UPDATED: Curt Schilling’s first game finally revealed – Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Posted by Andrew On July - 20 - 2010

*UPDATE* - This post has been updated to clarify that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is not an MMO but an open-world single-player RPG. 38 Studios is currently working on another title, which is an MMO and has not been named nor revealed.

Gamers, especially MMO fans, have known for some time that former Major League Baseball ace Curt Schilling has been working on an MMO. We’ve also known that he has signed up a roster of A-list talent to help him craft his very own virtual world: Spawn artist Todd McFarlane, renowned sci-fi writer RA Salvatore, and game designer Ken Rolston of Elder Scrolls fame. But what we have yet to learn is, well, anything specific about the actual game itself.

That changes a bit today, as Schilling’s 38 Studios has lifted the embargo on it’s super secret first game, named Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Thing is, it’s not an MMO, it’s an open-world single-player RPG. An MMO is currently under development at 38 Studios, but it is a bit earlier stage and this is not it.

USA Today has the exclusive story, and the pub’s gaming blog, Game Hunters has the in-depth interview with the crew. This info is dropping all in advance of Comic-Con, where Schilling, McFarlane, Salvatore, and Rolston will unveil a poster and one minute cinematic video this Thursday. Let us help you out by parsing through all of this info and pulling out the more interesting nuggets from the USA Today interview:

On the setting of Kingdom of Amalur:

Salvatore: “I think we can say that we are talking about a high fantasy world with multiple races.”

“What we did do to create this world was create a 10,000-year history of it so that everything made sense.”

On gameplay:

Rolston: “What I really wanted was the same kind of action immersion that you get in other games where if you are skateboarding, you are skateboarding. You’re not checking your interface to see if you have the right gear on to be skateborading. You are in that moment. … You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard. You just take an action game and then adapt it to an RPG. But if you look at an action game, they almost always have very simple worlds that you are moving through, levels and levels specifically designed to certain aspects of the character. So the player doesn’t really have that much choice. He is going through a maze and he is not improvising. Whereas the soul of role-playing games is defining your own character and being whoever you want to be and customizing yourself. So the challenge was finding something that would allow us to have the experience of an action-adventure game but sill have the complexity, richness and customization of a RPG.”

Schilling: “When you are playing God of War, the one thing you want to do is get into combat because the combat is so awesome, so engaging and deep. And when you are playing Oblivion, it’s a story and there’s a world and exploration is a motivator and a driver in that game…I can’t come up with a game in mind where those two existed in the same space. … That is what I believe the magic behind Reckoning is. When you are not fighting there’s this intensively deep rich story that matters to the player. And when you are not involved running down this central quest line and doing some incredibly story-driven things that are fun and engaging you are in this kick-ass, immersive combat environment that feels like a fighter.”

On the game’s visual style:

McFarlane: “To be clear, we are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We are just trying to take games as people know it and just make it instead of a five-speed sports car, we’re going to make it a six-speed, hopefully. It’s just going to be a little sexier than what they are used to…The biggest piece of video games that bugs me is the robotic piece of how they animate a lot of things. I don’t believe that is any more than a wire frame that is painted to look like a human being or a creature and it doesnt move. It’s got eight joints and it doesn’t feel like it has muscle and weight and stuff like that. So I have been hounding on nuance that adds to reality of these characters being there. When you are playing you feel that they are there. If they feel real then you are going to ask. ‘Who are they?’”

On the trailer to be unveiled at Comic-Con:

McFarlane: “We plan on having a handful of trailers and commercials before the game launches. This is sort of our first little peek for the audience to sort of see what is we are talking about. We are going to set the mood in it. We will show a little bit of a hint of magic in it. We’ll show a hint of the scale of the bad guys in it. Then there will be a nice component there of the action that isn’t a priority in a lot of the RPG games. So, the intensity of some of the action.”

Are you excited for Kingdoms of Amalur? I so definitely am with a motha truckin cherry on top. Sure, not a lot of hard details on the game’s story, setting, or gameplay have been revealed yet, but to go from radio silence to this is great. Considering that the last two Elder Scroll games, Morrowind and Oblivion, are two of my favorite games of all time, I am inordinately stoked to see anything new from Rolston.

Of course, gathering the talent is one thing. Executing on a great game is a whole ‘nother challenge; one much harder than getting a sinker to drop off the table. Here’s best of luck to Schilling and his crew at 38 studios, we can’t wait to see the trailer this Thursday.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will launch in the Fall of 2011 on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Be sure to check back at MMOMFG later this week as we’ll be posting that trailer as soon as it hits the web.

*Image courtesy of USA Today