGs love to make.
It's a convenient plot device for a role-playing game, of course. Not only can you be who you want to be (rogue, warrior or sorcerer), you alone in Amalur can change the way things are. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning begins with your death and subsequent resurrection with no memory - and, according to the seers, no fate.
You, however, are the Fateless One, a unique being with an unwritten destiny that is yours to control. An elven race called the Fae believes so strongly in the immutable power of destiny that they re-enact their songs and stories, over and over. In the fantasy world of Amalur, everyone believes in fate - in a predestined path that they are bound to tread, with a predestined end.
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