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 King's Quest 6 was a success for Sierra, both critically and financially. By most standards, it's not a very good game, but in terms of Sierra it was a masterpiece -- you had relative freedom in what order to solve the puzzles in, they managed to pay money for people who could sort of act, and sometimes mistakes didn't even kill you! And Sierra's policy at that time was that you just kept on making sequels until the money ran out, so of course Roberta Williams was asked to write another one. And she decided this was to be even more ambitious -- it would be fully animated, like a Disney film you could control yourself. It would span the globe, it would be brilliant, and it would be animated by Pixar. And it would have all of the quality that Sierra, and Roberta Williams, had become famous for. But everyone wound up hating it, and though another King's Quest game did come out (Mask of Eternity, which is much worse than this), it was really the end of the series. Still, while King's Quest 7 was insanely ambitious, and it didn't live up to its promise, the tricks and methods they used to put animation into their game inspired a lot of much better stuff, like the Broken Sword games (and, of course, Jack Orlando). They ran short on time, on money, and had to cut almost a third of the game to make the deadline. So of course it's bad, but let's play it anyway, alright? Though I don't know what the hell Roberta Williams was thinking when she wanted to call it "Rosella Versus the Volcano." That's just terrible. PART 2 THE TROLL TOLL PART 3 ANCIENT VOLCANO OF NO ROSELLAS PART 4 LORDS OF DOGTOWN PART 5 AN EMINENCE FRONT PART 6 DYING SLOWLY corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 14:00
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PART ONE True to form, King's Quest 7 starts with a Disney-style musical number. Of course, to fit the thing on the disk and make it at all affordable, they had to draw the thing in 10fps (though sometimes it's much lower). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-5HbVWJCL0 If you can't watch it, or are hard of hearing, here are the key facts from the introduction:     There's a popular myth that Animation Magic, the company responsible for such classics as Hotel Mario and the CDi Zeldas, did the animation for this game, and that's why it's so bad. But while they did do some work -- specifically, all the animation in Chapter 1, which you'll see in this update -- they didn't do anything else in the game. Several companies from around the world collaborated on getting the game done, and Sierra even wound up doing most of the final areas in-house when their contractors didn't finish in time. That's part of why the animation looks so uneven and jarring! The opening musical, however, was animated by an American company, Animotion, who also worked on Sierra's other animated games. They've also done lots of other animation for licensed titles based on cartoons, so if you played a crappy Spongebob Squarepants game in the early 2000s then it might have been these guys doing the art for it! And, to their credit, their later work is a lot cleaner and just generally much better. Not great, but better.  One unusual thing they tried with this game is that it is divided into chapters -- six of them. You can start a new game from any of them, even the final one, which according to Roberta Williams made the game "almost like six games in one," which is a blatant lie. The original plan was for eight, and evidence suggests that they were still hoping to make it to seven when the end of development neared. In at least one of these excised chapters, the player would get to explore the "Rubber Jungle," but since no concept art of the area seems to exist it's probable they cut that part early. Other plot threads will disappear without a mention, and in those cases it's safe to assume development issues is the culprit.   My daughter! Rosella! Where are you? What is this place? Where is my Rosella? My child?You may notice that I have subtitles on. This would be a surprise to most people who have played this game, since King's Quest 7 does not actually have a subtitles option. Instead, you have to make the game think you have no memory or sound card, and then the game will replace the voice track with the familiar text option. It's pretty clear that they never meant for this to work; the subtitles look terrible and are fairly buggy, so they're probably just a remnant of a planned full text option (something all other Sierra games had offered, talky or not). Unfortunately, that feature wound up being unfinished so they could make the deadline for release.  The game plays some terrible music here. It's very wacky and comical, I think? But that's not important right now. Valanice heads south, into the desert.  Doing this is made much easier by the (undocumented) option to increase walking speed. You press + on the numpad a bunch of times, and she ends up walking a hell of a lot faster. You might wonder why that's not in the options menu, but the answer is simply that there isn't one. It was cut to meet the deadline.  South again is the whirlwind that brought us here in the first place. You can tell this is a timing puzzle by the fact that Valanice drops to her default walking speed while here, but since she speeds up again once she's gone that's perfectly fine. The whirlwind moves up and down, and it's simply a matter of waiting until...  Got it. It is a hunting horn, and it makes this chapter bearable. You see, one of the things they planned with this game was to let you solve puzzles in different ways, to allay the criticism many had of the older King's Quest games where only one, arbitrary solution was allowed. They wanted to do this in the other chapters, too, but it was cut to meet the deadline.  Valanice heads up north. Note the painting on that rock, it's a clue. Inside the cave, though, are items we need.   It's a basket. The basket is a symptom of another "clever design decision" that Roberta was very proud of: you can examine items closely, and rotate their 3d models to get a better look at them. The trouble is, some bright guy realized you could make people solve puzzles in the examination screen, like so:  Rotate it around until you notice a tiny three pixel aberration and click that, and you get a corn kernel. You need it to beat this chapter, you see!  Grabbing the jars breaks them, up until the last one. It's sort of like a puzzle, I guess? Here's a mouse with no glasses:  I am Valanice of Daventry, good sir. Is there a problem with your eyes?  Of all the rude, inconsiderate--That rabbit has insulted the queen, and must be punished. Here it comes, you little fiend! Ha ha! I got you, didn't I?The jackelope left behind a pair of glasses, and a patch of fur on the cactus behind him. A good adventure game heroine never leaves anything on the ground.   Such a pretty yellow seed! Will you take a turquoise bead? That sounds like a good deal.We trade the corn kernel for a blue bead. And here's another moment of improved design: you can show the mouse any of your items, and he'll make some other rhyming offer, but Valanice will only agree if it's something you need. Alexander would probably have done the trade anyway, forcing you to backtrack here once you realize you made a mistake; Graham would probably have just died on the spot.  This is the next bit. We grab a stick, as well as some salt crystals (the sparkling thing down there by the water). With our fancy new pot, Valanice transfers some water from the pool into the statue's bowl. And then:  Valanice can cry on command, and it's used to solve puzzles. In this case, she's crying into the salty water. She can also cry on other things! Roberta Williams promoted this game as having a warmer, more personal story due to its female characters. We put the water back into the pot. It's still salty.  We actually don't need to do any of that. We don't need to solve the water puzzle, partly because I already gave away the corn kernel you need to do it, but mostly because I hate it. Valanice messes with the statue until it fits the cave drawing from earlier:   Where the water used to be, there's now a statue holding two turquoise carvings. We take the V shaped one, because I read a walkthrough and know that's the right one, and replace it with the turquoise bead.   On the way to the next thing, we spy this ghostly figure. He's probably not important, though.  Oh no!  Quickly tying part of her dress to a stick is the solution. Somehow, this defeats the scorpion. Here's a puzzle:  Here's the solution:  Our reward is an arrow-shaped piece of turquoise, which can be combined with the V we found earlier to create a larger arrow. We're actually done solving puzzles in Chapter 1, so that's exciting.  I mean, figuring out our arrow fits in the arrow-shaped hole on this statue is technically a puzzle, but not really.  Before I forget, there's also this:   End of Chapter 1. Time taken: 15 minutes. Time taken on Retsupurae: an hour.
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Mar 16, 2015 14:02
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Torin's Back Passage. They did use the selectable chapters later in Phantasmagoria.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:08
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I am all about bad animated adventure games and I am all about this thread. I am a little worried about my friend and yours, bible corn, who is probably going to have a breakdown if he keeps this up (please take care not to OD on bad adventure games, bibblecorn)
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Mar 16, 2015 15:23
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Break a leg!
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corn in the bible posted:Grabbing the jars breaks them, up until the last one. It's sort of like a puzzle, I guess? Here's a mouse with no glasses: This single line almost broke me.  Corn, where do you find this stuff? More importantly, why do you do this to yourself?!
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Mar 16, 2015 15:27
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The first instinct upon listening to her mother is to plunge herself headlong into a river, amazing. My neighbor's kitten once did that with our pond, pondering the point of life for a few seconds and then just jumped straight in. But I think the kitten at least had delusions of grandeur and assumed it would reach the other side. How does the interface on this work? The mouse pointer is the crown, I take it, but what's the other stuff? The K is probably just embellishment, and there's...a slider? An eye for examinations, and a red orb for...life?
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Mar 16, 2015 15:38
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Chokes McGee posted:This single line almost broke me. http://www.gog.com/game/kingdom_the_far_reaches
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Mar 16, 2015 15:38
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Fleve posted:The first instinct upon listening to her mother is to plunge herself headlong into a river, amazing. My neighbor's kitten once did that with our pond, pondering the point of life for a few seconds and then just jumped straight in. But I think the kitten at least had delusions of grandeur and assumed it would reach the other side. The interface being simplified was a big criticism that Sierra fans had for the game. There's one cursor, which changes depending on what you're pointing at -- it's an arrow when you point at an exit, a wand that sparkles over objects in normal conditions, or a crown during non-interactive cutscenes. You can click inventory stuff on the eye to look at it more closely, which is needed for some puzzles. The slider is kind of weird -- in areas which are wider than the screen, you can either walk from side to side or use the slider to pan around it without moving. Ironically, this kind of unified interface is pretty much how all adventure games work now -- the icon-based control that old adventure games used all the time died out during the 90s, and if you play a modern game it's almost certainly going to have one mouse cursor that does everything. So I can't fault the game on that account; it controls fine and having to guess which icon the designers wanted you to use on something was always pretty annoying to me. SelenicMartian posted:Look what else you can get at gog.com Ha ha, no.
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Mar 16, 2015 15:48
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corn in the bible posted:Ironically, this kind of unified interface is pretty much how all adventure games work now -- the icon-based control that old adventure games used all the time died out during the 90s, and if you play a modern game it's almost certainly going to have one mouse cursor that does everything. So I can't fault the game on that account; it controls fine and having to guess which icon the designers wanted you to use on something was always pretty annoying to me. Oh yeah, I remember that, like having 6 buttons for 'look', 'examine', 'combine', 'pick up', 'talk to', 'throw your arms in the air and yell gently caress', joined with an inventory of 10+ items which inevitably ends in utter frustration when you get sick of trying everything on everything with every option. That was about as fun as food poisoning. And I don't understand why lovely adventure games always seem to have pixel hunts. Even without having to find a cluster of 4 pixels, games like Jack Orlando's would be horrible, but somehow those games always seem to attract a particular kind of rear end in a top hat developer who thinks that hiding crucial plot-items is a really neat puzzle.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:02
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Fleve posted:And I don't understand why lovely adventure games always seem to have pixel hunts. Even without having to find a cluster of 4 pixels, games like Jack Orlando's would be horrible, but somehow those games always seem to attract a particular kind of rear end in a top hat developer who thinks that hiding crucial plot-items is a really neat puzzle. Look, man, the first adventure games had pixel hunts, and people bought them, so clearly if we're going to make an adventure game then we have to include pixel hunts. It's what the audience wants, our hands are tied  (Also it increases playtime and helps us sell the hintbook  )
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Mar 16, 2015 17:40
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Sierra used to put the number to their hint line in their game over screens. Only 2 dollars a minute! On the other hand, most modern adventure games have a feature to show you where the hotspots on a screen are. Pixel-hunting is pretty much a thing of the past as a result, except in the inevitable crappy throwback games like Quest for Infamy or crappy flash games on Kongregate. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 17:46
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corn in the bible posted:Sierra used to put the number to their hint line in their game over screens. Only 2 dollars a minute! Did anyone call those hint lines? I have to wonder if they were actually helpful, or if they were true to their name and just gave vague hints. I guess the proper business model would be to be helpful and explain exactly what you need to do, that way the customer is more likely to call again when they get stuck five minutes later.
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Mar 16, 2015 17:50
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Ah this game. First king's quest that I played, through I saw games five and six being played. It may have some issues, but it was fun to me, and that's all I ask of a game, for it to be fun.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:06
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Chokes McGee posted:Corn, where do you find this stuff? Oh wow. King's Quest. So obscure. Never mind there's at least 6 other games in this series and that it had a big enough budget for animation and full voice acting before DOS finally died. How could you possibly find it, bible corn?
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Mar 16, 2015 19:31
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Great Joe posted:Oh wow. King's Quest. So obscure. Never mind there's at least 6 other games in this series and that it had a big enough budget for animation and full voice acting before DOS finally died. A little rough, it is 2015, and this game was released in 1994. That means a 20 year old wasn't born when the game came out. Plus Sierra and adventure games really fell off a cliff by 2000. Hell I played the hell out of KQ IV, V and VI and I completely forgot that this one even existed until I read the thread. I actually remember Mask Of Eternity (for how bad it was) more then this one. So you can't fault someone for not hearing of the game if they didn't really play games in the early 90s.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:06
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corn in the bible posted:Ha ha, no.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:15
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syzpid posted:A little rough, it is 2015, and this game was released in 1994. That means a 20 year old wasn't born when the game came out. Plus Sierra and adventure games really fell off a cliff by 2000. Hell I played the hell out of KQ IV, V and VI and I completely forgot that this one even existed until I read the thread. I actually remember Mask Of Eternity (for how bad it was) more then this one. So you can't fault someone for not hearing of the game if they didn't really play games in the early 90s. 
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Mar 16, 2015 21:16
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Wasn't there a freelance astronaut vid of this scene with Tom Jones being played over it? I seem to remember something along those lines.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:20
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Great Joe posted:So, a game released the same year as Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Daytona USA and Tekken is now too old and obscure for people. Thanks for the info. I'd seen bits and pieces of the horribly animated intro (mostly the GIF Samovar quoted) and I was aware of a later King's Quest game, but I didn't know that King's Quest 7 was specifically where that came from.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:52
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Because of how they went about animating the game, there is a lot of concept art floating around. Sometimes it's pretty interesting, and you have to wonder what Roberta and the other people at Sierra thought when they sent off these sketches and then had to deal with the... interesting... finished animations. Queen Valanice, our heroine. Naturally, there's a fair amount of sketches of her, as well as Rosella, the deuterantagonist and other playable character. Her design is pretty 90s, what with the enormous shoulderpads she's always wearing, but it looks fine. Very Disney, but I guess that's what they were going for.  The trading mouse. He has a lot of voice clips, including for items you can never bring to him because you either only hold them temporarily or find them after you can't talk to him anymore. In at least one case (the moon, from chapter 3), I know that's because the item's importance was cut back significantly to make the deadline; otherwise, who knows?  Remember the jackalope? There are lots of pictures around of this guy, though whether that's because they wanted a bigger part for him or just that the developers liked the design and saved it, I have no idea. This one's neat, since you can see some of the animation guidelines in there.  The big lizard from the end of Chapter 1. Probably one of the few cases where the original design is pretty much exactly like its final appearance; I guess it was simple enough to be easily rendered in tiny sprites. And here's some pictures from the opening, which was fully storyboarded.  
corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 21:56
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Great Joe posted:So, a game released the same year as Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Daytona USA and Tekken is now too old and obscure for people. Thanks for the info. I'm 25 and didn't know this game existed. Then again, I didn't play PC games in the early 90's until my dad got Ultimate DooM so I'm an outlier but still shut the gently caress up.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:04
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Honestly, if it weren't for a vague memory of the few chapters I
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Mar 16, 2015 22:12
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I'd also figure that this game could be argued to be obscure because of its persona non grata status with fans of the series. Since it wouldn't really get brought up beyond "oh yeah and there was that poo poo one we don't talk about", I can see how it would become more obscure as time goes on. Of course, then there's assholes like me whose only exposure to the Kings Quest series was Mask of Eternity. And god help me, I have nostalgia over it, poo poo as it may be.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:15
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corn in the bible posted:End of Chapter 1. Time taken: 15 minutes. Time taken on Retsupurae: an hour.  slowbeef, killed by game's
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Mar 16, 2015 23:05
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This was not only my first King's Quest, it was my first Sierra adventure game. Before that I had only played Lucas Arts games. Imagine my shock at the first bullshit death, young me didn't know what the gently caress.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:12
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Samovar posted:Wasn't there a freelance astronaut vid of this scene with Tom Jones being played over it? I seem to remember something along those lines. Here. He posted it in my Mask of Eternity LP thread, so it was pretty easy to find again. As for the LP, the game sure isn't great, but I think you're doing it a bit of a disservice by doing things so intentionally out of order. There are in fact multiple puzzle solutions in this chapter and several things you pointed out and then skipped, and it's not QUITE as incomprehensible as you made it out to be. And the trading sequences of King's Quests past haven't all been as awful as you implied. In VI, for example, there was a trader in the pawn shop owner, who not only wouldn't accept any items other than the two or three you're supposed to give him, but he had specific lines for why he wouldn't accept about 2/3 of the items in the game. There were a few ways to handle the various trades in V (as well as a few ways to irrevocably screw it up), and I'm pretty sure I remember the designer's notes in IV originally stating that you could give the wrong item to the fisherman, but that was changed for the final game to eliminate that particular dead end. In short, I don't think you need to go this far out of your way to show how bad the game is, although there have been enough straight LPs by now that this one will complement them pretty well.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:12
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TheMcD posted:Did anyone call those hint lines? I have to wonder if they were actually helpful, or if they were true to their name and just gave vague hints. As a lad, I called the Sierra help line several times while playing Hi-Res Adventure #2: The Wizard and the Princess. (Back when it was basically just Ken Williams.) They gave hints, but they were very good hints and if you were frustrated they'd hand you the solution. My parents were not real happy with me when they found out I'd been toll-calling California.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:31
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TheMcD posted:Did anyone call those hint lines? I have to wonder if they were actually helpful, or if they were true to their name and just gave vague hints. I think the lines mostly consisted of pre-recorded hints with live support available if you were really stuck. The hintbooks had a bunch of development trivia and scratch-away answers that went from vague to spelled out so you could decide how much help you needed. SupSuper fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:35
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It would look better if you put a blank line in between images and character portraits, as well as between character portraits, imo.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:15
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We got this for my cousin right after it came out, but I don't think she ever got past chapter 3 or so. The main thing I remember was the game crashing every five minutes.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:28
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Look, man, the first adventure games had pixel hunts, and people bought them, so clearly if we're going to make an adventure game then we have to include pixel hunts. It's what the audience wants, our hands are tied But the first games had pixels the size of your thumb so it was easy to find them.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:19
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Nidoking posted:Here. He posted it in my Mask of Eternity LP thread, so it was pretty easy to find again. My god that audio compression. It's like watching StupidVideos.com again.
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Mar 17, 2015 05:02
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Favourite part of the game so far: The rotoscoped tree at the very beginning.
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Mar 17, 2015 08:40
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SupSuper posted:You bet people called them, Sierra's hintlines/books were incredibly more profitable than the games to the point they made them a cornerstone of their design philosophy. Bullshit sells. According to Al Lowe (the creator of Leisure Suit Larry) they sold more hintbooks than the games the hintbooks were for. One way to make a profit despite piracy, I suppose. Some of their hintbooks were just goddamn amazing.
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Mar 17, 2015 10:04
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Xander77 posted:According to Al Lowe (the creator of Leisure Suit Larry) they sold more hintbooks than the games the hintbooks were for. One way to make a profit despite piracy, I suppose. I actually have that. Wish I had the SQ Companion too.
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Mar 17, 2015 12:01
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Great Joe posted:Oh wow. King's Quest. So obscure. Never mind there's at least 6 other games in this series and that it had a big enough budget for animation and full voice acting before DOS finally died. Actually, I didn't know the series made it up to 7 and stopped playing (and paying attention) after 5. I also didn't know just how bad the series had gotten. But thanks for your input anyway, I guess! (jackass)
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Mar 17, 2015 14:53
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Xander77 posted:According to Al Lowe (the creator of Leisure Suit Larry) they sold more hintbooks than the games the hintbooks were for. One way to make a profit despite piracy, I suppose. I have the fourth editions version of that. Sadly the Second Edition of the Space Quest Companion only covers through SQ5 and they never made a third edition to cover 6. it took me forever to actually find most of these and I am still missing one KQ novel: 
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Mar 17, 2015 15:00
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corn in the bible posted:We actually don't need to do any of that. We don't need to solve the water puzzle, partly because I already gave away the corn kernel you need to do it, but mostly because I hate it. grandalt posted:Ah this game. First king's quest that I played, through I saw games five and six being played. It may have some issues, but it was fun to me, and that's all I ask of a game, for it to be fun. Chokes McGee posted:Actually, I didn't know the series made it up to 7 and stopped playing (and paying attention) after 5.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:04
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Tiggum posted:Could you at least tell us about it? I've played this, and I remember the grey guy is a ghost and you need to give him fresh water, but I can't remember how you get it or what you get for it. Also, is there a place you can only get to by bringing fresh water so you can drink it half way there to not die? Or am I thinking of a different game? You can indeed give the ghost some fresh water, but there's literally no reason to ever do so. We have to go back to the desert at some point anyway so if people are so drat excited about seeing Queen Valanice say MMM, FRESH then I guess I can oblige
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Mar 17, 2015 15:37
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Chokes McGee posted:(jackass) Great Joe fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 15:50
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