If you’ve played an RPG ever, you’ve likely encountered enemies with scaling levels. You fight them in the beginning and they’re an even match, then you fight them a few hours in and they’re still a match for you… what the hell, right? Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning is going to be a bit different.
Designer Will Miller has shed some light on how, exactly, enemies will level as you progress through the game’s world. Basically, each area has a level range. When you enter a new area, the game locks enemies into a level within their range that is best suited for your level.
“When the player first enters one of those regions, we clamp all of the region’s NPCs to the level of the player, provided he’s within the range.”
If you’re one of those smarty pants’ who thinks they can just run to the end like they did in Morrowind, you’ll be dead pretty quickly. If you’re below an area’s level range, it will lock in at the lowest level and will, most likely, still destroy you. It sounds like a pretty sophisticated system. The game still scales enemy levels to a point, but as Miller says, “[they] intelligently decide what that level is.”
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sidesteps scaling enemy levels [VG24/7]
