Ahhhh How did I not know this was coming out?

Was just listening to the Bombcast and I nearly fell out of my seat when Brad dropped this one on me. Holy crap. My childhood!

Downloading from Steam as we speak.

@bceagles128: Yep same here downloaded it as soon as I got home. It's pretty good so far can't wait to play more. I had a shit eating grin through the entire first section of this episode. Like playing a old school animated movie.

The most attention it's gotten was when it was on that one VGAs type live stream Geoff Keighley did when they gave a game developer life time achievement type award to Ken and Roberta Williams. So, that's probably why you didn't hear about it. Although it did have a trailer or two that Giant Bomb has posted before so...

Ya, I don't know. At least you know now. =)

Just played through the prologue and there are SO MANY nods to the old games. Love it!

I loved the King's Quest games as a kid, at least the first three anyway. They were some of the first PC games I played in the mid to late 80s. Part of me wants to jump in, but I always worry about how some things are better just left to nostalgia. I know a couple of my friends have been looking forward to this release for quite some time, so I think I'm going to wait and see what they think about it before I buy it.

I'd love to know if this game is good. I'm pretty uncertain of what King's Quest without the Williams' even is.

Gameplaywise, so far it has been exploration, adventure game puzzles, some gameplay-executed decision trees, and a handful of QTEs (they haven't been annoying or hard though. I actually have failed a few intentionally because the death animations are amusing). Really enjoying it so far. You can tell that they've built the game with a handful of potential paths in mind. And based on what I've seen so far, I have high hopes that the paths will diverge more than you'd expect out of a Telltale game.

thanks for the thoughts! That sounds promising!

Kinda odd to think of a King's Quest game not having obtusely hard puzzles, but I suppose that's one area where the old series could have been a lot better.

The Odd Gentlemen

hey guys this game is rad af

@slag said:

Not sure if you've played any of the later King's Quest games, but based on them, I'd say the answer is "Better".

The first 3 minutes tells the tale on Kings Quest.

The game picks up right in the middle of Kings Quest 1 (which you won't recognize as such unless you are a KQ veteran.) Graham is about to descend the well in order to get the Magic Mirror from the Dragon.

If you played KQ1, you know that there are a number of things you can do. If you found the kife hidden randomly in tree stump in Daventry, you can use the knife to cut the bucket off of the well, and then scale down the rope with the bucket in your inventory. If you don't have the knife, or don't think to cut the bucket, Graham can sit in the bucket, and his weight makes the bucket descend into the well. Once you get into the cave, and encounter the dragon, you can use your ring of invisibiltiy, if you got it from the gnome, to become invisible and steal the mirror back. If you have the dagger, and haven't lost it yet, you can throw it at the Dragon's throat and kill him. If you got the bucket, you can fill the bucket with water from the well adn throw it on the dragon to extinguish his flames, causing him to run away and leave the mirror unguarded.

All those choices. All that interactivity. All that non-linearity in a game that is 30 years old.

In KQ2015, you walk up to the well and press the only action button you have in the game. Graham does the rest. And... that's the game. You walk around, you press the action button when it pops up on the screen, and you watch Graham do awesome stuff. YOU don't do awesome stuff. You watch Graham do it. The game goes out of it's way to "make you feel" thrilled. To "make you feel" danger. "To make you feel" clever. But you aren't actually feeling any of it. It's all a magic trick of cinema. It's such a tragedy, because in the previous games, you ACTUALLY felt. It wasn't an illusion, because you were the one making the decisions and you were the one paid the penalty if you messed up.

That being said, while this game disappointingly plays like a modern "Adventure game", everything else about it is ULTRA charming and really, really great. The only true complaint I have with what they made (as opposed to what they didn't make), is the quicktime events. Quicktime events sucks. Period. YOu can't watch the exquisite animations and awesome action scenes because you are busy trying to hit the right button prompt. So, basically, you can't watch the best parts of the game because they put you to work for no other reason than if they didn't have quicktime events... it wouldn't be much of a game at all.

i'll be damned, this is a good one. I am into the first episode and fully engrossed. They have done a tremendous job at building a compelling world and the voice acting is top notch. I will certainly be buying the season pass, the humor is on point and I can't wait to see where things go.

Coincidentally I recently was looking at a thread on the forums about "unintentionally scary games". One that I remember as a kid was from my first PC game, King's Quest VI, and how the genie freaked me out with his golden eyes. They would always glitter and for some reason as a kid this really unnerved me. The point of all this is that I've always considered buying the game on Steam or GOG and playing it again but never did. Instead, after I posted in that thread, I looked up a playthrough to check out. Found one by Game Grumps and watched through it. It's still an endearing game in a way but it was definitely cheesy in a way I didn't realize when I was younger. I say all this because I have a vision of that game in my head and while it was all familiar it was definitely weird in retrospect and I'm not entirely sure I would want to play another one of those games. However Brad did mention that cheesiness and how the new game kinda gets away from that a bit on the latest Bombcast so maybe it might be okay.

I hear its very good.

I have! fwiw I like the first four the best, they may not hold up great today, but I felt the series really lost something when it transitioned to Point and Click (and voice acting for that matter). There was something about the text parser that felt really open ended.

and this is exactly what I was afraid of. The open ended non-linearity was what made the old games magic. That's very unfortunate that this one sounds like it is a more of the Telltale same but I suppose that's how games are made today.

If you have affection for King's Quest then you ABSOLUTELY have to buy this game. I honestly couldn't rate it without giving it two scores. In terms of living up to affection for King's Quest, it is a 10/10. 11/10 if that's possible. At one point in time, the camera shifted in such a way that I suddenly realized I was standing in a 3d scene from KQ 5 and hadn't realized it. I had the BIGGEST grin on my face.

Tonally the game has absolutely nothing to do with KQ and instead takes liberally from Dreamworks cartoons and The Princess Bride. It works. It works incredibly well. I still miss a great deal from the old games, but it's easy to overlook. The thing I find myself missing most, tonally, is the shift from first person present-tense narration to first person past tense. I HATE games that take place as recollections of the past or prequels. It's completely contrary to the concept of a video game. Videogames are participatory. They are about you taking action. They are NOT about you being told what action someone else took that you are now riding along for. It doesn't even make any sense. The game also lovingly pokes fun at, and lovingly references, KQ in THE most charming of ways.

For instance, Graham is telling stories to his niece, which is the framing device for the game. A short while later, we are introduced to her cousin. This is innocuous for new players, but for veterans, you know you are looking at Alexander's kid and Rosella's kid.

As for the original games not holding up, they absolutely do. I actually just replayed 1 in getting ready for the new one to be released. Sure there are some things that were problems. But the problems that exist in the game were problems when the game was new. Everyone KNEW they were problems. But you ignored the problems because of the parts that were pure gold, and those parts are still pure gold. The ability to solve the quests in any order, with multiple solutions, with varying morality in a game from THIRTY YEARS AGO can't be underscored enough. Just a truly, truly brilliant game.

Brad is about the last person you should listen to regarding adventure games. He has a well worn tendency to talk out of his butt about them. It's not necessarily a problem, but I think sometimes they forget that offhanded comments they make about games are taken as gospel by listeners. IF they say "x game sucked because y", people think that's the truth. They don't even really question whether they are remembering it properly or not.

Revisiting Sierra games is difficult for newer gamers because they almost always want to play the "CD' versinos of the games. Afterall, those are supposed to be "better", right? They have voice acting and stuff!

In reality, the CD versions of mid-ninties Sierra games are about like the Special Edition versions of Star Wars. They aren't the way the games were meant to be played. King's Quest 5 and King's Quest 6 came out on discs that were the way most people experienced the game. This had no speech and tended to play better. The CD versions were full of novelty "multimedia" bells and whistles that were the rage at the time since most people didn't have CD ROMS. The voice acting in King's Quest is, for the most part, an abomination. In Kings Quest 5, specifically, Cedric ruins the entire game.

To really understand what King's Quest is, I think you pretty much have to play King's Quest 1. That's the game that's really going to expose you to the open-endedness that made the series such a big deal. There are great remakes available for free.

I just finished the first chapter and it was so wonderful

I can't wait for the rest

Have never played any of the King's Quest games (banging my head against the wall in the first Police Quest is my only barely related memory...) of the olde, so I don't know if that would've affected my opinion, but currently I'm loving this game! It's really charming all-around and it's been a really long while since I've played anything with a similiar tone, so I'm probably liking it even more because of that.

If I'd have to single out one thing from the top of my head now, I'd have to mention the several cartoon-like effects they've got going on (smoke, water splashing, fire). I really like the look of those, like something they had taken from Dragon's Lair...which then in turn made me go back to this little gem.

I did not know this was even a thing before I saw the quick look posted here, which I skipped to avoid spoilers. I decided to give it a go, thinking this would probably be just another childhood gaming memory ruined. But much to my surprise, I ended up really enjoying it! It actually turned out to be a "real adventure game" with puzzles and multiple solutions and stuff! I'm looking forward to the next episodes to see what wacky adventures Graham goes on next!