阿玛拉王国：惩罚 Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning p.470

探索、叙事、推进和战斗这四个要素决定了一款 RPG 优秀与否。在前三件事上大家都做的得心应手。但至于战斗方面嘛……我们对自身的要求还远远不够，也还远未臻至化境。所以我们笃定，这个世界需要一款有着沉浸式战斗体验的 RPG。

A good RPG has four aspects – exploration, narrative, advancement and then combat. And, as it turns out for the first three things, people have been doing a pretty good job with them. But the combat... we really just haven't been asking enough of ourselves with that and haven't really known what an alternative would be. So, we decided; the world needs an RPG with good immersive combat.

Ken Rolston
《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》设计总监

Ken Rolston,
Amalur's design director

尽管平衡性欠佳，但《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》的战斗还是很有趣的，养成系统也能经得起时间考验。这款游戏之所以注定会失败，是因为它过分注重“数量”而轻视了“质量”，这款可供玩上 200 个小时的游戏与其说是一款 RPG,倒不如说是一款单人 MMO 游戏。

阿玛拉的世界幅员辽阔，并且满地都是任务。不过，虽然你从一开始就可以去任何地方，但还是会感到古怪和拘束感。你不能跳，突兀的空气墙把场景给团团围住，地下城是线性的，任务非常简单，规模也不大。例如，你被赋予的使命是寻找一个大多数人都认为实际上并不存在的传说之地——命运圣殿，但你实际上做的却是离开小镇然后沿小路在万能的任务罗盘的指引下前进。

NPC 也做得相当差劲，毫无个性，完全沦为了任务分派工具和知识百科全书，准备随时倾述关于盖德弗劳（Gadflow）的单调台词，讲述这位邪恶的精灵国王是如何命令他手下的扎法德恩（Tuatha Deohn）击溃黑暗精灵（Dokkalfar）并取悦蒂诺奇（Tirnoch）的……讽刺的是这些背景故事实在是哪儿都能看到，又非常的晦涩，很难让人提的起兴趣。

游戏还设计了像是劝说或开锁这样的非战斗技能，试图丰富一下玩法，你可以拥有自己的房子、也可以去偷窃、当扒手、杀害 NPC、或是遭受逮捕等等。然而这些全都有着很强的局限性并且非常机械呆板，这使得它看起来更像是款小成本制作的《神鬼寓言（Fable）》而不是 Ken Rolston 在《上古卷轴 3：晨风》中创造的那种沉浸式体验世界。

Even though unbalanced, Amalur's combat is fun and the progression system is solid. What doomed it was the decision to favour quantity over quality, delivering a 200-hour RPG that plays like a single-player MMO.

Amalur's world is massive, packed full with quests. But, while you can go almost anywhere from the start, it feels railroaded and limited. You can't jump, areas are surrounded by jarring walls, dungeons are linear and quests are very simplistic, lacking any sense of scale. For example, you're sent to find the Theatre of Fate – a legendary place most people don't even believe exists –, yet all you really do is exit town and follow a short road, guided by the all-knowing quest compass.

The NPCs are also poorly done. Entirely devoid of personality, they are mere quest dispensers and lore encyclopaedias, ready to dump monotonous lines on how Gadflow, the Unseelie King, ordered his Tuatha Deohn to destroy the Dokkalfar and please Tirnoch... It's uncanny how the lore is both incredibly generic and dense, making it almost impossible to care about.

Non-combat skills like Persuasion and Lockpick try to diversify the gameplay, and you can also own houses, steal, pickpocket, kill NPCs, get arrested, etc. However, it's all very limited and robotic, closer to the small-scale artificiality of Fable than to the immersive living world Ken Rolston created in Morrowind.

当时除了《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》外 38 工作室还在开发着采用了相同背景设定的 MMO 游戏。该游戏前后开发了六年，但在公司破产时被取消。您可以在 Jason Schreier 的《Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry》一书中了解到有关此事的详细信息。

Alongside Amalur, 38 Studios were developing an MMO set in the same setting. The game was in development for six years, but was cancelled when the company went bankrupt. You can read about it in Jason Schreier's book Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry.

尽管如此，Rolston 还是实现了他当初的想法。与《上古卷轴 5：天际（The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim）》、《龙腾世纪（the Dragon Age）》与《巫师（The Witcher）》等竞争对手相比，《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》的战斗系统更加有趣并更具深度，同时也让现代 RPG 所存在的缺陷暴露无遗。它的街机式玩法虽然不能像《哥特王朝（Gothic）》和“魂系列”那样与故事剧情紧密结合，但是有趣的街机式战斗和巨大的开放世界结合到一起还是令人相当激动的。

令人叹惋的是，想要通过续作来对其进行改进的可能性微乎其微。虽然《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》销量超过了一百万份，但 38 工作室开发配套的 MMORPG 时却遇到了严重的管理问题，并在不久之后申请了破产。

《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》简单、有局限、粗糙并且通常很无聊，但它却提供了其他开放世界 RPG 所没有的新鲜要素。不过话虽如此，但两个月后又出了个《龙之信条》（Dragon’s Dogma）……

Mods：

宽屏修正（Widescreen Fixer）：允许你拓宽游戏中那极其狭窄的视野角度并拉远游戏视角。文本框中的图片插入方法和正文中一样，只是宽度调整为 7.66 厘米。

核心难度（HeartCore，又名“YSA”）：一个游戏修改文件，它会削弱你的英雄，减少获得的经验值，增强敌人并让游戏速度提升 115%，从而使游戏变得更加困难。

按键映射清理工具（Reckoning Remapping Tool）：极大地改善了键盘和手柄那糟糕的键位分配。

Still, Rolston made his point. Amalur's combat is much more satisfying and deep than rivals such as Skyrim or the Dragon Age and The Witcher games, highlighting a flaw in modern RPGs. Its arcade-like gameplay isn't tied to the narrative as in the Gothic and Souls series, but the mix of satisfying arcade combat with a massive open world is thrilling.

Sadly, any chances of a sequel improving the formula are long dead. While Amalur sold over a million copies, 38 Studios had severe management issues trying to develop a tie-in MMORPG and the company filed for bankruptcy shortly after.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is easy, limited, unpolished and often dull. But it offered something fresh, that no other open-world RPG did. That is, until Dragon's Dogma came along two months later...

Mods:

Widescreen Fixer: Allows you to increase the game’s extremely narrow FOV and zoom out the camera.

HeartCore (aka YSA) Mod: A Cheat Engine file, it makes the game harder by nerfing your hero, decreasing XP, buffing enemies and increasing the game’s speed to 115%.

Reckoning Remapping Tool: Greatly improves the poor port job on the keyboard and mouse controls.