There's a Kingdoms of Amalur remaster and it's called "Re-Reckoning"
Ready for one mmore try.
A remastered version of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has popped up on the Microsoft Store, despite not yet being officially announced.
Its new title, regrettably, is indeed "Re-Reckoning".
If you missed it first time round, Kingdoms of Amalur is an ambitious RPG with a sprawling map and excellent world-building, albeit one which failed to spawn the franchise it was so clearly trying to set up.
Originally launched in 2012 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, its new "Re-Reckoning" version comes with "improved graphical fidelity".
Kingdoms of Amalur was famously pitched as the entry point into a new fantasy world - one created by author R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane and Oblivion lead designer Ken Rolston. There were plans for a World of Warcraft-scale MMO, to which Reckoning (and a proposed sequel) would simply be the prologue. But neither of these failed to appear.
At launch, Amalur sold moderately well but not enough to pay back an investment from the state of Rhode Island - and developer 38 Studios was soon shut down. The studio's founder, former baseball player Curt Schilling, was engulfed in years of messy legal wrangling over funds. Memorably, Schilling auctioned off an infamous, bloodied baseball sock to raise some cash.
Four years later, Schilling was cleared of criminal charges over the investment money. Finally, in 2018, THQ Nordic scooped up the rights to the Amalur franchise - including those for its unreleased MMO.
This is the second time in recent weeks Microsoft has dropped an unannounced remaster on its storefront (the first being the Mafia Trilogy, spoiling 2K's announcement plans).
This remaster was due to be made official soon, I understand, and is currently set for release in August.
"Yes, it's true and accurate," a THQ Nordic spokesperson said when contacted today. "The news was not supposed to go out yet, which can be summarised as 'oopsy daisy' on our end. We hope people are still looking forward to playing Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning in summer."
