Upon first glance, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a game that consumers may approach with a dose of cautious skepticism. Right off the bat it seems to be an amalgam of several high-profile RPG systems, from Fable to Elder Scrolls to World of Warcraft, and usually these hybrid monsters rarely work. But to write off 38 Studios freshmen effort based on the superficial judgments may be missing out on something rather solid, and that is what Reckoning brings to the table. Once an MMO, the bones of its previous design offer an experience that, while doing nothing to move the genre forward, is content at being adequate at what it does.

Reckoning starts off like most RPGs, with a blank slate, created character that is thrown into prominence because of plot convenience, although this time it’s because you were dead and revived through unknown means. One thing leads to another, and your heroic avatar learns that he is outside the “threads of fate,” a belief in the world of Amalur where everything is connected to a pre-determined path that people follow from birth to death. Of course, you are the exception to the rule, as you can wield your own destiny and change the fate of the world.

The story is primarily spearheaded by NY Times Bestseller R.A Salvatore, best known for the Icewind Dale trilogy back in the late 1980s. But with no disrespect to Mr. Salvatore, a majority of his works, while well written, are often formulaic schlock in the genre, the archetypical high fantasy with formulaic conclusions. The main quest in Reckoning follows this to the letter, you have the good guys, the bad guys, and maybe one or two people who are in the middle, but they follow the same characterization as everyone’s favorite fairy tale Mary Sue, the drow Drizzt-Do’Urden.

Guess who Alyn Shir is based on…no really, guess…

I think it’s a shame too, because Reckoning has a bundle of great backstory and lore that fills in the gaps of the in-game world. It’s just a shame that the route taken in the main quest line can be lifted out of any Salvatore novel. While listening to clichéd lines of exposition spouted out by a talking tree for example, it’s hard not to count how many times Tolkien was “lovingly copied” in the main points of the discussion. To be fair, this is a hallmark of high fantasy-style prose, but in a world where The Witcher and Dragon Age exist, striving to push fantasy into a more ambiguous setting of ethical morals and grey protagonists, it is hard not to notice the pitfalls in the story this time around.

It also shows in how conversations are handled in Reckoning. Following a hybrid wheel/list design, the voiceless protagonist gets to choose a response for important conversations, and a list of major talking points for everyone. But the caveat is that the dialogue ultimately becomes unnecessary to the design; most quest lines have little, if no, real reason to listen to the plight of the quest givers.