Why is this being covered on an MMORPG website? if I wanted to talk about single player games there's 1000 websites for that.

Originally posted by Kalsifer

Why is this being covered on an MMORPG website? if I wanted to talk about single player games there's 1000 websites for that.

I think it is because they also are working on a MMO set in the same world. Both 38 studio and Undead labs decided to give out a none MMO first to try the technology and world and to get in some money while they work on the MMO, MMOs takes many years before they actually start to earn in some cash.

If nothing else this game will tell us a bit about Copernicus, 38 studios upcomming MMO.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Kalsifer

Why is this being covered on an MMORPG website? if I wanted to talk about single player games there's 1000 websites for that.

I think it is because they also are working on a MMO set in the same world. Both 38 studio and Undead labs decided to give out a none MMO first to try the technology and world and to get in some money while they work on the MMO, MMOs takes many years before they actually start to earn in some cash.

If nothing else this game will tell us a bit about Copernicus, 38 studios upcomming MMO.

 

They started working on Copernicus well before this game.  This game is an engine which was built by Big Huge Games and used by 38 studios after they bought them from THQ when they devested themselves from all 3rd party studios.  Curt Schilling has stated that the engines for this game and the mmo are in no way related

Oh no! 2 more positve reviews!

RPGFan

Gamerevolution

Let me guess, these were paid off too? since clearly no one could like this game without being paid off /sarcasm.

Originally posted by Kalsifer

Why is this being covered on an MMORPG website? if I wanted to talk about single player games there's 1000 websites for that.

I think  because alot off MMO'ers enjoy RPG's. MMORPG.com has done a nice job of also giving us "General Gaming" forums,pc or console related. To be honest I prefer to read discussions here, over,say, IGN boards.

This game should be discussed on an MMO site because obstensibly it is an MMO that was made into a single player game. Sorry if I'm repeating known info.

38 was making this game an MMO and somewhere along the line they decided they couldn't or didn't want to compete, or the big huge engine couldn't hack the requirements of a AAA mmo, or for what ever reason it became a single player game. The guy who started the project and brought everyone on board is a massive Everquest fan. He dreamt of making his own for years, and being a rich guy was able to get other people to come on board one at a time as big names are attracted to the idea of working with other big names. This company has had some major publicized ups and downs. Hirings and firings, starts and stops etc etc.

If this game came out 5 years ago I might have been more impressed with what I was playing. Today however it is a colection of borrowed mechanics all wound together by dated looking graphics and features that are watered down versions of ones from larger better titles. I can't find anything original in this title.

This game IS Fable. It IS everquest. It IS god of war. It IS Dragon Age and it IS every hit game released in the last 5 years. And that's the key problem. It's kinds like how you can like all the ingrediants in a certain food seperately but when mixed all together it just tastes wrong. It plays like a console game, so yes it is responsive and snappy (too much so, turn that camera down!), and it comes with a console UI which we all know how much that pisses us all off. We didn't give Bethesda the pass when they failed in that regard and this game shouldn't get a pass either with it's Fable meets Dragon Age UI.

This game does NOT feel alive. The characters while well voiced are flat and depthless. Their conversation options are all the same like it's Morrowind all over, but eveyone has a different opinion of the same topics. A trend they put into everything. Redundancy redundancy redundancy. Or as I call it 'working to play the game'.

I haven't posted on these forums in a very very long time and I feel so strongly about this game that I feel I must, nay need to post a response.

Some people will like this game. Kids might like this game who've never played any other game before, or kids that watched their older siblings play fable I II or III and longed to play it too but weren't allowed.

OK, into the actual critism from a game design standpoint. The opening level is HORRIBLE! My gort. You get multiple copies of all the starter gear in the starter area...why? Because they dumbed it down for the idiots who run through levels ignoring content and have to force feed them the gear again just so they can handle the game. CAN YOU SAY LOADING SCREENS BATMAN!!!!? There is even poorly placed floating assets in the first level which make it look just rookie. Floor assets poorly placed that show the world below. Like an MMO beta where they said, "we know we have presentaion bugs, just ignore those for now, they are on our list and we will fix those soon." This game says "heck no! We ship with rookie bugs" because apparently they didn't have EA's massive QA department test this game.

The game is retardedly easy even on hard mode. Why is it easy? Because you've played this game before. You could play this game in your sleep and you probably have. It certainly put me to sleep once my eyes stopped rolling at the savage copy cats I saw everywhere I looked.

The areas are all corridors. I'm sorry but whoever at their studio that thinks a bunch of linked corridors is an OPEN world needs to be slapped with something heavy. Did no one at their studio play GTA? They stole features from Bethesda, yet managed not to see how an open wolrd is built. Being able to complete quests in the order you want is also not enough to call a game open world. Not saying you can, but it gives some flexibility in each area.

The buldings in the towns are jammed together just like in your favourite second tier Free to Play MMO except even more so. There are multiple vendors even in the same buildings that sell the same types of gear. In fact most all sell a bit of everything forcing you to go to them all and check each section against each other. Sorry I do enough pricing when I buy groceries. I don't want to do work in a game as well. Maybe that's for people who like shopping? Why do I want to go to loading screen, walk 10 feet to adjacent door and go to loading screen again?

Oh and did I mention that it was easy? In fact it is so easy that it makes character choices seem pointless. You get some fancy new animation if you invest points. But don't be prepared for any surprises, because just like fable we give you a nifty preview animation. Though at least in Fable those awesome abilites scaled, had tiers and you could pull them off at will practically. This game gives you broken over-powered gear that you can just spam and kill everything, without having to spec in one single skill.

All the details just feel like work. The bottom up skill trees all spread out and lacking any visual acuity or ergonomic design structure. The inventory system ripped from fable that if you double click you mistakenly drink or eat stuff from your bag when you're just opening up tabs.

EVERYTING IS FLAT!!! WTF! not a single normal map in the damn game? At the very least I will give them credit for having decent head rigging for lip synching even if I think the models look like POS. Unless you think WOW models are good looking and not just quirky and funny.

Tab menus at top of windows don't show all available options, but just 3. So if you are not the type ( I am, but the general audience wouldn't think to check) to habitually try to scroll past the options to see if something is hiding you'd never know the options existed. Who thought that was a good idea in a game so obviously watered down for the masses? And I really do hope that some producer at one of the studios to blame reads these posts, because I know they do, they have little else to do besides scheduling, and they want to know who to blame when the actual consumer reviews come in. By the way. Producers often post as normal users on web sites like these. Just saying.

Gack I'ma have to stop,I'd go on for hours with this game. Honestly try the demo. Maybe you'll pick it up. My guess is you'll pass for much better realized titles. This is just another example of EA putting their name on something and comming to "rescue" (hire fire and outsource) the developement financially then totally riuing it.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY!

You are wrong. /this game was not an mmo made into single player. BHG had a single player game in the works when 38 Studios bought them. They just made it Amalur themed after. The team working on the MMO has always been working on the MMO.

No I am not. Try following gamasutra for years or being in the industry. From a design standpoint this is an MMO. R.A. and Todd with Shilling all came together to make an MMO. One that Shilling could be good at I guess. Those drives translated into what we have here. There may be two teams that may all be fine and well. But why do you think they bought the team/game? Because they were further along then they were. It came down to being cheaper ergo 'safer' to buy something constructed, and then throw the creative anergies they had already developed into something with staff and ability. The dream of the MMO may still be there and in development but this was a stop-gap to stroke some egos apease investors that need to see a title every quarter and put something to market before the whole op folded on itself.

werd

Originally posted by Varking

You are wrong. /this game was not an mmo made into single player. BHG had a single player game in the works when 38 Studios bought them. They just made it Amalur themed after. The team working on the MMO has always been working on the MMO.

By the way...that team was tiny to start. hardly an MMO sized team. Not sure how many are on it now, likely quite a few but saying they have always been working on it is inaccurate. Most of those people  were working at other jobs for other companies when this little venture started..ohh what was it...back in 2006/7?

Originally posted by nontact

Originally posted by Varking

You are wrong. /this game was not an mmo made into single player. BHG had a single player game in the works when 38 Studios bought them. They just made it Amalur themed after. The team working on the MMO has always been working on the MMO.

By the way...that team was tiny to start. hardly an MMO sized team. Not sure how many are on it now, likely quite a few but saying they have always been working on it is inaccurate. Most of those people  were working at other jobs for other companies when this little venture started..ohh what was it...back in 2006/7?

You may want to go back re-research your info regarding single player and the MMO from the industry and/or gamasutra. The previous poster was right. Amular was converted and altered to fit the goals of what 38 Studios wanted to accomplish. KOA is NOT the MMO converted into a single player. It has some similarities, but only in the capacity of a single player game.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

First off, you basically cannot buy this game used nor sell it, because it uses an online pass mechanism.  So spending $60 on it sucks if you don't like it, that is money out the window.

NOTHING stopping youi from buying it used, or selling your used copy, AT ALL.

Really, if the loss of a whole 7 quests would prevent you from buying it used, you werent interested in teh first place.

Apparently you either dont know how online passes work, or just refuse to know, because it in no way shape or form ever prevents you from selling it or buying it used.

I find the art style reminds me a lot of WoW, its kind of cartoony. It also rubs off a bit of an adventure game, like Ratchet and Clank. For example, you can destroy crates and get money just like you do in most of these adventure games. The story, only judging by the demo, seems intersting and the combat seems like it can be addictive. Still I don't think Ill find myself as immersed in it as I am in Skyrim. The vibe I get from the game is more of just play it and have fun rather than immerse yourself in the world and story.

I share the same disappointments about the game as were expressed in the article but I enjoy the combat ( reckoning mode is awesome!) , the build system, and the story so much that the negatives are easy to get past.  I normally shy away from single players and lean more to MMOS because I dont like to purchase games that I 'm gonna finish in a few weeks /months but this game has so much content that I can see I 'm going to get a lot of game play out of it and I 'm happy to see that this game is just the ground work for an MMO which means that KoA will just get bigger.

I see people are grumbling about the art style but I think it works well with this genre and I 'm not so sure that the gorgeous spell effects would work well if the art style were more "realistic". I do wish the characters were a little more attractive, though. I had to tatt up my char's face just to make her more appealing (she looks more like Harle Quinn from Batman) , but over all I'm glad I bought it and I look forward to playing it everday.

Originally posted by nontact

No I am not. Try following gamasutra for years or being in the industry. From a design standpoint this is an MMO. R.A. and Todd with Shilling all came together to make an MMO. One that Shilling could be good at I guess. Those drives translated into what we have here. There may be two teams that may all be fine and well. But why do you think they bought the team/game? Because they were further along then they were. It came down to being cheaper ergo 'safer' to buy something constructed, and then throw the creative anergies they had already developed into something with staff and ability. The dream of the MMO may still be there and in development but this was a stop-gap to stroke some egos apease investors that need to see a title every quarter and put something to market before the whole op folded on itself.

 

werd

This game has been in development at Big Huge Games for nearly seven years, way before 38 Studios bought them.  They were working on an action-RPG called "Ascendant".  Since they were a THQ studio, they had financial problems because THQ is a poorly run, mismanaged Publisher.  However, BHG is a great studio with past, proven successes like Rise of Nations.  So they decided to sell of the studio or shut it down entirely.

This is when Curt Schilling stepped in with 38 Studios and bought them.  The Kingdoms of Amalur universe was planned from day one to be a Trans-media IP, and a single-player RPG was always envisioned.  However, when the opportunity to purchase BHG from THQ came up, they did so.  Before this opprotunity came up, the single-player RPG was a project planned for after the MMO.

At that point, the engine and core mechanics of the game were already developed, and they dropped the "Ascendent" stuff and used the Amalur IP instead.  You can see an early video gameplay of "Ascendent" here which shows the game before it was retooled for the Kingdoms of Amalur Universe.

Meanwhile, 38 Stduios had moved their studio to Providence, Rhode Island, secured a loan from the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.  This loan is entirely to create jobs for the State of Rhode Island, and the MMO studio, which never ceased its work, and is still in development under close scrutiny by the State of Rhode Island itself.  None of these funds were used to finish development of Reckoning.  Whether Reckoning is a success or failure the MMO will still come out.

This is where EA came in.  In order to finish up the single-player RPG, they secured a publishing deal with EA Partners which gave the MD studio the funds needed to finish the project.  EA will receive the lions-share of the profits on Reckoning.  However, had they not took a chance on the single-player RPG it would never have been made.

Edited to Add:  Actually, technically speaking, the deal with the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation isn't even a loan.  It's a good-faith guarantee that the State will back a privately-invested loan should 38 ever default and its incremental payout is based on performance milestones.

Sorry I am confused is this an mmorpg or co-op and secondly what does EA have to do with this are they just publishers.