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Monday 6 August, 2012
I desperately need to stop playing and write about Kingdoms of Amalur. I've been tearing it up all weekend, like, main activity from Thursday night through today. Haven't been this into a game for a while, and it's one of those that's ridiculously easy to sit down on the couch and begin and then you just, you know, sink into the couch, and at the end of the day you have to pry yourself away from it. Okay if you've got free time. Not so good if you've got a lot of work. Guess which is me?
And I had no intention of ever playing Kingdoms either. I'd followed it a bit in development because I like the genre, but it ultimately turned me off because it seemed like it was taking too much from action games like God of War for my purist tastes. I like God of War, but I don't like the idea of swinging Kratos's blades around in a fantasy RPG. You might ask how Greek mythology isn't fantasy. It just looked out of place, okay! Anyway, turns out the combat is the only real non-RPG bit of the game. When I was collecting data last semester I had this participant talking to me constantly about Kingdoms for months. He would tell me all about it, and I developed a negative opinion of it from the things he focused on telling me, which turns out to be just how he played, as in he loved to go hunt for treasure. I don't care to scour the map for all the treasure. He loved the action-RPG fighting and when he'd tell me about it, I'd be like meh, played God of War, played Devil May Cry. Then N bought it and I played it for 30 minutes at his house a couple months ago and again wasn't really impressed with the beginning. It seemed very generic high fantasy stuff about elves and gnomes, and the story about Fate upon first impression seemed really gimmicky the way they tied it into the combat. But again, N raved on and on about it. I also thought it looked like Elder Scrolls Lite, which I kept writing down as I was playing. So, in the end, N finished it and insisted I try. I put it in the Xbox Thursday and here I am 33 hours into it.
So what do I think about it now? I've got a list of pros and cons. The main pro is that the big name artists scored big. Todd McFarlane did the art. He did Spawn and is awesome. R.A Salvatore did the story. He's been doing D&D stories since I was a kid. He is also awesome. Curt Schilling, all-star Baltimore Orioles pitcher, runs 38 Studios that developed it. He was one of my heroes as a kid. He is not an artist, but he is still awesome too. But let me state for the record that Kingdoms looks phenomenal. Beautiful. Jaw-dropping. Mesmerizing. My character has this magical shield that protects him from some damage. One of my biggest complaints about the game is that the magic shield is too shimmery, that it distorts my view of the environment. Weird gripe, I know, but I want to look at the backgrounds when I play, not see everything through blue mana-shield-tinted eyes. If it wasn't so beautiful I wouldn't care. And the story, wow. A lot of people hated on the story, but I find it engrossing. The story of the main character itself isn't particularly interesting, but the world of Amalur they've built sure as hell is. There's intriguing backstory and so much culture created for the game. There are tons of characters and zones and so much going on. I feel like I'm playing a book, that level of detail.
And the game world is HUGE for a single player game. Maybe not Elder Scrolls huge (Elder Scrolls Lite!), but it's gonna take you a long time to go everywhere. At 30 hours, I had cleared either 8 or 9 zones. I think I'm up to 10 or 11 now. Yeah, there are more than triple that. Looking at the map, I'm maybe 33% through the game. At 33 hours? Holy crap. My character, however, is level 21 or 22 out of a 40 cap, so that puts me more than 50% developed. There's a downside to this, and that is if you choose a pure class type, like my pure sorcerer, then you are very close to the top of your skill tree at this point. I think by 25 I'll have all the abilities I can get, which leaves me with just damage upgrades and nothing new for a long time. Will it get dull? I've thought about respeccing to might or finesse, or doing some dual 'destiny,' as Kingdoms calls it, but I think it kind of will suck if I have to respec just to not get bored with a spec by halfway through the game. That means the specs can't compete with the length of the game, which is a problem. You should be unlocking cool new stuff up until the end. Of course, there may be a surprise or two waiting for me later, who knows.
In addition to the game being huge, it's fully voiced. On the plus side, the voice actors are very good and it's very engaging to be able to read and listen and watch every conversation. On the downside, due to the massive scope of the game, they can't possibly hire all different voice actors, so there are really obvious repetitions. "Hey this Homer NPC sounds just like Lenny...who sounded just like Carl, who is the same voice as Moe." The huge world is a double-edged sword in another way regarding the characters. The story is wonderfully detailed, as are the quests, and I think out of necessity of making such interesting storylines, they had to try and make every character The Most Interesting. So on the one hand, every single character will comment on a range of topics and every single character says unique things! It's nothing short of incredible. They don't just repeat what other NPCs say or reword what other NPCs say; they say their own thing as they would. Like I've listened to probably 50 NPCs tell me about the Tuatha or the Summer Fae or whatever, and because each one of them said something unique, I know A LOT about the Tuatha, what NPCs think of them, their relationships with other peoples and places, the war they're waging, where they come from, what their goals are, how they are affecting characters' lives...this is one of my favorite things about the game. That's the positive. But on the other hand, at times, it's like they tried to write too much significance into each NPC. They've all got some story of how they came to be wherever they are, they all tell you what they think about other characters, or whatever. It can get a bit much. Typically in games you have all these 'common' NPCs who aren't that important and will tell you the common line. In this game there are no common NPCs. Because of this, though the world is beautiful and humongous and richly detailed, it can feel a bit dead, especially in settlements, because there aren't any NPCs just going about their day a la Elder Scrolls games. The only ones you really see are the important ones. There's supposed to be this big war going on, but like there aren't any orphans, no wounded soldiers, no burning villages, no battles or battlefields. It's an odd contrast of such a rich story and detailed world with relative lifelessness.
Kingdoms moves you around with quests just like any RPG like it. The quests are really well integrated into the story and they feel very fluid, not like you're running from quest hub to quest hub 'picking up quests' and then making your rounds through the zone to turn them all in and pick up the next set. Quests are really thought out, many have multiple parts, and they all relate to the larger story, whether it's a faction or some trouble plaguing each individual zone. The quests are really well done. Like in my 33 hours, I've done like 60 quests. So they're involved! That comes to like half an hour per quest. Compared with most MMOs, this is really nice. In WoW and others, questing is just something to do as fast as possible to level, and no reading the quest text or anything, so I love that they're interesting and meaningful here and not just a means to an end. But there's always a downside to everything in this game it seems. There's one particular type of quest that's gotten a bit monotonous, and that's the kind to go into some cave or barrows or underground somewhere to do something. All the caves in the game are the same with different skins. They're all roundabout mazes of tunnels. Pick a direction and you'll eventually come to the quest objective and circle around to the exit. And they're all narrow corridors that open up occasionally for skirmishes. Some have lots of pretty glowing plants, some are fire caverns, some are ruins, but they're all the same experience. Oh, and also although the outdoor environments are gorgeous, there is very little variety. I just today made it to a new environment, desert, whereas I'd been in forest for the entirety prior.
The few quests that are different really stand out and make the similar ones feel all the more monotonous. I remember 3 in particular that I enjoyed. One was in one of the cave networks, and I was pursuing a guy who had these cursed boots that made him invisible. It was set up like a hunt where I was hunting him and he was hunting me. He'd pop out and attack until I got his health down to 75%/50%/25% and then he'd disappear and I'd have to continue on and find him again. So the whole thing was a bit scripted with pounding music and everything. It was really cool. Another was searching for a missing caravan. You're sometimes given an ally or two who will help you. This time it's you and this commander you're reporting to, and 3 other recruits like you. The 5 of you split up to look for clues and patrol the area when you hear one of the recruits screaming. You meet up with the rest and realize that was him dying. So you all move on, and another one gets killed. Then the three of you stick together and move on again and eventually the thing attacks you all and murders the last recruit and you fight it off and solve the mystery. Another cool scripted quest. Then finally there's a type I've done 2 or 3 of that are little puzzles where you have to read through a few books to piece together some order of events for an NPC or talk to a bunch of NPCs to figure out, in one case, which order they are supposed to line up in to see the the king. It's like one would say "I don't want to be behind Moe because he smells." Then Moe would say, "Homer should be in front. But I want to be behind Marge because I like watching her butt [actual NPC sentiment]." And you talk to a handful of people and arrange them so they're all happy. It's silly but a fun diversion.
I've written down a bunch of other random things. Like I said, the game is very Elder Scrolls-ish, like a more structured and simple Oblivion or Skyrim. There are the typical factions you can join up with, the thieves, warriors and mages. There is the array of skills like persuasion, pickpocketing, blacksmithing, etc. There's the map complete with fast travel. There's the lockpicking and sigil ward minigames. There's the stealthing, the theft, the paying fines/resisting arrest/going to jail for getting caught, the fencing stolen items, the trade skills...and on and on. It's all similar but lighter. I like the Elder Scrolls way better because it's more in depth and there's more freedom to play. Elder Scrolls is just a more developed world. I mentioned the NPC schedules already and how there are none in this game, or very few. In Elder Scrolls games, NPCs will go to bed, take walks, eat dinner, pray, meet friends, and do all kinds of stuff. Here, they just hang out in their house. If you go in someone's house at 4:00am because you need to steal something, don't be surprised if they're awake sitting in a chair for no reason. Then say you try and steal from them, there are magic guards that rush in if you get caught. Doesn't matter if there are guards around or not. And the entire town will automatically become hostile to you. But then if you get caught and pay the fine, everyone is magically fine. I like Elder Scrolls how you have a standing with every NPC from 0-100. Also in Kingdoms there's this weird thing with stealing. Say you go in a house and there are a few NPCs in there. Sometimes there will be a chest that will be like free to loot. Other times it will be marked as a theft if you take things. It seems weird to me that it would ever NOT be marked as a theft if you take it. But whatever. So Kingdoms has a % chance on any theft item that NPCs will notice you taking it. If they can see you in stealth, it's 99%. At some point I figured out that if you just stand by the treasure chest in stealth, that number will drop to 0 most of the time, and sometimes even if the NPC is staring right at you or sitting right by the chest. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So if you want to steal something, you just open the chest, see the 99%, close it, stealth, wait 10 seconds or so, then all the items should be about 0%. But I don't spend a lot of time stealing. It's really easy, and stealing isn't a big part of the game anyway. You find so many items that it's unnecessary. Which also means that skills where you make your own items are pretty unnecessary, like blacksmithing and alchemy. You find items EVERYWHERE. You find so many items so often that you quickly become filthy rich with nothing to spend your fortune on. At first, the 15,000 gold required to train a skill was a lot, and the 3,000 gold required to remove curses wasn't pocket change either. But now I have like 600,000. The most expensive thing I've seen at a shop is like 50,000 and I don't want hardly anything at shops because I find so much better stuff. I'm decked out in sets and rare pieces. So money becomes pretty meaningless. Actually this pisses me off a bit because I devoted a lot of skill points to Mercantile so that I would get more money from selling items and so things would be cheaper for me to purchase. Those points could have been spent on other skills. Now I'm putting points in persuasion because most of the other skills I don't see much point in putting points into, and persuasion just gives me some different dialogue options, which I enjoy using but haven't been too successful at with a low persuasion skill. I was short on cash in the very beginning of the game for a while, but then my stash just increased exponentially and I foresee having a hilarious amount of money by the end with nothing to spend it on. I think that's too bad. They should at least have some money sinks for neat things.
That's pretty much it. Just a few more annoying things. Sometimes the map is hard to navigate because I find the buttons for using it kind of strange. Also the A button is unresponsive during dialogue wheel conversations and the Left Stick is the same during lockpicking sometimes. It's odd, I'll have to mash the A button sometimes because it won't read during dialogue. One of the options for characters' faces is golden rings (lip, eyebrow, nose). But by now I've seen so many random golden lip rings or nose rings that look so stupid on so many NPCs, I am really questioning the choice to make golden rings such a prevalent piece of jewelry. My favorite recent one was a bearded gnome where I caught a shimmer of a golden lip ring under his mustache/beard. Aaand finally, the game revolves around the idea that your character has no fate, no destiny, and therefore you can change the fates of others. This makes you dangerous because the world is changing, and you may be the harbinger of it or you may prevent it. Dunno! But, the game incorporates fate into combat in a gimmicky way. When your 'fate meter' fills up, by killing enemies, you can 'fateshift,' which makes you essentially go berserk and kill everything real easily. Enemies killed during fateshift have a big 'A' over them, so you do a little quick time event finishing move exactly like in God of War. When you do that, you get extra experience from all the enemies you've killed while fateshifted. It's pretty much the only unique idea in the game, and even it's half borrowed from the family of quick time event using games. It's cool to strategically fateshift when you're up against tough enemies that will next you lots of experience. I try to plan for this and always drink an experience potion for another +10% or +15% xp. If you score big, you can net thousands of experience and make a nice dent in your level progress. But, again a downside. Don't think you're going to pull this trick and fateshift during bosses or minibosses even. If there's ever a cut scene during a fight while you're fateshifted, it ruins it. Wasted fateshift, wasted potion. It's really really irritating because you never know if there's going to be a cut scene during any given quest. It's like if you want to be sure, you need to use it on normal enemies, but if you want to take a risk, try it on a boss, but you might waste it all. It's a stupid gamble that they should have designed around so that players can fateshift during boss battles and during quests and not fear it being ruined by an unanticipated cut scene.
That's all for my first Kingdoms of Amalur log. Longest one I've written in a long time and worth the words. I plan on slowing down considerably because I've got other things to do and I don't want to burn out on it. I'll probably write again about my expectations and how the rest of the game turns out regarding character development and anything new or significant gameplay-wise I discover.
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