Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Community Q&A #19

In the latest customary Wednesday Community Q&A the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning team gives answers on the control setup, particle effects, the open world nature of the game and whether the Lorestones and/or Twist of Fates bonuses can stack. Here’s a snip:

Can y’all explain how the controls are set up to handle the abilities? How many abilities can we readily access from our controllers without having to pause the game and go to a menu? It appears that all four face buttons will be melee combat (weapon 1, weapon 2, block/parry, dodge/teleport) and that one of the triggers opens up another menu of 4 abilities that can be mapped. Is there only one ability menu or are there more? If there’s only one, then why that decision by the devs to limit our ability to, well, use all of the abilities we’ve spent hours mastering and acquiring ? Pardon the pun. By Pelirow

A: Good question! For the consoles you do have access to 4 active abilities through one ‘menu’ by holding the trigger and using the face buttons, and for PC you have quick access by using the number keys. In addition to active abilities that are used with each button press, we have sustained abilities, which will turn “on” when they are first activated and will remain so until activated again. You could map one, turn it on, then unmap and leave it active freeing up even more active abilities to be mapped. There are also a number of abilities that don’t need to be mapped to be used. For example, each tree has abilities you can invest in to improve your weapon attacks or unlock new combo options (such as delay and charge specials). We also have abilities that upgrade other abilities, like turning a lightning bolt into a thunder storm.

Beyond that there are several that will cause reactions based on your state, like increased damage for a warrior when his health gets low. So while you can certainly have more than 4 active abilities and swap them out, you can just as easily pick a combination of active, passive, sustained, reactive, and upgrade abilities so that you will be able to use all of your choices fluidly without having to pause your game. By Andrew “Andre” Frederiksen, Producer