Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

FemShep strikes a pose Last summer, Electronic Arts held a contest to decide upon the iconic face for the lead character from Mass Effect 3. Though the lead character, Shepard, can be male or female at the player’s choice, Mass Effect and its sequel were marketed with a male Shepard. Fans had been yelling for a more prominent role for the female version, known as FemShep for short. By playing through the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo, you unlock many items useful for low level adventurers – including FemShep’s famous armored spacesuit. Even though I haven’t actually played any of the Mass Effect games, I wanted FemShep to leave the airlessness of space for the lushness of Amalur for awhile. And so FemShep was born. ...

Cinematic dialog The “Reckoning” is a special mode you can get into where you become extremely deadly and suck the Fate right out of your fallen enemies. Just in case you were wondering what that was. It’s one of the more distinctive bits of a fantasy RPG that Electronic Arts hopes will be compelling glimpse into the world of Amalur for eager fans awaiting its unveiling as a fully-fledged MMO. ...

Dragon Age Legends One thing you gotta say about Dragon Age Legends: like the single player games upon which its based, in Dragon Age Legends you Get. To. Kill. DRAGONS. (Warning: link goes to Facebook). Unlike, say, Dungeons and Dragons Online, where I have yet to kill a dragon. The one you see in the tutorial is little more than a tease. It’s fighting a mind flayer, though, and we HAVE started killing those in our static group, but the name of the game isn’t Mazes and Mind Flayers Online now, is it? ...

If I were online media, I’d never have been able to bring you these exclusive screenshots from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning that the Big Huge Games division of 38 Studios is busily polishing down in Baltimore. But since it’s just you and me, here, Curt sent these along with a personal message about the hard work the super secret Copernicus guys are doing. Here’s another secret wallpaper: ...

I’m more interested these days in the single player RPG version of 38 Studios’ “Kingdoms of Amalur” than I am in its future MMO incarnation. My recent several play-throughs of Bioware’s excellent “Dragon Age” RPG have firmly confirmed me as an RPG nut. When companies make their IPs into MMOs, they have to have some grind in there to slow people down. In single player RPGs, you’re there to be part of a story. The very best RPGs provide a platform for your OWN story, but that’s rare, indeed. Have there been any besides Oblivion’s? ...

38 Studios and Big Huge Games released the first cinematic trailer for their Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning at the San Diego ComicCon yesterday. It’s hard to get a sense for the game based solely upon its cinematic trailer. Videos like this aren’t supposed to be acquainting you with the UI and the gameplay, but for its milieu. What can be told from this? The opening shot shows a standard musclebound Kratos/Den type, beaten, chained, being infused with some sort of mystical force that turns him into a killing machine. ...