Making Story Matter

Since we’ve heard from RA Salvatore on the writing process in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I thought we could take a look at an example from the game. Insisting that players hear your story leads to jaded players. Incentivizing players to hear your story leads to immersed players. And immersed players like to play your game. 

First things first - Reckoning does not have a codex/story bible/narrative log which you can access from the main menu, at least not in what we have come to know as the traditional sense. This is a welcome departure from the presently established norm. In theory, I love a massive codex filled with every song, story, religious text, and history lesson the world has to offer. I eat that stuff up. Except when I don’t have time to eat it up. When that happens, that codex sits in the menu like a pile of broccoli. I use broccoli because I hate broccoli and I assume most of you do as well - because it’s disgusting. 

There’s also a drop off rate. You start the game and in your wide eyed excitement, you make the decision to read every single codex entry you come across. You will be the master of this world’s lore before you finish and people of all nations will respect you for it. But that doesn’t happen. After a couple dozen entries, you detest breaking your flow - you hate having to stop raiding this dungeons, killing these ogres, so that you can pause and read about how ogre killing was a royal past time back in 600 BCEAG. And designers hate it too. We don’t want to see you have to stop playing to understand the world. It pulls you out of the game. 

So the menu codex is poor design and you end up not using it all that much anyway. Some of you do, and I applaud that. I wish I had your fervor for the intricacies of the world’s history. 

Or maybe I do. Enter Reckoning. Enter Lorestones. Enter me seeing a Lorestone from a distance and making a mad dash towards it, unconcerned with the troll standing nearby or the treasure chest a few feet away. When I see a Lorestone in Reckoning, nothing else matters. 

Lorestones are big stones out in the world that give you a bit of story when you interact with them. They are, for all intents and purposes, a codex entry. The difference is that they are completely voiced - a la Bioshock’s recordings. 

Fair enough - we all know Bioshock got that right, so that’s nothing new. I can continue playing my game while hearing the story of the world around me. However, there’s more. I get Experience Points whenever I interact with a Lorestone. So now I am being rewarded for experiencing the story. 

All that is well and good, but a little XP and a little narrative would make me use them when I find them - but what makes me actively seek them out? The fact that if I find every Lorestone in a given area, complete the set, I am awarded with a permanent stat boost to my character. The Old Republic did this with the Holocrons, but the frequency with which Reckoning places Lorestones makes it so much more enjoyable. 

A Lorestone in the world of Reckoning, ready to be plucked for its sweet XP juices

There are plenty of areas and plenty of stat bonuses to go around. And for you codex lovers out there, you can go back and listen to any entry all over again from the menu. 

Does this seem a little cheap? Maybe. It’s like offering a child a candy bar if they clean the dishes. The candy bar has nothing to do with the dishes - it’s just to get you to pay attention. That comes down to a matter of theming these rewards to fit the activity. But when someone has finally discovered a way to get me to want to hear hundreds of snippets of lore about their world, I can forgive a little pandering.