How to Make Immersive Dialogue, feat. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Coomans and Timmermans (1997) describe immersion as “a feeling of being deeply engaged where people enter a make-believe world as if it is real”. When dealing with huge open world systems involving make belief cultures and races a fundamental part of this, sometimes overlooked, is the use of different accents and dialects. A perfect case study of this being utilised is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KOAR).

Developed by Big Huge Games, KOAR takes place in the titular Amalur, which is separated into 5 distinct regions (Big Huge Games, 2012).

IGN, 2012

In order to create an immersive experience that avoids repetitive dialogue (Hertzberg, 2012), these regions each have their own dialects for the NPCs that relate to their local culture. “Culture is inextricably linked to language” (Kim, 2003), so the addition of accent and dialect informs us of the cultural layers in this world.

As we travel through Amalur we can quickly get an idea of some of these cultures due to similarities to accents in the real world. The Fae in Dalentarth for example, inspired by Scottish Folklore of the Seelie Fae (Varela Fernández, 2024), have Scottish accents. The Dwarves of Detyre speak in thick Irish accents, and the Elves of Klurikon have distinctly English accents that vary according to rank. For example, lower city Elves have regional British accents while Upper City Elves speak in received pronunciation. This helps create immersion for the player not only by isolating the various regions and establishing the setting within each, but also connecting them to the real-world folklore associated with them.

In addition to informing us of the world, dialect can bolster information we receive from other sources; Amalur has a distinct conflict between races; notably the Fae and the humans, which creates a setup for much of the early game quests that involve the Fae. In addition to informing us of the characteristics of these cultures individually, we also gain a profound understanding of how they interact between each other, and the divides between them. For example, the first time meeting a Fae happens rather early on in the game, when you discover a Fae in the human village of Gorhart, who is in bad shape following an attack. Upon speaking to a different Fae, Aery, on a nearby cliff, we learn of the racial tensions between Humans and Fae (which Aery believes to be a cause of the attack). The powerful difference in accents immediately demonstrates the cultural divide between the two groups and immerses the player in this new conflict. This is further noticeable when the player reaches the Cradle of Summer, the first bastion of Fae the player encounters. You travel there with your human companion, and the contrast between his accent and those of the Fae around you extenuates the change of setting. 

As we get more familiar with the game, and the varying cultures we begin to associate the sound of the accent with the traits of its people. By wandering through a region, overheard dialogue can inform us of the nature of the area we are in: the culture that is dominant here, the people’s mannerisms, and their rank in society. Are they friendly? What type of mission are we likely to find here? What can we buy here?

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While one cannot deny the importance of many other factors in worldbuilding and immersion (music, visuals, ambience, etc) the use of dialects clearly play a key role in immersing the player in KOAR. The 50,000 lines of dialogue recorded for the game are more than signposts to inform us(Hertzberg, 2012), rather a totally immersive, ever-present detail constantly giving us insight into how this world functions and our character’s place within it.

References

1. Big Huge Games (2012) Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning [multiplatform]. 38 Studios Electronic Arts

2. Cairns, P., Cox, A., Berthouze, N., Dhoparee, S., Jennett, C. (2006). Quantifying the experience of immersion in games [University College London]. https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pc530/pubs/Cairns_Immersion06.pdf

3. Cairns, P., Brown, E. (2004). A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion. CHI'04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 1297-1300. https://complexworld.pbworks.com/f/Brown+and+Cairns+(2004).pdf

4. Cairns, P., Cox, A., & Nordin, A. I. (2014). Immersion in Digital Games: Review of Gaming Experience Research. In Handbook of Digital Games (pp. 337–361). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118796443.ch12

5. Coomans, M.K. and Timmermans, H.J., 1997, August. Towards a taxonomy of virtual reality user interfaces. In Proceedings. 1997 IEEE Conference on Information Visualization (Cat. No. 97TB100165) (pp. 279-284). IEEE.

6. Ermi, Mäyrä, L. F. (2005). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. https://homepages.tuni.fi/frans.mayra/gameplay_experience.pdf [Accessed on 17/10/2025]

7. Gallacher, N. (2013). Game audio — an investigation into the effect of audio on player immersion. The Computer Games Journal, 2(2), 52–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03392342

8. Hertzberg, K. (2012, January 26). Standing Out from the Crowd - An Interview with the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Developers. https://www.tentonhammer.com/articles/standing-out-from-the-crowd-an-interview-with-the-kingdoms-of-amalur-reckoning-developers

9. Jennett, C., Cox, A. L., Cairns, P., Dhoparee, S., Epps, A., Tijs, T., & Walton, A. (2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66(9), 641–661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2008.04.004

10. Kim, L. S. (2003). Exploring The Relationship Between Language, Culture And Identity. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, Vol 3(2)(ISSN1675-8021).

11. Mirvis, P. H., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The Academy of Management Review, 16(3), 636. https://doi.org/10.2307/258925

12. Varela Fernández, B., 2024. Exploring Scottish Folkore: Myths, Legends, and Cultural Identity.