"I think the greatest game in any franchise is always the first, because you do far more than you ought to," Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning lead designer Ken Rolston tells Strategy Informer. "The first rule of game design is 'Don't do too much', but then the first time you always do too much. And you're taking a chance of killing everyone in the company, taking a chance of killing your budget, it's terribly risky... but it's what you have to do. You have to set a bar for yourself for the future... and I think we've set ourselves a very challenging bar."