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Weekend Confirmed 95 - Ken Rolston, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
by Garnett Lee, Jan 13, 2012 11:00am PSTTwo game design heavyweights lend their voices to the show this week. Weekend Confirmed welcomes the legendary Ken Rolston, lead designer on Morrowind and Oblivion, who is currently working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Big Huge Games' lead combat designer Joe Quadara also joins us. Together, they provide new insights from the creator's side in our ongoing discussions around Skyrim and storytelling within large-scale open world role playing games. Of course, the conversation naturally then turns to the approaches they took with Reckoning, and we get into some detail about the upcoming game. There's much more as well with news and your comments from last week's show before we wrap it all up with Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 95: 01/13/2012
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If you're viewing this in the GameFly application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 95 directly.
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
Show Breakdown:
Round 1 00:00:00 to 00:29:13
Whatcha Been Playing Part 1 00:29:47 to 00:58:46
Whatcha Been Playing Part 2 00:59:44 to 01:28:13
Listener Feedback/Front Page News 01:29:17 to 02:00:27
Thanks to our special guests, legendary designer Ken Rolston and lead combat designer Joe Quadara (@bazooie).
For the latest on the game, watch the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Facebook page.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, The Wait is Over on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter delriomusic.
Jeff Cannata can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Follow the Weekend Confirmed hosts on Twitter, too! Garnett Lee @GarnettLee, Jeff Cannata @jeffcannata, and Xav de Matos @xav.
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
JRPGs are kinda the worst - encouraging you to wait until the final dude is hovering over the world to start doing side quests. I personally think the best games are the ones that let you continue to do side quests after you've beaten the main quest.
If Garnett hasn't started playing it yet, The Witcher 2 is an example of very careful writing in this regard. Yes it's very linear compared to most WRPGs, but there are still quite a few side quests that all sound like activities within reason for Geralt's character - many of them dealing with his main profession - hunting monsters.
Perhaps someone should indeed make an RPG with no main quest at all. I already started a character in Skyrim with no intention of doing the main quest (at least not until very, very late). In fact, I figured out that if you don't even talk to the Jarl of Whiterun, dragons don't appear in the game at all after Helgen.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 12 replies.
Which isn't to say Bethesda shouldn't try to perfect their crazy, pomo take on narrative. But heroic storytelling doesn't usually involve the hero making a bunch of choices (about where to go or who to fight or what to do). If you want a story with impact, it needs to be paced and it needs to be sorta linear.
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