Zero Punctuation: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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One of my biggest problems with Amalur is how it handles its story, actually. Skyrim knows to let the environment speak and to present its fiction in digestible chunks. On the other hand, Amalur is bloated with exposition that's delivered in a fairly lifeless manner. It doesn't help that while Skyrim's world design ensures that there's always something around the corner, Amalur is mostly lifeless until you run into some other town or encounter the same mob for the -nth time.
The only thing Amalur has going for it is the combat. Not to piss on anyone who appreciates R.A. Salvatore, but cribbing from Celtic mythology for a change doesn't save what's ultimately a fairly bad example of kitchen-sink design. Amalur's been competently put together, but there's just no uniqueness or personality to it all.
On a personal level, I also think the interface design is fairly horrid, as well. Why do I need to hit B three times every single time I leave my weapon selection screen or switch apparel?
The only thing Amalur has going for it is the combat. Not to piss on anyone who appreciates R.A. Salvatore, but cribbing from Celtic mythology for a change doesn't save what's ultimately a fairly bad example of kitchen-sink design. Amalur's been competently put together, but there's just no uniqueness or personality to it all.
On a personal level, I also think the interface design is fairly horrid, as well. Why do I need to hit B three times every single time I leave my weapon selection screen or switch apparel?
great video
sadly other than the specialized subclasses there there is nothing that makes me want to go out and get this game...oh well another on the wishlist to wait for a steam sale
sadly other than the specialized subclasses there there is nothing that makes me want to go out and get this game...oh well another on the wishlist to wait for a steam sale
I actually welcome the resurgence of "standard" fantasy settings in games right now. For a long time I've been left cold by games with alternate settings that just didn't move me, like the settings of Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and NV, and Fable 2 and 3. But I agree that the way the game drowns you in incomprehensible lore terms pretty overwhelming at first. I'm starting to get a hold of it now, but it seems they could have made it a lot easier than they did.
Remember that Yahtzee quote long ago about people who say Halo is better than current gen shooters and are wrong, that's you. Oblivion is almost unplayable compared to Skyrim and Morrowind... that's like a poor man's KOTORAprilgold said:
I can't really find fault in this game really, but in the end, it just feels pretty standard. While I can't call a lot of other RPG's drastically more complex and advanced, Kingdoms just doesn't have a lot of innovation behind it. The game itself, has great combat, the story while trying is still decent, but there just isn't anything that really makes this game awesome rather than good. In the end, after completing the main story and doing the majority of the factions, I didn't have any motivation to do the rest, much less ever starting a new game to try a different build. I wish it the best, but hope it comes with more to offer if there is a sequel.
The reason why you have "traditional" sword and sorcery dominating so much of game design is that it's probably the only real genere where the tropes reinforce relatively deep game design and progression.
In a fantasy game you have a relatively uncivilized world dominated by magic, where typically allegedly there was at least one age prior to the current one where magic was more advanced and powerful.
This creates an enviroment that can easily explain why you need to explore and find things for yourself, and why you could have one "good" kingdom that is still warlike and violent, and fighting enemies on all sides largely due to being slightly more advanced at least on the level of modern morality. Knights Vs. Barbarian Hordes (optionally dressed up as Orcs) so to speak, with a goodly amount historical material providing fuel that can be applied to just that.
Most importantly however is that magical items are an easy way of gradually accumulating power, as there can always be something more ancient and powerful than what you have, waiting to be recovered from some monster infested tomb (with it's very nature justifying the location). This allows for people to constantly strive for upgrades within the defined concept with minimal difficulty.
With science fiction games, this isn't the case, despite what you might think. It's why despite numerous attempts fantasy has almost always dominated RPGs and deep gaming experiences despite numerous attempts to change it.
Science fiction generally involves there having to be a civilization that built up and maintains all of this technology and spaceships and such. In a situation like that "exploration" is kind of hard to justify outside of a very specific fronteir enviroment and, since logically you could just pull out google maps. What's more it's not the kind of situation where a bunch of young wet behind the ears adventurers are going to go running out into the unknown, being civilized they are liable to be in school or working regular jobs, and the actual exploration is going to fall to well funded professionals with the guys backing them giving them everything right off the bat. It's hard to justify National Geographic sending someone out into the horrible nebula of death, and saying that once they prove themsevles able to survive using the issued BB guns they might give them a better weapon.
Given that your dealing with a civilized enviroment, your also looking at a time of manufactured goods. It's not likely that your going to find a nearly infinate number of guns, especially in the hands of the same groups of enemies. Weapons are generally going to be standardized regionally, and fairly equvilent. Like in reality we have AKs and M-16s in the hands of vast numbers of people because those are the kinds of guns that are effective and mass produced. This can make it rather difficult to justify progressively better gear, especially seeing as it raises conceptual questions as to why nobody was using these better weapons when your characters happened to be lower level. A question that doesn't really apply when the primary way of finding upgrades is to recover it from the bottom of some abandoned monster pit what nobody has been in for thousands of years yadda, yadda... which is pretty silly on it's own but reinforced by the basic tropes of the genere.
You'll notice that science fiction RPGs, tend towards a mechanism that causes problems where you might only have so many guns, but they come in "Mks." which works, but doesn't quite flow with the game, and has you wondering why some guy handed your star fleet officer a straw and a bag of dry rice in comparison to the universe to fight the Borg initially, when you would think anyone wanting to seriously win a war would do like a SERIOUS militay organization and standardize the best equipment that can be mass produced. In a fantasy RPG it's far easier to work around the needs of game progression than in a science fiction game.
This is incidently why I was kind of irritated with Bioware killing the itemization system, it's an area of game design I want to see developers work on trying to find a way to deal with, rather than saying "frak it, we're going with a weapon loadout system" because really experimenting through trial and error to find a good way of handling problems like this both conceptually and in terms of game advancement is going to be one of the keys to seeing more diverse generes. Fantasy dominates because it works.
Or in short it's like Gary Gygax's old explanation of why he hated science fiction games which was basically "The differance is that if you ask a wizard who roasted 20 orcs with a magical wand where he got his wand he'll tell you he recovered it at great cost from the bottom of the tomb of horrors, and it's also his mosrt valued and irreplacable possesion. You ask a space advenuturer who killed 20 enemy aliens where he got his gun he'll tell you either it's just like the one he was issued when he first started, or he bought it from SEARS for $19.95 and has it covered on the the replacement policy". You might also be saying "Gary Gygax hated science fiction games?" reportedly yes, though his position waffled like it did on a number of things such as "house rules" and the rights of other people to add to Greyhawk without his direct approval. I always suspected this story was larely based around the relative failure of numbers sci-fi game attempts like "Star Fronteirs", "Metamorphisis Alpha", "Gamma World", and "Cyborg Commando", none of which were successes anything like
D&D and at best kept bouncing in and out of print as oddities and nostolgia value. Of the lot "Gamma World" being perhaps the biggest success because it set things up where lost technology and the odd inventions of hyper-intelligent mutants (given the passage of time) could be used in much the same way as magical items, and the apocolyptic nature of the setting justified exploration and the kind of unprepared adventuring the genere demands.
At any rate, I'm rambling, but think about it, even if you want to disagree with me this is exactly what you see in games. It sounds simple, but developers really do keep hitting those same walls, and nobody really wants to take much risk in terms of development. I suspect one of the reasons why Bioware sold out on Mass Effect was not just that shooters sell better to a larger, more casual audience, but because it was going to take a lot of work to make it a deep RPG experience in that setting, and there was no way to justify that much effort when they could actually make more money by doign a shooter conversion and dealing with the conceptual design problems while drawing in a wider array of gamers.
Simply put, science fiction works beautifully for shallow, action oriented gaming experiences where there is intended to be very little in the way of progression or growth in the actual abillities of the character. In some ways a shooter is fairly realistic in a soldier remaining more or less the same, and using the same weapons and equipment, throughout an entire war or series of battles. Fantasy works far better for a game where you want a character who starts out as being a wimp and then turns into a dynamo over time, with a bit motivation being on finding better and better gear and toys to play with through proactive exploration.
In a fantasy game you have a relatively uncivilized world dominated by magic, where typically allegedly there was at least one age prior to the current one where magic was more advanced and powerful.
This creates an enviroment that can easily explain why you need to explore and find things for yourself, and why you could have one "good" kingdom that is still warlike and violent, and fighting enemies on all sides largely due to being slightly more advanced at least on the level of modern morality. Knights Vs. Barbarian Hordes (optionally dressed up as Orcs) so to speak, with a goodly amount historical material providing fuel that can be applied to just that.
Most importantly however is that magical items are an easy way of gradually accumulating power, as there can always be something more ancient and powerful than what you have, waiting to be recovered from some monster infested tomb (with it's very nature justifying the location). This allows for people to constantly strive for upgrades within the defined concept with minimal difficulty.
With science fiction games, this isn't the case, despite what you might think. It's why despite numerous attempts fantasy has almost always dominated RPGs and deep gaming experiences despite numerous attempts to change it.
Science fiction generally involves there having to be a civilization that built up and maintains all of this technology and spaceships and such. In a situation like that "exploration" is kind of hard to justify outside of a very specific fronteir enviroment and, since logically you could just pull out google maps. What's more it's not the kind of situation where a bunch of young wet behind the ears adventurers are going to go running out into the unknown, being civilized they are liable to be in school or working regular jobs, and the actual exploration is going to fall to well funded professionals with the guys backing them giving them everything right off the bat. It's hard to justify National Geographic sending someone out into the horrible nebula of death, and saying that once they prove themsevles able to survive using the issued BB guns they might give them a better weapon.
Given that your dealing with a civilized enviroment, your also looking at a time of manufactured goods. It's not likely that your going to find a nearly infinate number of guns, especially in the hands of the same groups of enemies. Weapons are generally going to be standardized regionally, and fairly equvilent. Like in reality we have AKs and M-16s in the hands of vast numbers of people because those are the kinds of guns that are effective and mass produced. This can make it rather difficult to justify progressively better gear, especially seeing as it raises conceptual questions as to why nobody was using these better weapons when your characters happened to be lower level. A question that doesn't really apply when the primary way of finding upgrades is to recover it from the bottom of some abandoned monster pit what nobody has been in for thousands of years yadda, yadda... which is pretty silly on it's own but reinforced by the basic tropes of the genere.
You'll notice that science fiction RPGs, tend towards a mechanism that causes problems where you might only have so many guns, but they come in "Mks." which works, but doesn't quite flow with the game, and has you wondering why some guy handed your star fleet officer a straw and a bag of dry rice in comparison to the universe to fight the Borg initially, when you would think anyone wanting to seriously win a war would do like a SERIOUS militay organization and standardize the best equipment that can be mass produced. In a fantasy RPG it's far easier to work around the needs of game progression than in a science fiction game.
This is incidently why I was kind of irritated with Bioware killing the itemization system, it's an area of game design I want to see developers work on trying to find a way to deal with, rather than saying "frak it, we're going with a weapon loadout system" because really experimenting through trial and error to find a good way of handling problems like this both conceptually and in terms of game advancement is going to be one of the keys to seeing more diverse generes. Fantasy dominates because it works.
Or in short it's like Gary Gygax's old explanation of why he hated science fiction games which was basically "The differance is that if you ask a wizard who roasted 20 orcs with a magical wand where he got his wand he'll tell you he recovered it at great cost from the bottom of the tomb of horrors, and it's also his mosrt valued and irreplacable possesion. You ask a space advenuturer who killed 20 enemy aliens where he got his gun he'll tell you either it's just like the one he was issued when he first started, or he bought it from SEARS for $19.95 and has it covered on the the replacement policy". You might also be saying "Gary Gygax hated science fiction games?" reportedly yes, though his position waffled like it did on a number of things such as "house rules" and the rights of other people to add to Greyhawk without his direct approval. I always suspected this story was larely based around the relative failure of numbers sci-fi game attempts like "Star Fronteirs", "Metamorphisis Alpha", "Gamma World", and "Cyborg Commando", none of which were successes anything like
D&D and at best kept bouncing in and out of print as oddities and nostolgia value. Of the lot "Gamma World" being perhaps the biggest success because it set things up where lost technology and the odd inventions of hyper-intelligent mutants (given the passage of time) could be used in much the same way as magical items, and the apocolyptic nature of the setting justified exploration and the kind of unprepared adventuring the genere demands.
At any rate, I'm rambling, but think about it, even if you want to disagree with me this is exactly what you see in games. It sounds simple, but developers really do keep hitting those same walls, and nobody really wants to take much risk in terms of development. I suspect one of the reasons why Bioware sold out on Mass Effect was not just that shooters sell better to a larger, more casual audience, but because it was going to take a lot of work to make it a deep RPG experience in that setting, and there was no way to justify that much effort when they could actually make more money by doign a shooter conversion and dealing with the conceptual design problems while drawing in a wider array of gamers.
Simply put, science fiction works beautifully for shallow, action oriented gaming experiences where there is intended to be very little in the way of progression or growth in the actual abillities of the character. In some ways a shooter is fairly realistic in a soldier remaining more or less the same, and using the same weapons and equipment, throughout an entire war or series of battles. Fantasy works far better for a game where you want a character who starts out as being a wimp and then turns into a dynamo over time, with a bit motivation being on finding better and better gear and toys to play with through proactive exploration.
To be fair though, Amalur is the first game in a series, and Skyrim was not. The enviroments of Skyrim don't really speak that well for themselves, and are just as generic pseudo-viking stuff as Amalur is celtic. The differance is that most of the major exposition needed for Tamriel took place in other games. While they exist, very few people who are playing Skyrim are actually new to the series, the anticipation based on previous titles is exactly why it was a blockbuster before it even appeared, with people literally creating songs about it before it's release.IamLEAM1983 said:
See, with The Elder Scrolls, all those books and pieces of NPC and quest dialogue built up quite a world. Chances are if your playing Skyrim and singing the praises of Tamriel you either read a LOT of this stuff in previous games, or you had someone who DID explain it to you. The storyline of Morrowwind which is where the current gameplay comes from was not conveyed entirely through the actions and enviroment, to find out all of the stuff that sold that plotline and is currently common knowlege you had to track down and read books, private notes about guys like Vivec, and pay attention to what people were telling you. The same is true of all the ramifications of what was going on throughout Oblivion.
To be honest one of my big criticisms of both Oblivion and Skyrim is that I feel they built too heavily off of Morrowwind and actually haven't included much in the way of world development, in favor of becoming inceasingly casual. A lot of the books and lore is simply system assets recycled from previous games, as opposed to a lot of new material being created for this game. While the story of the Dragonborn is interested, compared to the depth of Morrowwind and that entire divine soap opera, it's nothing.
I tend to agree with Amalur not being anything special though, to be honest I was quite disappointed. I expected more from an RA Salvatore/Todd Mcfarlane team up (I believe he did the art), even with Todd doing a less dark art style. My issue isn't so much that they borrowed from Celtic mythology, which would have been awesome normally, my problem is that they decided to pretty much crib the basic plotline from David Edding's stories about Sparhawk, which I won't go into. When I hear the term "Well of Souls" that's generic enough where it makes me roll my eyes.
There is a LOT of good stuff and cool stories that could be told about the summer and winter courts, and their natures and conflicts. Jim Butcher's "Dresden" books draw on this heavily for some of the material. I don't think this did it though from what I've seen.
As far as Dark Souls goes, I don't think anyone can lionize that in terms of story. It's pretty much pre-Tolkien fantasy that is so old it's new I guess. It's like some of the darker Michael Moorcock or Robert E. Howard stories atmopherically, except their uberness is replaced by your plot-justified abillity to keep coming back from the dead and graveyard zerg the scenario through patience.... a death prone glaciar that inevitably consumes everything if your persistant enough. You might think the dark horror elements are unique, but really at the time a lot of classic fantasy was written the genere was generally "wierd tales" and it was highly incestuous with writers borrowing from, copying, and amulating each other left and right, and even collaberating and outright borrowing each other's work with permission. Some people who didn't follow the time period occasionally catch some lovecraftian themes present in Conan or something that seems to be a referance to Conan as a pre-history in a Mythos story, well that's because Robert E. Howard wrote mythos stories with Lovecraft's permission and they collaberated. Michael Moorcock dealt with the same guys, and characters like Sojan The Swordsman, and what eventually grew into his entire Champion Eternal mythos were due to him finding the nature of characters like Conan too limiting for the stories he wanted to tell (I read some things about it).
Basically in playing Dark Souls, I feel like I'm walking into one of those old wierd tales, where the author just got permission to use some of Lovecrafts work to my misfortune, and it shows in the design of my enemies and atmosphere of my sword and sorcery story (which is more over the top than anything he would actually write).
But then again, I'll also say that while fun, I'm pants at Dark Souls, and the utterly craptastic magic system hasn't given me much motivation to play. When I play fantasy I want a dedicated wizard to be a viable option, and this game pretty much forces me to play melee who can only use magic in a sporadic and limited fashion.
Sounds pretty good, I'm going to get it based on this, I hesitate to call it such, but, "review" =D
Seriously, I got Driver:SF after the ZP ep on it, it, was, awesome.
Seriously, I got Driver:SF after the ZP ep on it, it, was, awesome.
Agreed. But people want what they know.Simonoly said:
Me, I'd be fucking THRILLED with another Elder Scrolls sett in Elseweyr or Blackmarsh...with Khajits and/or Argonians at the helm. Probably preferably Khajits as I feel they have more of an interesting way of being/talking.
OT: KOA is dull. It feels like wow without the people.
Brilliant post. It's a shame that science fiction works like this though; As much as I enjoy the medieval fantasy games, I would still like to see more science fiction enter the fantasy genre. Mass Effect did this particularly well, Mass Effect 2 did this alright but not as good as its predecessor (I don't expect ME3 to do much better).Therumancer said:
It's funny he says this, because Kingdoms of Amalur is the "prologue" for an upcoming MMO, codenamed Copernicus. It's still in the works and is now being developed by 38 Studios (who also worked on KOA: Reckoning).Yahtzee said:
Source: http://38studios.com/products/copernicus
That however, doesn't justify the repetitive and tedious quests and general progression that KOA: Reckoning provides. Just because it's the precursor to an MMO doesn't stop it from being a singleplayer now. Being a singleplayer it should've aimed to please the group of people who play singleplayer games, not those who play MMOs, since the latter would be playing MMOs right now anyway.
Overall, KOA: Reckoning isn't an entirely bad game. I mean, I've played much, much worse. It's just not particularly "good". I felt that gameplay wise, games like Skyrim were much better (though honestly, Skyrim is just as easy as KOA is - the difficulty sliders only increase health and damage, as well, not the actual AI mechanics) but story-wise, KOA kicks the crap out of Skyrim (Skyrim's story had so much potential that it never used).
Only real issue I had with KOA's story was the whole paradoxical effect of being separated from Fate. You have this whole thing about your character NOT being driven by Fate, yet obviously Fate had to decide that you would be reborn and your powers unfolded in the first place (this is implied about 30-60 minutes in, in fact).
Oh, god, now I really want an RPG based on the Mumin-stories.
Or perhaps a tactical squadbased shooter where the mumin-trolls do their part of the fighting against the Russians in the Talvisota. "Mumin: The White Death"!
Also, on the subject of the generic Western fantasy genre, I do agree, it's gotten into a rather boring mess. The reason of which, I think, is that there's not enough experimenting going on. One thing I'd love to see would be a fantasyworld that actually evolve. I mean, one of the d0rf's main shtick is their steam machinery and industry. Why on earth not expand on that, give them electricity, nuclear power plants and assault rifles and whatnot.
Furthermore, in a world with naturally occuring magic, people practicing it and a developing industry, it will take about fifteen minutes until someone crafts an equivolent to an atomic bomb. Imagine something Fallout-like set in a fantasy-land. Imagine what a bit of mutagenic mana fallout would do to the dragons!
Or perhaps a tactical squadbased shooter where the mumin-trolls do their part of the fighting against the Russians in the Talvisota. "Mumin: The White Death"!
Also, on the subject of the generic Western fantasy genre, I do agree, it's gotten into a rather boring mess. The reason of which, I think, is that there's not enough experimenting going on. One thing I'd love to see would be a fantasyworld that actually evolve. I mean, one of the d0rf's main shtick is their steam machinery and industry. Why on earth not expand on that, give them electricity, nuclear power plants and assault rifles and whatnot.
Furthermore, in a world with naturally occuring magic, people practicing it and a developing industry, it will take about fifteen minutes until someone crafts an equivolent to an atomic bomb. Imagine something Fallout-like set in a fantasy-land. Imagine what a bit of mutagenic mana fallout would do to the dragons!
Yahtzee the reason why this game seems so much like an MMO might have something to do with.. That..... *dramatic pause* The Game is technically a Prequel FOR an MMO build in the same world and set after the event of the game
That's a good point. I suppose you know what you're getting with all them dwarves and elves. I was kind of impressed when Dragon Age took a new slant on it and cast humans as the dominant species and elves as the oppressed - it's so frequently the other way around.tzimize said:
I really really want an Elder Scrolls set in Elseweyr too! Bethesda really need to start exploring the beast races of Tamriel, as there's so much we just don't know about them.
"Baby's first Skyrim" eh? Sounds adequate enough. After all, I heard that *gasp* you could only spend about 70 hours on this game.