Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lead designer Ian Frazier has taken a pop at The Elder Scrolls series, saying Big Huge Games’ effort has “upped the bar” in RPG combat.
Ruh roh. Ian Frazier, lead designer on Big Huge Games/38 Studios‘ upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, has told CVG his game will “take RPGs in a new direction” after pointing out a perceived lack of innovation in the Elder Scrolls series.
“As far as Ken [Rolston, lead designer on Morrowind and Oblivion, now working on Reckoning] competing with his own parallel reality, for him, after Oblivion, I think he was done. Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, they’re all great games, and I think they’re progressively better, but they’re all the same game. It’s not like they’re radically changing with time. I think he wanted to do something new“.
“What can we do to take RPGs in a new direction? With Reckoning, there’s a lot of things we’ve upped the bar on, but the really exciting one was combat: he was just excited to do combat well which, frankly, they didn’t do in the Elder Scrolls series. They have a lot of other strengths, but combat isn’t really their thing“.
To be fair, he’s got a point. Combat has never been the focal point of the last three Elder Scrolls titles, even with the ability to breathe fire by shouting at people. Consider if you think Kingdoms of Amalur can do what Bethesda couldn’t by checking out the trailer.
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Little disingenuous, only the Riddick games have made first person melee combat work. The whole ethos of TES is that YOU, are free in this massive world. Third person severely limits that.
Should Bethesda spend some time playing Riddick and trying to figure it out? Of course.
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edcampion (January 28th, 2012)