KQVGA: A Review

[Meowster]

Taoiseach Quest. Scaoil amach do bhoibili´n.

Póg mo thón, déanaim neamhshuim!!!

[juncmodule]

The Model T ford is a classic car.

If you put it next to a 2003 model car, it would suck.

I think the problem with the debate going on is the use of the word "timeless". Barcik is right, it is not "timeless". However, it IS a classic. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.

Problem is, there are many things that are "Classic" that I don't like. That doesn't mean it's still not a classic. There are plenty of classic movies that I think are crap and should have never been made. However, I would be an idiot if I assumed it still wasn't a classic. It just isn't a classic "for me".

I think this is the seperation regarding Sierra games. Some think they are not classics for "them", some do. But, I'm sorry to say, no matter how much "you" hate it, it is still a classic game, and a true pioneer in Adventure gaming.

King's Quest is our ugly, beaten, stinky father.

Foo.

later,
-junc

[Hollister_Man]

I, unlike many (possibly most), never liked LucasArts games.  Indy was ok, as was DoTT, but they weren't great.  You couldn't die.  In places where you would expect to get killed, like beating up a nazi, you would just keep getting thrown in a cell.  DUMB

I agree that King's Quest was frustrating.  I agree that the eternal pixel-hunt is annoying.  The cliff diving is downright irritating.  BUT the best part was that they were HARD!  I spent long (and enjoyable) hours clicking away with my dad, trying this and that.  So what if you fall off a cliff here and there.  Some people learned that there was a "Save Game" option for a reason!

I am not the first (or the last) to flame a flame, but I truly wish that I could get a team together that is as great at what they do for their hobby as Tierra!    They took a classic and resurrected it.  Twice.  I haven't seen anyone succeed in making a "Maniac Mansion" remake, although there have been enough MI respoofs.

King's Quest was a long standing innovator (first color game, first exclusivey CD game.)  It is truly sad that Sierra has failed to continue the series, but Tierra has honored their legacy with a great tribute.

[remixor]

I, unlike many (possibly most), never liked LucasArts games.  Indy was ok, as was DoTT, but they weren't great.  You couldn't die.  In places where you would expect to get killed, like beating up a nazi, you would just keep getting thrown in a cell.  DUMB

That is indeed not a common opinion.  Obviously, there is no one "right" opinion, but I think many people appreciated the LucasArts system of handling death (or not handling death, really) because it allows the player to take a more relaxed attitude towards the game.  Rather than worrying about tripping over a rock, you are just free to explore.  This may not be realistic, but I hardly think it's less realistic than Sierra's somewhat absurd attitude--step into a stream (or practically ANY body of water in a Sierra game, unless you're specifically supposed to go there), you drown and die.  Walk into a rock--you trip over it and die.  Accidently click the walk icon past the edge of a cliff--you fall over the edge and die.  Walk into a street--a car hits you and you die, despite the fact that will never be a single car on the street until you decide to cross it.  There are a million more examples.  We expect computer games to give us reasonable boundries--I mean, we don't expect the game to let us walk through walls; it doesn't let us.  By the same token, no reasonable person would just accidently fall off an obvious cliff.  There's no reason the games should even LET us do that, since in all likelihood it was just the result of a misplaced click.  And honestly, some of the stuff that kills these "heros" certainly wouldn't kill me, which seems rather suspect.

But anyway, I still love many Sierra games; King's Quest VI, for example, is one of my all-time favorite adventures.  Adventure games have too many aspects to judge without letting a death system influence me enough to call an entire category of games dumb (but do remember that just about all AGS games take the LEC route almost all of the time).  I don't blame Sierra for the insane death system in KQ1, since the genre was so young at the time and still in development.  I don't blame Tierra either because in the case of KQ1VGA their goal was to make a literal 1:1 remake, and in that they succeeded.  They obviously realized how frustrating the death system could be when they make KQ2+, but that was from the beginning labeled as a total revamp.


I do agree that a MM remake could be a great thing.  That game is just begging for updated graphics.  It could be quite cool.

[MrColossal]

king's quest wasn't the first colour game, where do people get these facts from?

and wasn't 7th guest the first CD exculsive game?

and you could die in indy. i don't remember being thrown into a cell in the first indy game, i remember hitler winning and the game ending when i got beat up

otherwise i agree with remixor completely

[Miez]

Taoiseach Quest. Scaoil amach do bhoibili´n.

Póg mo thón, déanaim neamhshuim!!!

you are SUCH a liar! telling us you don't speak the Celtic lingo and then letting rip like a female Cuchulain ...  

[Vel]

IMO the best way to handle death is to use try again messages as in KQ7 or GK3

[Las Naranjas]

Which brings us to the point that the reviewer was making vel. Since the original death system was so flawed Sierra learnt and improved it into a superior system in those two titles.

Yet when remaking KQ only visual maladies were improved, so the death flaws like the tohers were still present and irritating. The reviewer questions why you would make a remake and not attempt to cure those maladies (which they are more than capable of, since they did and excellent job of granting KQ2 2 decades of gaming wisdom).

[Erpy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only "unexpected death" in KQ1 was pushing the rock from the wrong direction. Ironically, we were gonna leave that one out at first, but the fans asked us to keep it in for authenticy's sake. All the other deaths involve drowning, getting squashed by a giant or falling into a raging river (the difference between a peaceful lake and a fast-flowing river is fairly easy to spot) and can't really be qualified as unexpected.

The death vs. no death is an age-old debate and the odds seem to be fairly evened. Lots of people don't like to die, lots of others think it's a cool feature. (yes, dying in itself is a feature, it can make certain situations more realistic and add tension to situations where needed)  The person who made this site is a typical example of someone who doesn't mind getting your character killed ever so often. The whole death vs. no death isn't really relevant to KQ in particular.

And yes, KQ1VGA was a litteral remake. We thought it was an interesting way to train ourselves before starting with something bigger like KQ2VGA. Yes, we COULD have tried to take out some of the flaws, but in the end, we'd just have to deal with other people complaining.

[Interference]

Woops, I'm actually surprised this thread's hit three pages. Looks like I inadvertently sparked off something.

To elaborate, KQVGA in a chronological sense is a "1984 classic," ie. back then it was.  But back then that was the best there was. Gamers knew no better.

To pick up on what a few of you said, its similar to black 'n' white movies. They're not so good today as they were in their prime, although that's not to say that some aren't - to some degree - timeless. Citizen Kane is supposed to be the finest film ever made and its black and white.

But film as a medium by then was quite developed. Gaming by the time KQ1 was released was only just into its infancy. Just like the first films, early games were looked upon with wonder but by now we have a greater understanding of what we're working with and those early games become nothing more than a curiosity.

Good games, timeless games, are more than the sum of their parts. Games like KQ1 were created in a time when people weren't even sure how to USE those parts correctly. I felt KQVGA didn't work for me because its update of the graphics and sound felt as if they were inviting you to treat the game as you would something of a similar graphical quality, without realising that its gameplay was what most needed an overhaul.

Monkey Island was originally EGA and got an update to VGA and CD music. The gameplay didn't need an update because it was developed enough to begin with. Lucasarts had enough of an understanding of the technology and of the genre as a whole to develop a game that covered new ground in an interesting and fun way (hence the Doom reference earlier, which did the same balancing act for FPSs, although I enjoyed MI more).

And Erpy, the rock isn't *quite* the only unexpected death. Falling into the moat is fairly easy to do ("They couldn't possibly have made a game that makes it easy to fall into that could they? ... Oh.") and of course, falling off stuff that initially appears fairly innocuous. Even worse though, is seeing death coming and being able to do nothing about it (*cough* witch's cottage *cough*).

Death as a feature is a cop out: an excuse for poor design. Look at Hitman: Codename 47 for an example of where this trait has slipped into a recent game. You had to go through the same level several times, dying frequently, before you gathered enough information to pull off a hit. IO Interactive chose this highly unrealistic and highly irritating approach rather than developing gameplay to the point where you could gather information discreetly rather than blindly rushing in and adapting your strategy to the consequences.

[Erpy]

And Erpy, the rock isn't *quite* the only unexpected death. Falling into the moat is fairly easy to do ("They couldn't possibly have made a game that makes it easy to fall into that could they? ... Oh.") and of course, falling off stuff that initially appears fairly innocuous. Even worse though, is seeing death coming and being able to do nothing about it (*cough* witch's cottage *cough*).

I see it depends on what you see as "unexpected". The rock death was the only death where you could get killed by doing something that didn't seem fatal at first. (pushing a rock) All the other things are "watch your step"-cases. Depending on how you see it, "unexpected" may or may not be out of place here. If I fall into a serpent filled moat, I expect to get killed. The mentioning of the witch' cottage made me frown. I take it you're aware of the fact that you can get rid of the witch, right?

Death as a feature is a cop out: an excuse for poor design. Look at Hitman: Codename 47 for an example of where this trait has slipped into a recent game. You had to go through the same level several times, dying frequently, before you gathered enough information to pull off a hit. IO Interactive chose this highly unrealistic and highly irritating approach rather than developing gameplay to the point where you could gather information discreetly rather than blindly rushing in and adapting your strategy to the consequences.

I'm afraid I must disagree. With a couple of exceptions, all Sierra games (most of them better designed than KQ1) allowed the player to die. This has nothing to do with poor or well-done design. It's done to either add a humoristic situation at certain points (Space Quest) or to make the danger more real. (if someone is pointing a gun at you, he won't have the patience to keep saying "don't move" until you're done with those 30 different attempts at escape. After one or two warnings, he'll probably shoot you.)

[Matt Brown]

I think there are more exceptions then you think. KQ7 was horrible at this, (dying for no friggin reason at all), and so was robin hood, (lalala, oops, programmers missed a spot. I died.) KQ6's walking deads, "crap! stuck in the maze without a brick! now Im screwed) and in KQ5 (locked in the celler?) The list goes on and on

[DragonRose]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only "unexpected death" in KQ1 was pushing the rock from the wrong direction.

What about the randomly appearing ogres, witches, wizards and other nasty things that just pop out of nowhere? I think those were fairly unexpected! The stupid frickin' dwarf wasn't a death as such, but he was still pretty dang annoying.

I did however enjoy KQ1VGA. I never got to play the original, because I never found it on it's own and it was rather silly to buy a King's Quest Collectors pack just for one game when I already have all the others.  (Actually ended up having four copies of Kings Quest 2, though. Weird, that.)  It was nice to finally go through that quest.  As long as I avoided that dang dwarf... stupid dwarf...

[Interference]

I see it depends on what you see as "unexpected". The rock death was the only death where you could get killed by doing something that didn't seem fatal at first. (pushing a rock) All the other things are "watch your step"-cases. Depending on how you see it, "unexpected" may or may not be out of place here. If I fall into a serpent filled moat, I expect to get killed. The mentioning of the witch' cottage made me frown. I take it you're aware of the fact that you can get rid of the witch, right?

Yes, I know you can get rid of the witch. The fact is, you have to die first to realise that or get very lucky. As for the serpent-filled moat, sure I'd expect to die from falling in but I didn't expect to fall. Saying that sticking a deathtrap right in front of the player the moment they can move is not a design issue is missing the point. It's not the fault of the remake, of course, but its still wildly stupid to experience.

With a couple of exceptions, all Sierra games (most of them better designed than KQ1) allowed the player to die. This has nothing to do with poor or well-done design. It's done to either add a humoristic situation at certain points (Space Quest) or to make the danger more real. (if someone is pointing a gun at you, he won't have the patience to keep saying "don't move" until you're done with those 30 different attempts at escape. After one or two warnings, he'll probably shoot you.)

Certainly, pointing a gun at the player is something that should be time limited. Broken Sword did that and I can't complain (love that game). However, it wasn't a FEATURE of Broken Sword: it just happened as part of the story. It brought the danger home but the frequency of death (tm) wasn't to the extent that it became irritating and it was certainly possible to avoid it the first time round rather than repeat it again and again until you gathered enough knowledge to stop it.

And on one last note, death can be funny. Unless its your own. Then its irritating.

[AGD2]

Wow, what an interesting thread! I can actually appreciate some of Interference's points. Here’s the story: Originally, we didn't even plan to release the KQ1VGA remake publicly. We were only going to create Royal Quest... a game that made fun of KQ1's "trite" elements and frequent death situations. However, before we tackled that complex task, (not knowing how to script in AGS at this point) I wanted to "mimic" the scripting of the original King's Quest game so that I had a guide, something to learn from and compare my progress against. To that end, KQ1 proved quite a useful candidate for remaking. An original game, such as Royal Quest, would have been unchartered territory and also would have taken much longer to complete with my limited AGS knowledge at the time.

So I scripted KQ1VGA with the intention of gaining more experience with AGS and making a 1:1 remake of the EGA version -- just to see if I could recreate every situation from the original. To tell the truth, I wasn't looking at the dead-ends/frequent deaths from a casual player's point of view, I was looking at it as a scripting challenge... to recreate the game in AGS exactly as it appeared in its original form.

Mind you, at this point we still had not plans of a public release.  Towards the end of the scripting process, I began to think, "Hell, maybe we should release this thing to the masses! A lot of work's gone into it...  someone out there might want to download it." And that’s exactly what we decided to do.  It was then that we removed a few of the original game's 'flaws/features' (depending on your personal preference) in order to make it more bearable for new players. We also wrote up several solutions to dead-end problems. For example, in the original game if that Troll takes the Magic Mirror from you, then that's it... game over, man. So we added a part, where IF the troll took any important items from you (and you used the goat to make him fall in the water), then you could simply walk down stream a bit and find your possessions washed up on the shore and take them again. We were also gonna add a part where the giant would chase you down the beanstalk and you could use the woodcutter's axe to chop it down to kill that big bastard (jack and the beanstalk style).  When we announced these intended improvements on our forums, though, the general consensus was that most people would have preferred not for these changes to be added to the game for fear of making it too different from the original. KQ1VGA 1.0 was, however, released without the "pushing rock" death. We actually received more than a few complaints about that one's absence (surprisingly)... so back in it went for v2.0!

I guess the original KQ that was released in 1984 was a pretty big technological leap from other games available at the time.

Ken: ”Can you trip over a tree stump in real life?”
Roberta: “Sure, let's throw that in our game! That'll impress people.”
Ken: “Can you swim and drown in real life?”
Roberta: “Uh huh...”
Ken: “Great, let's throw that in too. What would happen if you pushed a large boulder on top of yourself in real life?”
Roberta: “ It’d crush you!”
Ken: “I'm glad we had this brainstorming session. Throw that into the mix as well.  People will be so amazed at how lifelike this game is!”

…and people, no doubt, WERE impressed at these things in 1984. No other game at the time allowed the much more than static monocrome graphics. KQ1 was like the Mario64 of it’s time.

Ironically, this same WYSIWYG approach is adopted by most, if not all, modern FPS shooters as well. If you see a pool of water, you can swim in it, and drown if you stay under for too long. If you see a high cliff, you can walk off and fall to your death. If you see a guy pointing a gun at you... then you know damn well that he's gonna shoot you, so you better shoot him back first! Not being able to walk off the cliff or drown would feel unrealistic and illogical in accordance with real life. Granted, this is a little more noticeable in first person perspective games. However, most games do try to portray a certain element of realism and in the case of KQ1, we get the same "if you do a stupid thing, you receive a fatal consequence" type of game play. Doom had these 'don't fall of the ledge or you'll die' puzzles too, just like KQ1 does. Furthermore, in Doom you're often forced to bypass these puzzles to end the level (The end of tricks and traps in Doom2 always drove me crazy!), whereas in KQ, sometimes the player is forced to walk the annoying path (KQ3) and sometimes it's obvious that they must use common sense to avoid it (serpent infested moat).

While Sierra's early approach (letting players do anything that would result in death in reality) was probably seen as impressive in the early 80's, I think they may have slightly overlooked the fact that people play games to escape from reality. Not that they really cared back then because it impressed people and made them rich. But still,  I do think there should be some borders between games and reality. Therefore, I don't disagree with death situations in games. Personally, I prefer the Sierra approach (i.e. being able to die), over the Lucasarts one of not usually being able to die until the end scene (i.e. Full Throttle), although I must admit that the Lucasarts approach was also used in GK1 and it did not reduce my enjoyment (nor the suspense level) of the game one bit.

What I think it all boils down to is just being fair to the player. Obviously, pushing a rock from the wrong side (which, let's face it, could be ANY side to the unsuspecting player) isn't cool by today’s standards. But as long as adequate warning is given to players, then, IMO,deaths shouldn’t be considered a flaw. (I always had more of an issue with dead-end situations in Sierra games rather than anything else).  

As CJ said, KQ1, being the first of it's kind, was more of an experiment than anything else.  You can see where these errors have been amended in later KQ/Sierra Adventure games. Nothing ever gets better without learning from mistakes or trial and error. KQ1 was a good game for its time. By today's standards it probably only holds sentimental value for those who played the original. But we must also remember that if it weren't for KQ1, then no other adventure games (Lucasarts ones included) would have eventuated the way they did. It's all cause and effect, you have to take the good with the bad and see the greater long-term advantage of the situation. Refinement is what makes things better. Instead of criticising the early adventures, as adventure game fans we should at least respect them (even if they frustrate us); for the path that they’ve forged, and for the influence they’ve had to make adventure gaming as a whole, a much more enjoyable experience!

[shbaz]

I liked the game.. I thought it was cool. It is an awesome remake.

The first adventure game I played was Monkey Island I, and I enjoyed it. The second was Quest for glory I, and I enjoyed it even more. This was in '91, maybe '92. I like the amusing death scenes and the way you could type stuff and get amusing responses to things you probably otherwise wouldn't see.

My problem with this game is that I've solved all of the puzzles I can find, and it seems like I'm supposed to grab this hawk outside of the dragon cave, but the guy can't catch it. Jumps right under it, with arms in air, and it flies away without me. I hate having to waste an hour on an interface problem.

EDIT:

Ah.. thanks erpy! I hope you'll pardon my ignorance.

[Erpy]

That's why we put a little cross on the floor that marks the right spot. It's easy to miss though.

[Interference]

An interesting read, AGD2, that at the very least gives me some semblance of respect for KQ1.

King's Quest was undoubtably a launch platform for a plethora of games to develop ideas and control systems from and the father of the modern adventure game as we see it today.

My only grudge remains in the fact that no-one at Sierra saw fit to analyse their games, rooting out irritations, for quite some time. Even by "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers" it was still possible to seriously mess up your game to the point of not being able to complete it, meaning all that work was for nothing. Nice to see enough people got the right idea to make adventure games a worthwhile genre to play.

And try not to poke too hard at my common sense, that serpent-infested moat was ridiculous. Like having a doormat fashioned out of nitroglycerine: one step wrong and you'll never tie your shoe laces again. It wasn't really that obvious.

An example of a well executed, you-know-you'll-die death would be the reactor in Beneath A Steel Sky: activate the door and you're fried. You know that's what'll happen though, so you can avoid it. The moat is a case of "Is that dangerous? Woops.."