Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — EA Event (part 3)

They were as follows (left to right, in order of sitting):

Curt Schilling: World Series winning pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and a hardcore gamer. His number was 38 when he pitched in the MLB, thus the name of the studio (38 Studios).

Todd McFarlane: Creator of Spawn and founder of the popular independent comic label Image Comics.  Incredibly talkative and down to earth.

R.A. Salvatore: New York Best Seller’s List author who has written over 50 novels in his lifetime. He was famous for his Forgotten Realms series and infamous for killing Chewbacca in the Star Wars’ novels.  Despite his loyalty to the Patriots, and making fun of my loyalty to the Cleveland Browns, incredibly nice guy.

Ken Rolston: While certainly not a famous name outside of the video game world, like the other three, Rolston is responsible for putting together some of the most memorable RPG games in video game history, including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Funny gentleman and world renown (as he wants to be called).

The panel started out with Curt Schilling who talked about the original forming of his company, 38 Studios. At the beginning, he was still in the MLB, but wanted to make something he loved, which was video games.  He was an avid MMO fan, stating that he played Ultima Online like crazy. He got into more details about how many he had on his staff and what they felt they needed to make a successful MMORPG. 

“There was 11 of us on the first day of this company’s founding… we quickly realized that we needed some heavyweights from a visionary perspective.” He talked about contacting McFarlane to help with the art and talked about needing a story, so he contacted one of his favorite novelists named R.A. Salvatore, “RA was very interested in where the writer was going in this [game’s] space. No one had done story very well, or tried to do story well especially in the MMO space.”

Schilling also mentioned courting Ken Rolston and Todd McFarlane, and reflected back on the first day, after he pitched the season opener in Kansas City, where he stayed up all night preparing a pitch for the visionaries. He went on to say that getting these guys on board for the MMO was a huge deal and what it meant for them helping with the developers. 

“These guys are at their best when they’re on the floor with the kids (devs) mentoring.” Schilling continued, “The magic that these guys have created [already with Reckoning] is going to be incredible.” Shortly after pitching the group (no MLB pun intended), Curt Schilling said everyone bought into and was onboard.

Once onboard, production started immediately. The first step was getting a solid story together. To do that, R.A. Salvatore put together an enormous history for Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning to exist in… 10,000 years worth, “They were looking for a place to go explore, live, breathe and kill things.” Salvatore continued, “We created meta story for this world. What I mean about meta story is that if you look at any religion or mythology of our world they have [explanations] of this is how the world was formed, this is how the world will end and everything that happens in the middle. So, we created a mythology for the world.” Curt Schilling quickly added to Salvatore’s explanation of building the story by saying, “They (Salvatore’s team) came up with the history of the world. It was literally a 10,000 year history. R.A. did a presentation to us about the history of the world and all the events that happened in the world [during its history]. The who, why, where and what; the villains and the heroes.” Schilling concluded, “That was the first day everyone realized that this was a really, really different [type of game].”

Of course, story is one part of it, most gamers want to know how good something can look and feel. Breaking the barrier from the typical RPG genre is a difficult thing, as the genre has been pretty much the same for years. Bringing someone in to ask questions and to break those barriers was going to be difficult, but that’s where Todd McFarlane stepped in on the project. Having virtually no experience with video games, McFarlane’s ability to question old rules and develop new ones proved to be valuable during the production process and the mentoring of the developers.

“I watch [our guys] play games and I ask, ‘why can’t they do this a little better [in games] or that a little better in games?” McFarlane continued, “I ask why can’t this be done? There are only three reasons. One is that it will take too much time; that’s a valid one. One is that it will take too much money; that’s a super valid one. One is that the technology is just not there. Short of those three, I just start asking a lot of questions and being the dumbest guy in the room. I don’t have any barriers to stop asking what may seem silly or obvious questions because I don’t know where the stops/starts are to all of this.” McFarlane kept going, “When we would draw it up on the chalkboard and I would ask, can we do this? When there was dead silence I knew that the answer was ‘yes’… I’m not the guy who is going to sell you hyperbole. To me what I have had success at is going, “What exists and how can you make it just a little bit better?”  He provided examples during the session by telling us about the toys he made and how he knew that action figures are made generally the same way, but by making the details of the figure stand out a bit more makes the $1 price justified when consumers purchase it.  Basically, his attitude seemed to be that the group didn’t invent the RPG genre, but they were intent on making it better.

The final person in the visionary group was the most eccentric, and the most well spoken, which was Ken Rolston. Out of the four, Rolston was certainly the most experienced in the group when it came to making RPGs. His resume is a mile long and his work on such hits as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion gave the gaggle of visionaries some true credence in their journey to make the perfect RPG experience. Rolston explained his role and their goal, “In this squall of crazies, I’m the guy who has to know the dirt. One of the stupidest things you could possibly want to do in this industry is to make a role playing game. The challenges are inexpressibly vast. You need so many different skills and so many different systems to work. You need it to be the most beautiful graphics in the universe and at the same time everything you are doing is swimming against that. You need to have so many sub systems, each is fighting for assets and charm in other places… [With that said, I’m the guy who knows] what the difference is between making a role playing game and making a Triple A role playing game.” Rolston continued, explaining a bit about the history and premise of the game and characters, “When I saw [Salvatore’s] 10,000 years… I knew where we were going to have our game because this is perfect… the premise for this character, a character who is dead, which is a pretty good way to start. [He is] the first guy who came back from death…by the way there are some very important cultural themes that hinge around those kind of myths, when you have that character appearing in the beginning of the game. In the first hour a character who doesn’t know why all those things happened is overlapped symmetrically with the player who doesn’t know any of that, therefore the revelation of the content is going to be organic. The player will explore the world and its own mystery… if you make a world that is not only huge in detail, but has those dramatic moments in it, it’s not by accident when you create things that are built out of history and built out
of myth… you sense emotionally that all these things are important.”

The small session with the group was very revealing for this writer. It’s one thing to bring really popular, successful people together as a group and announce that it’s all going to work out beautifully and to trust them because they’re all ‘superstars’. It’s quite another seeing these four individuals visually dedicated to the task at hand and hear them explain their solid visions on their contributions to the overall project. Out of all the things I saw at this EA event this certainly was the most eye-opening portion. Each person spoke about the game and laughed/made fun of each other, you could certainly sense that their goal to bring the most perfect, most unique RPG experience to the gamer was right on track, as well as having fun along the way. Egos aside, this group seemed to know what the hell they were doing and know how the hell they would pull it off.

Ultimately, only time (and a game in hand) will tell if they succeeded, but this last session of the event was a great indicator on what was possible. 




Final Thoughts

Having separated myself from the event (and all its glamor and glitz), I personally think 38 Studios and Big Huge Games is on track for something special. What I saw at the event was a game that had a lot of detail in it that immerses the gamer into this majestic RPG world. All bases seemed to have been covered in the pre-production stages that will allow for more creative, expansive details inside the main game. The demo we saw looks beautiful, seems to play beautiful and grabs the curiosity inside us and teases painfully.

With that said, Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning was supposed to be released in Fall 2011, but has been pushed back until 2012 (no quarter or date was given).  Normally when a company pushes a title back there are some concerns with the structure and content. After reflecting on the EA event I can firmly say that there isn’t anything wrong with the game’s production timeline, rather the group is simply pushing the game back to make sure they deliver the best product they can possibly deliver. 

That isn’t bullshit being fed to us by any fake company representative. That is the God’s honest truth the way I see it. 38 Studios and Big Huge Games has a lot riding on this one title. They have an MMORPG in the works that relates to this game directly, in terms of history and characters. If this game fails then there’s a great possibility that other games related would fail, too.  With that said, this gives enough reason for me and should give enough reason for you to see how dedicated these folks are to making a truly epic role playing game experience. The game looks like it’s going to be great.

I can’t wait to see this finished, as I want smaller developers who give a damn to be as successfully as they possibly can. It’s good for gamers and the industry.

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