Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

"From the beginning our fates were sealed. Decades of war gave rise to a new enemy. The losses were great. But one would die and be reborn. A hero with no fate but many destinies."

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an Action RPG developed by Big Huge Games (Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends) and 38 Studios, founded by baseball legend Curt Schilling and named after his jersey number. The game features the efforts of three "visionaries": a story written by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, a lead artist in Todd McFarlane and it's lead designer Ken Rolston. Schilling, a long-time MMO gamer, provided the money... or, at least, somebody's money.

For untold years Amalur was a world where fate cannot be altered and your destiny was sealed from birth. In the aftermath of decades of bloodshed and suffering a new threat emerged to threaten Amalur, the Tuatha Deohn. Across the land magic returns to mortals, chaos replaces order and The Fateweavers have foreseen no-one is fated to save the land from its inevitable destruction. As hope seems lost, the impossible occurs, the "Well of Souls" succeeds in restoring someone back to life. Freed from the chains of fate by death, "The Fateless One" is able to forge not only their own destiny but alter that of others as well.

The game forgoes choosing a standard class from the start in favor of a new "Destiny" system. This allows the player to build their characters stats from the outset in any of the three disciplines: Might(Warrior), Sorcery(Mage) and Finesse(Rogue). These choices will unlock Destiny cards that enhance their selected abilities. Each card is rewarded based on the type of build you choose allowing unique bonuses for specializing in a single disciple, creating a hybrid warrior or even choosing to possess skill in all three. The system is an attempt to allow stats and bonuses to be altered with a level of flexibility that most RPG's don't offer and to avoid the player being locked into a specific build. Reckoning also seeks to merge the deep RPG mechanics with the combat system of action games. It takes advantage of hybrid abilities and skills, allowing the merging of abilities and cross-class combos, and lets you carry up to two of nine weapon types, with Real Time Weapon Change.

Has two DLC campaigns. The first, titled The Legend of Dead Kel, involves being shipwrecked on an island run by the titular dreaded pirate. The second, titled Teeth of Naros, involves coming to the aid of the Kollossae, a civilization based upon ancient Greece located in the titular region.

Reckoning itself is the brainchild of Big Huge, owned first by Microsoft and then 38 Studios, who were themselves developing an MMORPG, "Project Copernicus", which Reckoning became a Dolled-Up Prequel to. Reckoning met a decent reception from critics, almost all of whom praised the game's ambitious design. However, in late May 2012, 38 Studios dissolved in the midst of catastrophic financial shenanigans, making Amalur a Stillborn Franchise.

Tropes used in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning include:
  • All Up to You: In full force in Justified. You are the Fateless One. That means you can do anything.
  • Alternate Continuity: According to DLC, a previous leader of the Warsworn was Commander Shepard.
  • Alternate Dimension: The Omniblade Daggers DLC are Strange and Mysterious Magic, lost from another Time.
  • Amnesiac Hero: Coming back to life has given The Fateless One amnesia.
  • And I Must Scream: The villain of the Scholia Arcana questline was trapped within a prison under the college for centuries. The Archsage gets trapped as well, thanks to the spell used to seal the Dark Empyrean.
  • Apocalyptic Log: A set of lorestones tell the tale of the last survivor of a group of Fae stationed in a fortress, tasked with stopping the resurrection of a fae sorceress known as the Widow. The survivor slowly realizes something is wrong when the rest of his comrades who had returned to the Fae Lands for the Long Sleep never returned and fears that when the time comes, the same fate awaits him. His final message for the player: The Widow Walks.
    • Also sets in Klurikon and Alabasta describing Gadflow's rise to power.
    • "The Legend of Dead Kel" DLC has the three volume log of the architect that built Gravehal Keep long ago. It ends with him desperately writing his final words as the things assaulting the fortress start breaking down his door...
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Prismere, a crystal that enhances magic in people and items... for mortals. For fae, it corrupts their power and drives them insane. The Tuatha use mountains of the stuff.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority: The current Archsage of the Scholia Arcana has the sole vote on who becomes the next Archsage, and always insists on choosing the greatest master of war magic, rather than someone more rounded who would be better suited to administering the school. This is because the actual purpose of the Archsage is to fight the Dark Empyrean if she ever manages to free herself.
  • Back from the Dead: The Player Character emerges as the Well of Souls only successful attempt bring someone back to life. It is also the reason the main character is no longer bound by fate.
    • A common occurrence for the Fae, they die, resurrect and then lead essentially the same life they led before.
    • Interestingly, the Fateless One did not have his corpse resurrected, but it was actually completely reformed from nothing in the Well Of Souls. The creator of the Well wanted to revive the dead, but did not want to desecrate corpses to do so. So the pile of corpses that the Fateless One wakes up in is from people who did not reform as successfully as he did.
  • Bald of Evil: Gadflow, as well as various other Tuatha.
  • Battle in the Center of the Mind: A few battles in the Scholia Arcana quest line take place in various characters' minds.
    • Bizzarely enough, you can still find random loot drops inside their minds and take the items with you when you leave.
  • BFS: The greatswords. Some Reckoning finishers use one as well.
  • Big Bad: Gadflow. But it turns out he's just the dragon to Tirnoch.
    • Each faction questline has one.
      • The House Of Ballads - The Maid Of Windemere. Can be sided with.
      • The Warsworn - Niskaru Lord Khamazandu and his dragon, Besin the sorcerer. Can be sided with, turning all Warsworn hostile against you.
      • The Scholia Arcana - Ciara Sydanus a.k.a. The Dark Empyrean.
      • The Travelers - The Hierophant a.k.a. Argine of the Sun Camp. Can be sided with.
      • The House Of Sorrows - Saturnyn a.k.a. King Bisarane.
      • The House Of Valor - Tyr Magnus, the house champion.
    • The Legend of Dead Kel DLC - The undead pirate Dead Kel.
    • Teeth of Naros DLC - Primos Anakatos.
  • Bigger Bad: Tirnoch.
  • Blade on a Stick: With aversion of Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship. Spears have long reaching stab attacks.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: A key aspect of Fey culture is "The Telling", of which our modern re-enactments and LARPing is but a pale shadow. New Fey will assume the roles and responsibilities of past heroes by actually fighting their old enemies, living their triumphs and even dying their deaths. Over. And. Over. Again.
    • Most Fey consider deviating from the telling a bad thing. So dying when you are supposed to as part of the telling is a good thing. If a mortal helps them they will get upset if the mortal assuming the role of a doomed person does not die (they may forget that mortals don't go to the Great Cycle like they do).
  • Body Horror: Dead Kel has a thick branch in place of his left arm and a skull mask that might not really be a mask at all but rather his own deformed skull. His twisted appearance is one of the reasons he's not happy that Akara brought him back from death. It's implied that he was left in that state because Akara aborted the revival process midway when he realized Kel was a Complete Monster who would abuse Akara's power.
  • Body Surf: The method used by the Dark Empyrean to facilitate her escape. She uses several high level mages to create the artifact necessary for her release. And she controls all of them simultaneously.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord: The Fateless One is free to use this
  • Breakable Weapons: All equipment has a "durability" rating that goes down over time. Blacksmith NPCs can repair it, but the cost goes up dramatically if you're using blue (rare), purple (unique) or gold (Set Bonus) gear; you'll save money by buying Repair Kits from vendors and making field repairs.
  • Broken Angel: The Fae are slowly losing their magic and immortality thanks to the Tuatha Deohn's actions wrecking havoc on the Great Cycle. They're not happy about it, but most of them know deep down that their time has passed.
  • Butterfly of Doom: The Fateless One. Argath has a minor Freak-Out when you save him from the monster that was destined to kill him since that is the moment he realizes the full ramifications of one person being Immune to Fate. Everything the Fateless One does changes the Weave of the entire world, for better or for worse. This actually happens in the very beginning of the game when Hughes avoids the death foretold by Argath just by meeting you.
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: It's not skeleton, it's faer gorta. Likewise, those are not elves, they're alfar. Nope, not a demon. A niskaru. They really go out their way with this trope. Those creatures all other RPGs would happily call goblins? Those are Brownies! Yeah.
  • Came Back Strong: The Fateless One. Whatever he was like before his or her death, (s)he's definitely come back more powerful.
  • Came Back Wrong:
    • Until you came along, the Well of Souls produced at best mindless zombies. One of the journals you can pick up strongly implies that during the early stages of the project this trope also applied to the physical aspect, with the Well producing variously malformed bodies.
    • It turns out that this also happened to Dead Kel, thanks to the misguided generosity of Akara.
  • Camera Screw: There have been numerous reports of PC players having difficulties with the field of vision and mouselook, both of which seem optimized for consoles and in some cases cause instant motion-sickness. This makes the PC version seem like an afterthought.
  • Can't Argue with Elves: Played with a little, the literal elves of this setting usually can be disagreed with when they get huffy... you can even disagree with them through actions that ruin them. As for the Fae which more accurately fit the whole long lived magical special race, you can argue with them and outwardly disagree with them, but they tend not to listen and if they're tuatha they generally don't listen on the grounds that they feel you simply can't understand them because you're mortal.
    • The 'good' Fae don't listen because they're willingly or reluctantly bound to their old stories, of which the Fateless One is not a part. More reasonable ones, like the High King Titarion and Prince Cydan (note that these are the leaders of the sane Fae) acknowledge that the Fae's time has passed and have a healthy respect for mortals.
  • The Chosen One: There wasn't supposed to be a Chosen One! No one was supposed to defeat the Tuatha Deohn! Someone went out of their way to build a machine which would bring someone back... that's you.
    • In a strange twist of this trope in the Teeth of Naros DLC, the goddess Ethene knows that she is not fated to have a champion, and so she waits for someone who is not bound to Fate.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: In the last dungeon, Alyn talks for pretty much the entire area... which includes several scripted encounters against swarms of enemies.
  • Contrived Coincidence: It's really ironic when you consider that the Fateless One, who was part of a group that kept Tirnoch's existence a secret, was the one who actually manages to put her down for good.
  • Crapsack World: Amalur has been getting progressively darker for centuries, culminating in the fated victory of the Tuatha. It's to the point that fateweavers, who were once the advisors to kings, are forced to live as beggars, since all they do is predict bad futures that are impossible to avoid. There's a reason why every fateweaver who meets the Fateless One treats him as the messiah; as far as they're concerned, he can't possibly make anything worse. Look down at Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? below, and you may just realize that maybe, just maybe, someone was intentionally making things that way.
  • Cult: The Tuatha Deohn are an evil cult of Winter Fae led by Gadflow. Unfortunately, the Tuatha are gaining influence in the Winter Court.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: The Winter Fae. Their main court is "The House of Sorrows", and they hold a reverence for waning of the seasons and present a foreboding appearance. However, they hold death as merely a part of the Great Cycle and necessary in life. Subverted, however, in that Gadflow is doing his best to forcibly convert the Court of Winter into a force of evil and much of the court has fallen prey to the ways of the Tuatha Deohn.
  • Dawn of an Era/End of an Age: The disappearance of fate at the end of the game and the return of mortal magic eventually leads to a time of unprecedented growth and change dubbed The Age of Heroes. At the same time, the Fae are slowly losing their magic and since their immortality relied on the Great Cycle of fate, the end of fate means the end of their immortality. They are effectively mortal now.
  • Deadly Disc: The chakrams, which also double as Precision Guided Boomerangs and Boomerang Comeback.
  • Deadly Dodging: High level wizards and wizard/thief hybrids can perform a flash step with a damaging effect included. This can be spammed, and costs no mana, allowing you to perform this move repeatedly, to the point that you can wipe out an entire party of attackers without ever drawing your weapon.
  • Deal with the Devil: At the end of the Warsworn quest chain, you can choose to ally yourself with the demon you've been hunting the whole time. This gives you a few nifty things, but also turns any Warsworn hostile.
  • Death Mountain: A quest in the Scholia Arcana chain takes you to the top of Skycrown, a huge mountain in the center of the Plains of Erathell.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Most of the Faction Quests have you defeating entities that have stood over mortals for centuries. The final boss fight has you defeating a dragon so large that you look like a mosquito next to it. A dragon capable of controlling fate. After it is beaten, the fateweavers become unable to see a fate for anyone, leading to the possible conclusion that it was responsible for the entire weave of fate throughout all of history. In short, you killed the creature that created destiny and which has been constantly rewriting the destiny of the entire world to ensure that it could not be defeated. And probably engineered the extermination of all mortal races since, unlike the Fae, mortals did not meekly accept Fate's designs, but constantly pushed against it. A world with just Fae meekly obeying the commands of Fate would be far easier to manipulate for all of eternity. Interestingly, if Tirnoch did in fact script all of Fate then she may have sealed her own defeat as the Fateless One's creation (foreseeable by Agarth) was apparently part of the plan. A simpler explanation for the end of Fate: the world was fated to end, but it didn't. Thus, the surviving world no longer had a fate. Tirnoch didn't control fate, but she could Screw Destiny and give that power to others. Doesn't make sense with other examples of the Fateless One changing fate. Didenhill, for example, was supposed to have been completely wiped out by the plague before the Fateless One intervened, yet once their fate had been changed Agarth could still see a new fate for them. Clearly preventing someone's death or destruction doesn't remove them from the weave.
  • Difficult but Awesome: Chakrams have the sort of range and multi-hit capability we last saw in God of War. As a downside, you can't block with your shield until they have returned to your hands. Perhaps in compensation, the final strike of their combo actually loops around behind your character a little bit, and if timed correctly will ward off incoming attacks.
  • Dirty Coward: King Wencen near the end of the House of Ballads questline chickens out and leaves you with his role because his victory is no longer guaranteed.
  • The Dreaded: Dead Kel to the sailors of the world even back when he was an ordinary mortal. He's become even more infamous as an undead horror.
  • Drop the Hammer: Yet another option for the Fateless One.
  • Drunken Master: Agarth implies a few times that he's actually more competent after he's had a few.
  • Dual-Wielding: Daggers, Faeblades, and Chakrams allow this.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Niskaru. Creatures from a chaotic plane of existence, they come in several flavors: hunters (look like a freakish mix of a preying mantis, human and a box of glowing crystals), tyrants (ten feet tall, with very malleable bodies, can reach across the screen with one attack), greater (you fight one as part of the story line they're 40 feet tall and can destroy cities, and can only be defeated with specially created weapons) and Lords (the Warsworn quest involves stopping the emergence of one, and it is implied that these things can ravage CONTINENTS if they emerge, and are almost impossible to kill once free; just one emerging into the mortal plane of existence is something that can shake the foundations of the world).
    • The Fateless One, in a sense. They died, then their soul was captured and stuffed into a body created purely from arcane energy. And since they aren't bound by Fate (and often use it as a weapon), they are often asked "What are you?!" by NPC's who are sensitive to the Weave of Fate. The Tuatha even consider him/her an abomination.
  • Everyone Is Bi: Most NPC's who flirt with the Fateless One will not change their dialogue based on his/her gender.
  • Fair Folk: Fae in Amalur take inspiration from this trope, with a new spin on it though.
    • Interestingly, the Tuatha are the exact opposite of what most Fae are considered. They are not subtle, nor do they shy away from violence or direct confrontation, nor do they rely on trickery. They are violent, cruel, and merciless, and in regards to tactics, they have roughly the same amount of subtlety as a warhammer blow to the face. You could almost mistake them for humans in that regard.
    • It is also commonly commented that there's something WRONG with the Tuatha. They're a radical branch of the Winter Court, who "are not nice, but not evil."
    • Argath claims the Fae are even simpler to understand than mortals, because the Fae don't change with time thanks to the "Great Cycle".
  • Fake Difficulty: Like most action games, getting hit just once in a Multi Mook Melee can lead to being stagger-locked for half your lifebar or more. Your only saving grace is the fact that you can use healing potions no matter what else is going on.
    • The game's auto-targeting system also leads to Interface Screw sometimes. The algorithm works by a combination of range ("What's nearest me?") and aggro ("What most recently hit me?") and has no option for locking in a target in case you want to pursue it.
  • Fan Disservice: Banshaen have breasts the size of your head. Too bad they're giant, monstrous, lightning-spitting reptiles that vomit up their young.
  • Fetch Quest: There are several, but they're mostly filed under "Tasks" and are mostly the player turning in Vendor Trash they find scattered across the various lands.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Of course, you can choose to combine aspects of these into a style of your choice.
    • You can be all three at once, or have your fate unwoven so that you can select different skills and abilities, letting you change from Warrior, to Thief, to Wizard, or any combination of the three on a regular basis, so there's no worries to be had over not being able to meet the requirements to go through a faction quest (or being stuck with a gimped character because you accidentally chose the wrong skills to level up). For a modest fee, you can reset your stats and remake your character (the only thing you can't change are the destiny cards concerning the choices you've made).
  • Fighting a Shadow: The problem with fighting the Fae. You can kill their bodies, but they just come back.
  • Finishing Move: If you use Reckoning mode correctly, it will end with you ripping the threads of fate out of your victims, turning them into a glowing weapon, and beating them to death with it.
  • Flash Step: By ranking up in Sorcery, your dodge roll becomes this instead.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Tirnoch, the Goddess of... Mercy?
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Before murdering the heads of the Winter Court, forming the Tuatha, and leading them on a war to annihilate all mortals, according to the lorestones, Gadflow was... the court jester of the Winter Court.
  • Full Set Bonus
  • Gambit Roulette: Alyn Shir suggests near the end of the game that the Fateless One planned out everything including his/her death and subsequent resurrection. If this is true, then the Fateless One essentially Out-Gambitted Tirnoch.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: The Fateweavers originally read the Destiny of others through cards. For the Fateless One who makes his/her own Destiny, the cards instead allow access to the Class and Level System via deliberate choosing of the cards.
    • A more subtle example in the main questline. One quest requires you to recover a spear that is the only thing that can defeat a greater Niskaru. When the weapon is lost during the battle against this monster, and you have to take it on, once it's health is reduced to a sufficient level, you use a finisher, and what you create to destroy the enemy is AN EXACT REPLICA OF THE SPEAR, FORGED FROM THE WEAVE OF FATE.
    • Another example comes up in the Teeth of Naros DLC. Primos Anakatos uses the Fateless One's role as Beckoned to fulfill the Kollossae's prophecy just enough to open the way to the Hyperian and breaks the Fateless One's Cipher. At that point, since the Fateless One had gained a new fate, he becomes the very victim of the kind of power he commanded, becoming inflicted with the Broken Fate status.
  • Gladiator Subquest: House of Valor has this in two flavors: one is chain of teamfights leading to a championship match and coupled with some plot (what little of it can be applied to such quest); second is just series of fights against common enemies, sometimes with additional rules.
  • A God I Am Not: Akara in The Legend of Dead Kel allowed the people of Cape Solace to think he was a god to give them peace of mind, but admits he isn't one when the Fateless One finally meets him. Which is odd. Due to his power and the fact he was old when the world was made he has a good claim for Physical God.
  • Green Rocks: Prismere, a powerful magical mineral that is usually blue, unless treated with magic the right where, whereby it turns bright glowing red. Prismere is the mineral of choice for most of the evil or corrupting people in the game, in particular Gadflow and his Tuatha, or the Maid of Windemere. In limited amounts, it allows the bad guys to Screw Destiny too, though not to the same extent that you can.
  • Groundhog Day: The Fey are big into reliving the past, including killing the same villains and being vanquished (actually dying) by the same, if the story goes that way. The Fae are thrown for a loop in the House of Ballads questline because the story has been changed, starting with the champion Sir Sagrell being killed by the monster he always triumphed against in past tellings.
  • Healing Factor: Using blacksmithing and sagecraft, a player can give his equipment a boost to health regen (you start with 0 health regen). Top tier equipment dedicated to defense and health regen makes the damage most enemies can deal to you negligible, and heal before it can show on your health bar.
  • Heel Realization: Primos Anakatos in the Teeth of Naros DLC realizes he was a Complete Monster near the end of the questline after hearing Ethene's true desires. He challenges you to a fight to the death anyway because the evil he committed in life made him a suitable scapegoat for his entire race's flaws (he was that bad). As a result, when the Fateless One kills him, the Kollosae as a whole are redeemed of their past arrogance and savagery.
  • Heroic Mime: The Fateless One's dialogue is never heard aloud.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Doing bleeding damage to enemies causes impressive torrents of blood to burst out of their bodies.
    • There's also one quest giving NPC, who suffers this effect permanently.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Tirnoch severed the Fateless One from the weave of Fate intentionally, seeing that as the only way to secure her freedom. He is then the only one who can kill her. Bonus points if the Fateless One is using Prismere equipment, since Prismere is crystal infused with Tirnoch's power.
  • Hourglass Plot: In The Legend of Dead Kel, Alder Malloi is a devout worshipper of Akara while Paddy is one of Akara's most outspoken skeptics. By the end of all of the questlines, Alder believes that he was wrong to put so much blind faith in Akara rather than relying on himself. Meanwhile, Paddy ends up believing that Akara was responsible for guiding him in the restoration of Gravehal Keep and plants a tree seed in the Keep's courtyard to honor Akara.
  • Humanoid Abomination: People who take Fate really seriously like the Fae and the Fateweavers get freaked out when they understand that Fate doesn't apply to the Fateless One. The Fateless One is not only Immune to Fate, he/she can wield the very Weave itself as a weapon. No one like the Fateless One except maybe Tirnoch has ever existed before; the oldest living mortal in the world notes that he/she is something new. The Tuath outright call the Fateless One an abomination. The Fateless One's origin is also suitably disturbing: he/she is a dead person whose soul was pulled back from the afterlife and shoved into a new body created entirely by magic that is physically identical to their old one.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Walking through shadows is heavily implied to be this. Before you make the trip, Cydan tells you to keep your eyes closed... and to ignore the whispers. The trip itself is uneventful and offscreen, presumably because your character actually listened to Cydan's advice.
  • I Am Who?: Alyn Shir and the Fateless One were originally members of a secret organization designed to keep the secret of Tirnoch's existence from the world.
  • Immortality: The Fae are ageless and immune to disease, and if they do die return to the Great Cycle to reincarnate in a short time. In fact, in some quests you can get them to kill themselves by passing a simple persuasion check.
  • Immune to Fate: "The Fateless One". Being ressurected from the dead has allowed him/her to be freed from their destiny and forge a new one. In a world governed by fate and the inability to fight it, this individual marks an omen for serious change in the world. For good or ill.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of Reckoning mode finishers involves this.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: The sidequest titles in particular are rife with these.
  • Inhumanly Beautiful Race: The Dokkalfar. Despite a well-earned reputation for being skilled manipulators and puppet masters, individuals cannot resist their natural allure. It's apparently strong enough that people still deal with them knowing full well the risks of working with the Dark Elves.
  • Insurmountable Waist High Fence: Played straight several times, but most egregiously regarding jump points at the end of certain dungeons that allow quick access to the front door. Basically all you'd need to do to bypass the dungeon and whatever mystical locks/traps they have in their entirety is bring a ten-foot ladder. Hell, even the Hall Of The Firstsworn, which has a fate-proof door protecting a legendary forge, could have been bypassed thusly.
  • Item Crafting: Almost any piece of equipment can be disassembled into components with varying properties, which can then be used to produce custom armor and weapons.
    • With the proper components to construct them, this equipment far outshines even the best armor sets in the game, including a complete armor set that you can get just moments before the final boss battle.
    • You can also collect "shards" to turn into gems to use on Socketed Equipment via the "Sagecrafting" skill, and "Alchemy" lets you make your own potions, once you've learned or experimented out the appropriate recipes.
  • Kill'Em All:
    • The Fateless One can actually press a button to toggle that attacks against villagers.
    • Everyone in the House Of Sorrows is either dead or sealed in Esharra by the end of its questline.
  • Land Mine Goes Click: Due to the mines being magical in nature, it's more of a "whoom" sound, but it serves its gameplay purpose of giving the player time to jump out of the way.
  • Land of Faerie: The Fae races claim to be from a different realm of existence. There's also the suggestion that if any mortal has set foot there, they have not returned.
    • The Fateless One makes a brief visit to the place at the end of the "House of Sorrows" questline. The Fae who takes the Fateless One there is impressed that he/she seems none the worse for wear.
  • Large and In Charge: Tirnoch is huge.
  • Last of His Kind: By the end of the "House of Sorrows" questline, the Fateless One is the last member of the House.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A journal in The Legend of Dead Kel DLC contains the following passage: "I see before me, as if written in bright letters in the air, precisely how effective a student's attack has been."
  • Lecture as Exposition: The Lorestones will just jabber on no matter what, even if you've hit pause. Similarly, in the last level, your companion goes on at length about how you died. Timing the lecture, it goes for five solid minutes.
  • Legacy Character: The roles of the various heroes of lore taken up by the Fae of the House of Ballads, as explained to you by King Wencen and Lady Belmaid are as a matter of continuity to them as a people and is likened to mortals passing on their legacy to their children. You can participate in this by becoming Sir Sagrell.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Roll a sorcerer, equip chakrams, and mash the action button, and you can happily shut your brain off for a few hours while decimating everything on the field. Averted somewhat with Greatswords: big sweeping arcs, lots of damage, knockback, and a rolling attack that instantly sends groups of enemies flying. Also averted with Longswords. They have amazing field control and one of the best knock-ups in the game. However, to use them effectively, you will want to be both a warrior and a rogue (longsword + bow = absolute field control and no fear of death if active).
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Characters of any build can equip a physical or magical shield in addition to their weapons and pull it out instantly to block attacks, even in the middle of a combo. This makes sense when you have a talisman equipped, since a talismans is basically a magical Deflector Shield mounted on your arm that activates whenever you want it to, but it gets a bit silly when you pull a tower shield just as tall as you are out of thin air. The one exception to "even in the middle of a combo" are chakrams: unless they're physically in your character's hands, s/he can't block... and their whole purpose is to go flying around dealing razor-sharp death at range.
  • The Magic Comes Back and The Magic Goes Away: Having been lost to the mortal races since ancient times, magic has returned to the world. The era the game takes place in has been dubbed "The Age of Arcana". However, as the mortals' magic waxes, the fae's wanes. It's not clear whether or not there is a connection or if it is just a coincidence; fae and mortal magic are too different from each other to be really sure. And according to the Amalur webpage's history section, magic will become even stronger over time. Roughly 1600 years after the events of the game, people all over the world are manifesting incredible abilities ranging from an unprecedented control over magic to physical abilities beyond anything seen in previous ages. This era is dubbed, quite fittingly, the Age of Heroes. Also, fate disappears after the death of Tirnoch.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • Magic Knight characters, while not powerful as their pure counterparts, get bonus abilities, like converting the damage they take as mana.
    • Bonus points to the Universalist Destiny. Putting 37 points in all skill trees nets you a destiny that gives 20% bonus damage to all weapon types, 12% resistance against all types of damage, 10% chance to critical hit and a +3 skill point bonus to all skills. Equipment restrictions are also reduced by half. It also "Unlocks all weapon mastery abilities.", meaning the player can use all special attacks for all weapon types.
    • High level mage knights are able to use Warrior level armor (a jack of all stats fighter/made/thief can equip Sylvanite armor at top levels, potentially even higher if they can level past the minimum requirements for the Universalist destiny), but also use powerful magic weapons like Chakrams, staffs and scepters. However, the most powerful, room clearing spells in the mage tree are really only attainable to magic dedicated characters.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Tirnoch to Gadflow.
  • Manic Pixie Dream Elf: Rast Brattigan from the Legend of Dead Kel DLC. The trope itself is name-dropped via an achievement regarding her.
  • Message in a Bottle: There are eight of these in The Legend of Dead Kel DLC, and there is an achievement for collecting all of them. "Briar", the mysterious penpal responsible for saving the first writer's sanity and lead him to fellow castaways, is implied to be either a figment of his imagination or Akara itself.
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Rast Brattigan in The Legend of Dead Kel DLC. If you spend time talking to everyone and reading the logs, you find out the Calamity, her ship, managed to accidentally shipwreck a whole lot of ships on the island
  • The Mole: King Bisarane of the House Of Sorrows is actually their feared enemy Saturnyn. Which makes him a Mole in Charge.
  • Money for Nothing: If player is using self crafted equipment, there is very little to spend money on, leading to a very probable possibility of ending game as multi millionaire.
  • Money Spider: Wolves carrying around swords, armors, and various other adventuring supplies abound.
  • My Greatest Failure: In The Legend of Dead Kel, Akara deeply regrets failing to realize Kel was a monster before reviving him. Akara's only goal is to rectify his mistake by empowering a champion to slay Dead Kel... which would also mean Akara's own death, since the two are linked thanks to the incomplete resurrection magic.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Dark Empyrean is able to rise because the Fateless One took part in the ritual to enter the Scholia Arcana. Had the Fateless One not initiated the questline, the Dark Empyrean may have slumbered for centuries longer. On the bright side, the Fateless One kills the Dark Empyrean, ending her threat and freeing the Scholia Arcana from their age old burden.
    • The Fateless One is also partially responsible for the end of the House of Sorrows. It was already doomed since its leader was secretly a Tuatha who wanted the House dead, but the Fateless One accelerated its demise.
    • If you use all the lorestones in the Cradle of Summer, it triggers a side quest because you've destroyed the magic protecting the area and now you've got to fight the Wild Fae.
      • A more literal example is, during a part of the main quest line, you use a device that allows a fateweaver to see where a person is on the Great Weave. When you touch it it falls apart.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Tirnoch's efforts to free herself by creating the Fateless One ultimately end with her dead and everyone else free of fate.
  • Not So Invincible After All
  • Oh Crap: Tirnoch isn't quite what Gadflow expected.
    • Hilariously, during the House of Valor DLC questline that comes with the Online Pass, when the champion of the House of Valor betrays you and tries to get both you and your team killed (by separating you from your team), the assassin that is sent to kill you will, if you pass an easy persuasion check, realize that he was sent, alone, to kill a guy whom he watched best multiple teams of top warriors, in one case singlehanded, and he has just succeeded in pissing off. He then begs forgiveness and runs for his life.
  • Our Monsters Are Different: Most monsters are wild fae, magical creatures only slightly better than animals. More specific examples below.
    • All Trolls Are Different: Another type of wild fae, sometimes used as siege weapons by the Tuatha. They are a monstrous mix of rock and fifteen-foot tall gorilla wielding a tree-trunk as a club.
    • Our Angels Are Different: The Erathi are "creatures of order" who left the world long ago, leaving behind massive underground ruins.
    • Our Demons Are Different: The Niskaru are "creatures of chaos" mostly exterminated ages ago by the precursors of the Warsworn. Their Lords are intelligent, but the lesser ones don't seem to be.
    • Our Dragons Are Different: There's only one (that we know of) but she has godlike powers, including controlling fate.
    • Our Elves Are Different: The Dokkalfar (dark elves) and the Ljosalfar (light elves) used to be one species, but split long ago over ideological differences. They are explicitly mortal (albeit long-lived) and used to rule over the other races before humans as a species began equaling them in magic.
    • Our Fairies Are Different: And not to be confused with the elves in this game! Elves may also have pointy ears and inhuman beauty, but they are explicitly mortal and separate from the fae, which is really confusing if you're used to reading lots of Neil Gaiman...
      • Made even more confusing considering the Light Elves are tall, pointy eared, blue skinned, and fond of face paint. The problem is the Fae are also tall, pointy eared, blue skinned, and fond of face paint... The main visual difference is the Fae tend to dress like Poison Ivy while the Ljosalfar dress like normal people. The Fae also have Black Eyes with almost glowing Iris' as well as a slight flanging to their voices and nearly-neon Anime Hair.
    • Our Giants Are Different: The ten-foot tall and six-foot wide Jotuuns (basically ogres) and two-headed ettins.
    • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Fit the standard modern mold of being focused on science and engineering. They're also the ones who created the Well of Souls that brought the Fateless One back to life.
    • Our Zombies Are Different: The "Sons of Laz" are are animated, mindless corpses that attack all living things without reason. They were created by a related resurrection experiment to the one that produced the Fateless One, and are the reason Hughes refused to use corpses in his own experiments.
  • Pirate: Dead Kel.
  • Point Build System
  • Private Military Contractors: The Warsworn make up large parts of the armies fighting the Tuatha. They're much more sympathetic than most examples of this trope, however, and in fact were originally founded to exterminate demons.
  • Real Time Weapon Change: Including in the middle of combos. This ability is probably an even bigger advantage for the Fateless One than his or her power to Screw Destiny, as most enemies don't seem to use it.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Tuatha's armor and weapons.
    • Many of the top tier equipments have this scheme, which isn't surprising, since, like the tuatha's gear, contain prismere, which is formed from the emanations of Tirnoch.
  • Sadistic Choice: This happens in the climax of the Travelers faction quest chain, in which you can choose to expose the Hierophant, or serve her and betray the one who helped you discover her identity. This also happens in the main quest line of Teeth of Naros, in which you can choose to help the Kollossae council members in the Nyxaros torture chambers, or free the Naros Jottun slaves from execution and permanently befriend them.
  • Scenery Gorn: The Winter Fae revere death and decay and their lands show it. The northern half is mostly swampland whose most notable feature is the giant tree with corpses hanging from its branches, and that's the nice part. The lands held by the Tuatha are a frozen bleak hellscape. It's implied that the Winter Fae's lands used to be much nicer before the Tuatha took over.
  • Scenery Porn: Amalur is beautiful. On rare occasions, the camera pans around to make sure you know how awesome the area you just stepped into is.
  • Screw Destiny: Imagine a giant upthrust middle finger flipping off fate, destiny, and all things pre-determined. Now imagine that finger given human form. That is the Fateless One in a nutshell. As mentioned above, he can rip a person's fate out of the weave, turn it into spears, swords, daggers, or gigantic maces, and pummel people to death with it. Oh, you're not fated to die this day? Let's change that. Permanently.
    • At one point, Agarth starts yelling at you about this. Until he realizes that your ability to do this just saved him from his predetermined death.
  • Screw You, Elves: Though the difference between man and elf is not emphasized in this setting like others and the two usually seem to get along amiably there are examples where elves put on airs on occasion, one example that comes to mind is the town Tirin's Rest where through your actions you may,
    • Aid a couple of refugees and former citizens of the region and snubbing your nose at the local church's claims that it's their gods plan that these people deserve what they got arbitrarily.
    • Aid a thief in stealing the donations of the citizens meant for the war effort, the thieves intent being to donate it to refugees who the town gives a knowing cold shoulder to, again because of their local beliefs.
    • And last but not least, free an unjustly imprisoned fairy who than curses the head priestess of the local church as well as one of the towns main guardsman for their involvement and then you can even blackmail the priestess lest you blow the story wide open to the locals of the town.
    • Also, elves had magic first, and looked down on humans for not having it. Then humans got it.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: A few. The Niskaru Lord of the Warsworn quest chain and the Dark Empyrean of the Scholia Arcana chain are the most obvious, but the villains of the House of Ballad's stories could count as well. They are forced to play out their roles eternally, with no hope of victory. Although that one is less clear: the heroes, at least, are free to leave and let someone else play their part, so its possible the same is true of the villains.
  • Seers: The Fateweavers. Able to see the destiny of anyone. Except you of course.
  • Shaggy Dog Story: Early on, you'll get a quest to find ten books of "ribald literature" collected by a monk. These books are scattered across the Faelands, and you won't be able to finish it until very late in the game. Your reward for finishing is a negligible amount of gold and a note saying the monk in question would be proud of you.
  • She Is the King: Playing through the House of Ballads storyline lets you take on the role of Sir Sagrell, a fae hero, and eventually King Wencyn himself. This doesn't change if the Fateless One is female.
    • Nor does it change if you choose the tyrannical approach which is choosing to spare the life of the end boss and become king to her queen in a changing of the telling.
  • Shout-Out: The Warsworn wear light blue armor with massive shoulder pads trimmed in yellow and their mission is to "fight chaos wherever they find it". Does that remind you of anything...?
    • The name of the Greater Niskaru, Balor, is a shout out to the Formorian king by the same name from Celtic Mythology. In addition, the devs showed their work by giving it an Evil Eye and having it (usually) require a Mook to open and close it.
  • Smoke Out: A Finesse skill allows you to turn briefly invisible by throwing down a smoke bomb.
  • Sticks to the Back: So that the player can always see the entirety of his or her hand-crafted pride and joy, of course! Although having a fiery sword that never goes out stuck to your back can't be all that comfortable.
  • Stripperific: Armors your own female character can wear are surprisingly sensible in this respect.
    • Played very straight by Alyn Shir.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: Regardless of level, enemies in the field will take you on, to the point that your character can be at level 25-30, with enchanted prismere armor and weapons, and wolves and bears at the opening areas will still try to take you. Apparently, living in the Fae lands removed their survival instincts.
    • Justified for the Fae, who have spent the entirety of existence knowing exactly how and from what they will die, as they have gone through those deaths a thousand times. They don't realize that the one they are fighting is the one person in the world capable of violating fate and killing them permanently.
      • Also Alyn Shir threatening to find you if you ever reveal truth about Tirnoch to anyone. Considering what the Fateless One has gone through to get to Tirnoch, I doubt a single Dokkalfar woman armed only with a pair of daggers and a distracting-as-all-hell outfit is any danger to him/her.
      • King Wencen remains confident that he and his Court will prevail against the Maid as they have in previous tellings despite the Maid's newfound power. The very moment he understands that victory isn't guaranteed this time he panics and passes his role onto you before running for his life.
  • Super Empowering: Once every generation Akara imbues a person with his power, and he/she becomes the Scion. The people of Cape Solace call this ritual the Offering and have given it a religious significance and treat the new Scion as the avatar of Akara's will. This isn't at all what Akara wants. The Scion's true purpose is to slay Dead Kel, Akara's greatest mistake. Dead Kel's goal is to claim the power of the Scion for himself.
  • Take Your Time: There don't appear to be any time limits on quests whatsoever. Even when the quest in question involves providing first aid to a woman who got knifed and is lying on the street groaning and writhing in pain.
    • Averted in one sidequest in The Legend of Dead Kel DLC. Take too long to come to the aid of a man who left to pursue his wife's attempted rapist, and you'll find the man bleeding to death outside of a cave. Oddly enough, the reward is actually better since you can loot the man's body afterwards and his widow still gives you the same reward though she also chews you out for releasing her attacker from his cage in the first place.
  • That Man Is Dead: The Maid of Windemere if you spare her. If you talk to her about it, she declares that the name will soon have no meaning anymore.
  • This Cannot Be!: Tirnoch's reaction right before the Fateless One finishes her off.
  • Too Many Belts: What little Alyn Shir wears consists mostly of belts.
  • Treacherous Advisor: Bisarane of the House Of Sorrows, who is actually their feared but never seen enemy Saturnyn. Templar Octienne is one as well.
  • Try to Fit That on A Business Card: If you do all the sidequests, the Fateless One will end up with a lot of titles. If you go by the fae tradition, every single quest chain could probably be a new one... but there are still more than a few explicit ones as well. King Wencyn of the Court of Enchantments, Archsage of the Scholia Arcana, Truesworn of the Warsworn, Champion of the House of Valor, Master of Gravehal Keep, Scion of Akara, Beckoned of Ethene, Herald of the Gods, Hero of Mel Senshir...
    • You can even purchase a title for announcement purposes by officials in Ysa, to tack onto your already long list of names.
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: The player. With Blacksmithing and Sagecraft, you can create armor and weapons that have such high stats that they make anything else, even high level armor sets, look weak in comparison. And you can max these both out before you reach level 20 if you make use of trainers and fateweaving.
    • The Hermit Blacksmith. He is the only one who knows how to reforge a unique sword (if the player has points in Blacksmithing he/she can admit to not being able to fix it) and after going through his quests he'll come out of retirement to become a blacksmith for the Warsworn.
  • The Unchosen One: Played with. Hugues' success at bringing someone Back from the Dead was foreseen by Agarth but the mountain of corpses in the Well clearly shows that the specifics weren't set in stone. Nothing beyond that was either. Certainly not the fact that the resurrectee would defeat the Tuatha and free the land from Fate entirely. High King Titarion will mention that he has seen people destined to be heroes come and go, and adds that trying to save the world due to choice rather than destiny makes you a far greater hero.
  • The Unfought: The Niskaru Lord at the end of the Warsworn questline. All you do is decide whether to let it rot in its prison or become its new champion.
  • Unwanted Revival: Dead Kel really isn't happy being an undead abomination. He had accepted death, satisfied in the knowledge that he had escaped the gallows and died at sea.
  • Unwinnable By Mistake: The Silence Falls glitch. Said quest involves you going around Klurikon and destroying prismere crystals that allow Gadflow control over the region. However, if you destroy a crystal before starting the quest, the game will glitch and you'll be unable to finish the quest.... and the game, because Silence Falls is part of the main storyline. What makes it worse is that the quest is relatively late in the game (it's after you first leave Mel Senshir), so you can potentially waste 40+ hours of gameplay; and it's even more painful if you've been going for achievements/trophies that span the whole game, such as finding all of the lore stones, succeeding at 50 persuade attempts, and beating the game on Hard mode.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Some questgivers, including the king of the House of Sorrows and Primos Anakatos play the Fateless One like a fiddle to take advantage of his/her power to alter Fate. Being Immune to Fate doesn't mean you can't be manipulated in other ways.
  • Vendor Trash: Assorted non-magical jewelry, nuggets of precious metals, and various other items can be sold for a nice profit.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Bhaile and Amethyn.
  • Weapon of Choice: Exaggerated. Not only is the main character's exclusion from fate literally weaponized, each of the Might Finesse and Sorcery disciplines gravitate towards their own equipment types. This trope applies to the player as well because custom weapons can be created with blacksmithing and Sagecraft.
  • We Buy Anything: And we have an infinite amount of money to buy your Vendor Trash with too!
  • We Sell Everything: As pointed out by Total Biscuit, apparently inns can sell blue-level weaponry when the blacksmith does not.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: You basically are told this if you betray the Warsworn and ally with the Nishkaru at the end of their questline, turning every Warsworn NPC in the game aggressive to you. Can lead to Video Game Cruelty Potential if you decide to go and slaughter each of the keeps afterwards.
  • Wicked Witch: The Maid of Windemere (whether she wants to be or not), The Widow. The Legend of Dead Kel DLC has the Whispering Witch.
  • World Tree: Nyralim is a huge sentient talking tree that is one of the oldest mortals in existence. Akara from The Legend of Dead Kel is one as well. Akara reveals that he was once a member of a group of twelve such trees that called themselves the Ring of Watchers.
  • X Meets Y: Oblivion meets God of War was often used to describe the gameplay both in early previews and the developers themselves. Though for many it also feels a lot like the former mixed with Fable's control scheme, 3 style system, and semi-open world. Just with deeper RPG mechanics. Style wise it actually comes closer to World of Warcraft. It has an Elder Scrolls-like open world, but instead of being Real Is Brown everything is incredibly bright and vibrant like World of Warcraft. So in short, a mix-and-match of elements from several types of RPG.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: A big theme in the game. Prophecy keeps on reiterating that no one is actually destined to defeat the Tuatha Deohn. Until you come along that is.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tirnoch to Gadflow, once she awakens.
  • You Shall Not Pass: The Well's inventor Hughes pulls this against the invading Tuatha to cover the Fateless One's escape. He even manages to escape his predestined death as a consequence of meeting the Fateless One.
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