Kingdoms Of Amalur 2 Possible, Depends On Sales

This week Big Huge Games released their open-world RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. While they're no doubt relieved to finish the game after years of development, they're eager to make a sequel.

"[A sequel] is certainly something we would love to do," lead designer Ian Frazier told Eurogamer. "Obviously it needs to succeed well enough to justify that. But we would love to do that."

Frazier added that it might not be a direct sequel, though. They have a lot of material to drawn on for ideas.

"[The game universe] is really big. It's 10,000 years of history. We could be sick to death of the Age of Arcana, which is where Reckoning is set, and be like, okay, we'll just pick a different time period or pick a different geography in a different area of the world. It's pretty darn varied, so we have a lot of stuff to choose from to keep it fresh."

The sales and reviews of Reckoning will determine whether Amalur 2 happens.

"It comes down to units sold at the end of the day, but it's complicated," Frazier said. "If the game doesn't sell that many copies but the critical reception is really good, then our publisher might be like, well, it was the first in a new franchise, we're going to take a bet and sign you up for another one. If the sales are really good you're pretty much set no matter what. There's a pretty big sliding scale there."

EA, the publisher for Reckoning, has let poor sales slide in the face of strong reviews in the past. For example, the first Dead Space didn't do that hot but they greenlit a sequel. That decision paid off for them, too, with Dead Space 2 bringing in big sales. We'll see if EA has the same faith in Reckoning.

Reckoning is available throughout North America on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. It hits Europe tomorrow.