If there's one common element that so many highly-regarded RPGs are criticised for, it's character animations. The team at Big Huge Games and 38 Studios are well aware of this fact -- we're told due to the creative influences of comic and animation legend Todd McFarlane -- so it has become one of the standout features of their upcoming game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
The latest trailer for the game features the developers talking all about these two points and demonstrating their implementation in the game.
Reckoning’s hand-crafted animations, impressive combo chains, ability hierarchy, and more await you in the latest Inside Reckoning, featuring Lead Combat Designer Joe Quadara, Animator Chris Cox, and Lead Animator Young Vo.
As far as how it works: if you’re on the PC, you play with mouse and keyboard and “you don’t want any of that console crap” so you set aside the controller, then it’s setup not totally dissimilar to an MMO. You’ve got an ability bar across the bottom of the screen that will work with the number keys -- you can map abilities onto that. You can have spells on your right mouse button and your weapon on your left mouse button. You can use the scrollwheel to quickly switch between different weapons, like how a lot of first-person shooters tend to work on the PC.
And obviously you can bind all your keys. There’s a couple of specific things you can’t bind, like the Escape key is always backing out of menus -- we don’t let you rebind that -- but as a general rule, you can rebind whatever you want. Whether you want WASD or arrow keys or whatever else.
The other interesting thing about it is that if you prefer the console controls: if you plug in an Xbox 360 controller and you start fiddling with it, the game will instantly and automatically switch to that and the UI will change -- you’ll have a console-style UI. Then if you’re like “no, screw that”, sit that down and start moving the mouse, it’ll instantly switch back to the PC UI and you can do that whenever you want, you don’t have to change any options or anything, it just works.
Really, depending on the kind of build that you have, I might recommend one or the other. If you’re playing a pure melee warrior, personally I prefer the controller, because you get that rumble and tactile feel. If I’m playing a pure mage with a whole lot of active abilities, then I prefer the mouse and keyboard, because you’ve got a larger number of abilities you have instant access to.
So depending on your build and what you’re used to: if you like the controller; if you don’t like mouse and keyboard, you might want to go one way or the other. And obviously the PC can just look better than the consoles because it’s a PC!
The UI switching thing sounds awesome to me and I can't recall any other game that has taken this approach.
There's a lot that's sounding good about this game and it's looking very good on paper, whether or not it's going to have the substance to back it up is still a big unknown though imo.
Posted 01:14pm 23/12/11
Morrowind
Oblivion
Fallout 3
Skyrim (best animation in the list but still)
wait... is there a common theme here?
Posted 02:08pm 23/12/11
Posted 09:42am 24/12/11
Posted 11:30am 24/12/11
There's a lot that's sounding good about this game and it's looking very good on paper, whether or not it's going to have the substance to back it up is still a big unknown though imo.