Kingdoms of Amalur

Just fired up the demo... doesn't work with triple wide. Gonna keep an eye on how that pans out at release.
 
I use a Radeon 6870.. I run the game with everything on including post processing. I did get a black screen if I ran AAxEQ only straight 2x 4x AA worked. Also AA mode to performance.

Give that a try and see if it works..
 
Q-BZ said:
Agreed. It does come together nicely though and I think the art direction as a whole does well.




Having spent more time with the demo today I'm going to have to agree with this criticism.

I'd like to have the freedom to look all around and including straight up if I want to and I can't at least in this demo. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have control over the camera entirely or at least to some degree. Again, I can't tell you how many times I hit my mouse wheel wanting to pan that camera back like is so easy to do in a TES game.

That's an example of where I feel "constrained" coming of of something like Skyrim although, again, to be fair I certainly didn't go into this expecting something like that nor should anyone else.

I can be honest about this: I think this is going to be a good game but it's a console game. There's no question about it. Now I want to stress this: It's NOT a bad console port or anything like that but it's a console game and probably a very good one. That's what I'm taking away from this demo.
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Honestly I never once hit the wheel expecting it to pan the camera, but I REALLY wanted it to. Most of the time the camera angle didn't bother me, but the few times it did it was annoying. If they support modding then I'm not going to be at all concerned about the camera. Even with that I put down my $60 to pre-order it right after playing the demo.
 
The camera didn't bother me in action/combat sequences. But during slower/still sequences or just running around, I wished I had more control over it even if just zoom. Other thing is I wish it had an automove key like Skyrim.

I have to go back to an earlier discussion point about the art style. I have to honestly say it isn't the most appealing style to me. For me I feel something like that is important, because with a game like this you'll be spending a lot of time with it to really enjoy it.

By the way for those interested, $47.96 at D2D currently -

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1667112
 
limitedaccess said:
The camera didn't bother me in action/combat sequences. But during slower/still sequences or just running around, I wished I had more control over it even if just zoom. Other thing is I wish it had an automove key like Skyrim.

I have to go back to an earlier discussion point about the art style. I have to honestly say it isn't the most appealing style to me. For me I feel something like that is important, because with a game like this you'll be spending a lot of time with it to really enjoy it.

By the way for those interested, $47.96 at D2D currently -

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1667112
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I like the art style personally. Reminds me of Fable's look without Fable's insanity.
 
Didn't have an opportunity to test this concept out yet: Is there a way to get out of a combat situation if you realize you're in a bad spot and want to retreat and regroup?


Dated January 9, 2012 dev interview:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/106339-kingdoms-of-amalur-reckoning-interview.html

GB: What is your stance on user-created modifications, and how mod-friendly will the PC version of Reckoning be? Have you put any plans in place to ensure that modders are supported in any official capacity?

Ian: I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that we at Big Huge Games are very much in favor of user-created mods for Reckoning. I come from a modding background myself (mostly on Dungeon Siege) and I’d absolutely love to see anything and everything that players can do with the engine.

The bad news is that the game’s architecture makes it fairly difficult to mod, and we couldn’t afford to officially support mod tools with this title. We’re currently looking into ways to hopefully make modding a bit easier for the community, but getting the dev tools into a publically usable format and releasing them doesn’t look viable any time soon. Nonetheless, we’ve got quite a bit of faith in the ingenuity of the modding community and are hoping to see great things from them!
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So this doesn't sound promising on the mod front short term and no Creation Kit is going to happen.
 
Derangel said:
I like the art style personally. Reminds me of Fable's look without Fable's insanity.
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I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the art direction. I was expecting Torchlight style low poly + low detail models. I think a more fitting comparison would be Orcs Must Die! -- unmistakably WoW-inspired but actually quite detailed, clean, and polished looking. The embossed Roman armor on the gnome Praetorians, in particular, made me stop and look.

One technical issue I've run into though -- the load times are absolutely appalling. I'm not sure if I'm the only one experiencing this and if something's wrong on my end. The demo's installed on my Vraptor raid right now, I guess I can try moving it to my SSD and see if it helps, but this seems glaringly wrong.
 
I don't know what's going on, but I seem to get stuck nearly indefinitely (sometimes a minute or longer) on the loading screen with the blue spinning disk in the upper left each time, but if I alt-tab out and back in, it immediately loads. Does this on both my SSD and Vraptors. Well, at least I found a workaround for my issue.
 
AmberClad said:
I don't know what's going on, but I seem to get stuck nearly indefinitely (sometimes a minute or longer) on the loading screen with the blue spinning disk in the upper left each time, but if I alt-tab out and back in, it immediately loads. Does this on both my SSD and Vraptors. Well, at least I found a workaround for my issue.
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Weird I load the game on a regular 7200rpm western digital drive and it loads in a few seconds.

Performance is overall good if they can sort out the weird controls it will be a solid experience.
 
I tried playing it, but unfortunately, all I see is a black screen :D (possible due to AMD card). I can still access the menu, inventory/quest thing... and I don't like it one bit, lol.
 
This game was really designed for playing on a controller. It can be done on Kb/M but it would be like playing God of War on kb/m. Overall this was a good demo, hopefully the game really opens up later on. I can see now why the scrapped the mmo idea. There's no way the could maintain that combat style in an MMO setting. Thousands of people all doing it at once? I'm actually glad they did a single player game. I'll most likely pick this one up, more to support these guys than anything.
 
Am I being stupid, or is there no way of keeping both your shield and weapon out at the same time? By that, I mean if you hold your shield out to block, your weapon gets sheathed. It looks a little odd, and I haven't seen it done in any other game besides Bastion. Actually the combat, esp the roll dodging and charged arrow strikes do kind of remind me of Bastion, but in full 3D.
 
My impression of the demo from about 40 minutes or so of total play time is that this is most certainly a console port. The combat was definitely designed around the controller and thats not to say it doesn't feel good or anything but I was sort of disappointed with how clunky it felt to me on a kb/m. The dodge spamming combat doesn't do much for me, I feel like a dodge as fast and long distance as the one in this game kind of limits the skill cap on combat. It was nice to see that they do actually punish you pretty heavily for not using your dodge in combat though, they did a good job of discouraging attack mashing strategies.

The visuals were a big disappointment, though I realize that the texture options in the demo might not be the best the game will offer at launch. This is a pass imo but that might change once I see some game play from the final product being run on the pc.
 
AmberClad said:
Am I being stupid, or is there no way of keeping both your shield and weapon out at the same time? By that, I mean if you hold your shield out to block, your weapon gets sheathed. It looks a little odd, and I haven't seen it done in any other game besides Bastion. Actually the combat, esp the roll dodging and charged arrow strikes do kind of remind me of Bastion, but in full 3D.
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It could have been an accident and this is with default KBM but what I saw a few times was if I was fighting and I had the shield and the sword going...if I held down both the attack button and the block (shift key) I watched the character take the shield and do this power shove with it against the enemy, pushing the enemy back and then they got hit with the sword. I liked it when I saw it happen a few times.
 
Solid performance and a definite visual boost over the console demos.
I’m playing with the 360 pad so I’m right at home. The dodge feels pretty much like the one from the Witcher 2 once you boost it up. Not quite Ninja Gaiden fast/useful, but still a little spammy.
Overall the game reminds me of Fable a lot. Fable crossed with a little bit of the Witcher 2.

I'm in. Even if the full game is no better than the demo I think I'll still have a good time with it.
 
Domingo said:
Solid performance and a definite visual boost over the console demos.
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Any youtube videos that show this? ( I compared xbox on youtube and seems to be same as PC visuals) I don't own a 360 / PS3 so just curious about the visuals compared to PC.
 
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northrop said:
I tried playing it, but unfortunately, all I see is a black screen :D (possible due to AMD card). I can still access the menu, inventory/quest thing... and I don't like it one bit, lol.
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Same here. I don't feel like dicking around with settings for an hour to (maybe) get it working, I'll just wait for them to fix it. Story seems a little meh though. I'm reborn, I'm the chosen one, big evil army and I'm the only one who can stop them...anyone else have deja vu? Hopefully the gameplay makes up for it.
 
B2BigAl said:
Same here. I don't feel like dicking around with settings for an hour to (maybe) get it working, I'll just wait for them to fix it. Story seems a little meh though. I'm reborn, I'm the chosen one, big evil army and I'm the only one who can stop them...anyone else have deja vu? Hopefully the gameplay makes up for it.
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Yes let's judge a story on it's base elements I mean god forbid we realize that there is no such thing as an original story anywhere because every story has already been told.
 
mickeykool said:
Any youtube videos that show this? ( I compared xbox on youtube and seems to be same as PC visuals) I don't own a 360 / PS3 so just curious about the visuals compared to PC.
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I have everything on my TV, so I just tend to flip input switches to compare.
The main "still-image" differences are in the AA, higher resolution, and view distance. Plus, you can obviously get a higher framerate. I maxed everything out and still got a solid 60fps with vsync on. I'm guessing (based upon the texture pop-in in new areas) that it's an Unreal engine game, so you can use that as a frame of reference.
 
Domingo said:
I have everything on my TV, so I just tend to flip input switches to compare.
The main "still-image" differences are in the AA, higher resolution, and view distance. Plus, you can obviously get a higher framerate. I maxed everything out and still got a solid 60fps with vsync on. I'm guessing (based upon the texture pop-in in new areas) that it's an Unreal engine game, so you can use that as a frame of reference.
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Apparently it's an in-house engine of their own creation. The texture work is too good for UE3.
 
Derangel said:
Yes let's judge a story on it's base elements I mean god forbid we realize that there is no such thing as an original story anywhere because every story has already been told.
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I know that this will definitely be a big plus in this game's favor: Originality.
 
Q-BZ said:
I know that this will definitely be a big plus in this game's favor: Originality.
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I'm more interested in how well it's written than how "original" it is. It's a world created by R. A. Salvatore so I'm expecting a good, deep, and well written world to explore.
 
Derangel said:
I'm more interested in how well it's written than how "original" it is. It's a world created by R. A. Salvatore so I'm expecting a good, deep, and well written world to explore.
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I'm not a huge fan of his work. Generic fantasy just doesn't interest me, so that's hardly a selling point. I'm more interested in seeing how well they can execute on everything in the final game without it coming across as muddled or broken.
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
I'm not a huge fan of his work. Generic fantasy just doesn't interest me, so that's hardly a selling point. I'm more interested in seeing how well they can execute on everything in the final game without it coming across as muddled or broken.
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Salvatore isn't always generic though he can be hit and miss. When Salvatore gets something right he really gets it right (Icewind Dale Trilogy and Star Wars Vector Prime) so I'm expecting this to be good since he has spent a lot of time working on this apparently.
 
Derangel said:
Yes let's judge a story on it's base elements I mean god forbid we realize that there is no such thing as an original story anywhere because every story has already been told.
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Lol, "Let's not judge a story on it's base elements, grrrr"! You're a funny guy.
 
B2BigAl said:
Lol, "Let's not judge a story on it's base elements, grrrr"! You're a funny guy.
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Anyone with any real knowledge of writing and stories will tell you the same thing: Every story ever has already been told. There are only a handful of different types of story. No matter how you dress up a story it always comes down to one or more of a set few basic elements. The point in story telling isn't trying to find something new to tell, but to tell your story in an interesting an engaging way.
 
I enjoyed the demo other than the random textures not loading, or weird textures stretching across the screen. Looking forward to the release! :D
 
Do we have any specific idea what things will be better in the final game vs this demo?
 
Blubikins said:
started the game up, i can hear sound but everything is black. exit game. delete.
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Ugghhhhhh....This has been discussed to death throughout this thread. Go to the game options and uncheck post processing. Insta fix and takes 5 seconds.
 
Blubikins said:
started the game up, i can hear sound but everything is black. exit game. delete.
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Withint the first 10 minutes of the demo being up, this was reported and a work around was posted. If you can't be bothered to go a simple google search stick to consoles or read a forum post, perhaps you shouldn't play games on your pc, because that's something basic that almost any pc game can have.
 
Blubikins said:
started the game up, i can hear sound but everything is black. exit game. delete.
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You forgot one last step: "move back to braindead console gaming". Hard to believe any pc gamer is incapable of having the patience to do one settings change to get the game to run.

Anyways, this demo has left me craving more than the 45min time limit is providing. People commenting on the RPS article on KoA keep bringing up Divinity II, so I might as well finally go install that and try it. I'm also kicking myself for not getting in on the various Darksiders sales in the past.
 
Played the demo and I really quite enjoyed it. It has some shortcomings, mainly the camera being too close (hope they allow you to change that in the final version). But all in all, I would recommend this to other gamers and sell them on the fact that ...

This is a gamers game.

Something about it, it has that friday night, 6 pack of beer, a pizza and staying up until 3am vibe to it. Much like WoW in the early, EARLY days. Matter of fact, Reckoning felt sort of like WoW and Fable had a child... in the best of ways.
Great fun game, fun being the key word. I look forward to buying it on a discount, because thats how I buy games these days.

edit. I had issues with the black screen and PP issue. Took about 15 minutes to resolve, but ... it did remind me that that kind of shit problem does not exist on other platforms. Its not about putting down other gamers because they dont have the patience to fix broken shit, its about developers releasing shit versions on a platform with zero common denominator. PC gaming is great, but one of its biggest downfalls is shit just doesn't work a lot of the time. Sure its gotten better in the past years but lets be real, shit is still breaking all the time, everywhere all over the world. PC gamers are so conditioned to fixing broken software that they've somehow fooled themselves into thinking its a badge of honor to fix broken consumer products lol. Reading this forum is living proof.

Consoles may be under powered and not using control inputs that PC gamerrs may like, but at least the shit works with the press of a button. While I was able to quickly fix my broken demo, that didn't stop me from being pissed off and reminded how awful PC gaming can be at times. I've been building PCs and gaming on them since the mid 80s.. its not fun, cool or hip to fix shit, tweak INIs or snob around online anymore. Its old, tiresome shit and people have fooled themselves into thinking its perfectly ok to deal with broken software. There is nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all bitching about this problem.

double edit. I'm buying this on PC, just had to vent a little.
 
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Whoever wrote earlier in the thread about the camera being from pre 2000 is definitely correct. That's the biggest negative in this game for me.

I had my unwitting sister take a break from Skyrim to try this demo blind out of nowhere and about 5 minutes in I hear "This is kind of like Legend of Legaia." That's a pre 2000 (1998) PlayStation 1 game.

She didn't mean as far as graphics or production values, although this certainly isn't going to get confused with Skyrim or some other 2011-2012 high end graphics show off game.

She meant camera and some of the play mechanics.

I really couldn't disagree with her on that point.

I tried both KBM and controller and could play the game either way but I'll probably stick with KBM.

I also hope some of the facial animations are more realized in cutscenes and that my character isn't a completely still and emotionless mannequin the entire time. That's a quibble.


AmberClad said:
People commenting on the RPS article on KoA keep bringing up Divinity II, so I might as well finally go install that and try it.
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http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/20/kingdoms-of-amalamadingdongdemo/
^^ I more or less agree with that take myself. It looks and feels like a pretty good console game.


Divinity 2 is something I've kept somewhere in the back of my mind. Dragon Knight Saga is the buffed up one if I recall?
 
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