I never got around to play th Sierra version (Aka: the original King's Quest) this seems ok, I mean I'm not in total agreement with it. Though not gonna get all physco, start cursing up a rant storm, and then purposely throw my baby in a well or anything like that. (Pesant's Quest refernce ) All jokes aside, I'll keep my eye on it, not saying it will be Sierra great, not saying it will be
Thanks for your comments. I think that almost all of your brainstorming in the 4th paragraph is on the right track. Large non-linear explorable environments were a staple of King's Quest, and it would be nice if you could somehow do that. As for difficulty - why are there like 4-5 different levels of hints in Telltale games? It should imply that the games are difficult with hints off, and the casual gamers can just play them on Easy (it could easily be conveyed to the player beforehand what the situation is and how it works).
But they're still stupid easy with hints off. I beat BTTF episode 2 in two days (only because I had some other obligations in the way or it would have been one evening) and figured everything out on my own.
Eh, this isn't fair. First, I reject the idea that a series always has to stick with the same creator, especially video games. More importantly - Sierra had a system of really pushing their famous marketable designers. They would put the famous designers' names on products that they actually may have had very little to do with. Josh Mandel posted over at the Adventure Gamers forum that he once saw a quote saying that Freddy Pharkas was "Al Lowe at his purest" or something, and he just had to laugh. Josh strongly implied that he was the "real" designer of the game.
Mandel also worked on some of the Space Quest games, and so there might be similar situations with him or others working on that series.
That's true of other games in Sierra's catalogue, but with Space Quest it was pretty much what you see is what you get. The Two Guys created and developed every Space Quest game together (with the addition of Gary Oldfield, who Scott himself says was pretty much the Third Guy from Andromeda) up to SQ4. Mark Crowe designed SQ5 by himself, and SQ6 was designed mostly by Josh Mandel. Josh quit Sierra in the middle of development and SQ6 was completed and slapped together at the last minute by Scott Murphy and Leslie Balfour.
Unlike the other Sierra titles, you always got what was on the box. Josh Mandel didn't do anything in any other SQ games besides the hint book in SQ4 and possibly some other small bits of writing. But he didn't design any SQ games besides SQ6. And he didn't even complete that, great as he is.
It is clear from what she says that Sierra would have continued to innovate - they may have had some missteps sure, but I would bet that if they were around, the genre would be healthier than it is now when the entire design philosophy is stuck in 1990.
And let's face it the only thing that can make him angrier is if Telltale got the liscense to make a reboot of this.
Please stop with the antagonizing messages. Dashing is certainly heatedly passionate but he's bringing more valid points to the table than anybody else here on the other side of the debate.
Please stop with the antagonizing messages. Dashing is certainly heatedly passionate but he's bringing more valid points to the table than anybody else here on the other side of the debate.
Sheesh, I was joking. In fact, I knida agree with him a little. I mean the direction Telltale's games are going now, what with the puzzles and stuff I think it actually might turn out bad in retrospect. Though I never meant any of that in an antagonizing way and I appoligize if I offended anyone.
I also want to say that I love Telltale's fanbase. I've never worked at a company where we hd such a rich online community that I could interact with on a daily basis.
On top of that, it gives me access to what you all really care about.
As I read through these comments, I am making notes of what people declare as "must-haves" and others heavily agree on. I'm reading the nay sayers and paying attention. These are the people I'm going to have to work the hardest to please.
And I'll say it again. I'm a fan, too. I just emailed my best friend to warn him that when the series is done, I'm flying out to the East Coast so we can stay up and play through them just as we did when we were young-- swapping the keyboard and chugging pepsis.
I also want to say that I love Telltale's fanbase. I've never worked at a company where we hd such a rich online community that I could interact with on a daily basis.
And I want to say that we (me at least!:P) really love the Telltale artists, and appreciate how much they care for people on this forum, even if we repeadetly get angry with you for everything. But I think that all this people on this board means a LOT of love for your games. And most of that bad things we say are because we appreciate or have appreciated your daily work.
And we have to thank you for some amazing hours you gave on our lives with your games.
And I'll say it again. I'm a fan, too. I just emailed my best friend to warn him that when the series is done, I'm flying out to the East Coast so we can stay up and play through them just as we did when we were young-- swapping the keyboard and chugging pepsis.
Now you moved my heart
Hope that you don't spoil him anything!
Keep on the good work!
I've only completed the first three (currently making my way though IV) and while decent games they can also be very frustrating, especially III. I hate time limits.
Kings Quest was the first computer game I ever played (on an old 286) And always prefered adventure games like those. So am very excited. I've only just got my playstation 3 (which I am new at, never played on a console like machine before, only pc) so I am hoping it will be on ps3. I don't suppose there is any idea of a release date?
I just emailed my best friend to warn him that when the series is done, I'm flying out to the East Coast so we can stay up and play through them just as we did when we were young-- swapping the keyboard and chugging pepsis.
Kings Quest was the first computer game I ever played (on an old 286) And always prefered adventure games like those. So am very excited. I've only just got my playstation 3 (which I am new at, never played on a console like machine before, only pc) so I am hoping it will be on ps3. I don't suppose there is any idea of a release date?
We won't know anything until the E3 event in June.
1. A return to a variety of challenging puzzles. This isn't BTTF where the game-play has to be dumbed-down for mainstream gamers - this is KQ, the grand-daddy of adventure games. I demand to kept more busy thinking about puzzles than watching cinematics.
2. Fairy tales characters. There's always fairy tale characters. And you always find yourself in their stories somehow. And you either end up helping them, robbing them, or killing them.
3. Exploration. A larger world, like in Homestar Runner or Bone. KQ games are not meant to feel claustrophobic, like in BTTF where I'm trapped in the town square all the time.
4. Keeping it family-friendly. The big thing about KQ compared to other adventure games is that it doesn't employ edgy sarcastic humor or crude innuendos which would otherwise turn it into "Shrek." It should be a nice light-hearted family adventure (where you can die.)
My Must-Not Haves:
1. Characters crying. All the time. (see: KQ7, TSL) KQ may be serious at times, but it doesn't need to be emotionally dramatic.
2. No notorious Roberta Williams puzzles. Just because she thought it's okay to throw a pie at a monster doesn't mean that's the standard for KQ puzzle-solving.
3. A customizable HUD where you can hide all the buttons you don't want to use. Goals, Hints, Story So Far - I keep clicking them by accident hoping to hit a "menu" button when I want to save. Also, add a menu button.
1>. Perhaps a KQIX and more sometimes in the future.
2>. Level of difficulty (provided as options to increase appeal to more gamers). For me personally, I like tough puzzles. Tough puzzles mean more chances of getting stuck, retrying, and dying.
3>. Narrator and voice acting. Telltale has been superb in Monkey Island and recently Back to the Future.
4>. As for graphics, it is nice to see some animation like KQVII but with KQ perhaps the normal style mixed with animation would be great (i.e. balance).
Details in background: sound of flowing water, chirping birds, leaves blown by the wind, etc.
My must-not-have:
1>. First person --> I never enjoy first person adventure. I like to be able to see my character on the screen.
2>. Too much animation (this depends on the game and what range of gamers we're trying to reach).
3>. Too much darkness (there are certain games nowadays that have constant gloomy feeling to it).
2. No notorious Roberta Williams puzzles. Just because she thought it's okay to throw a pie at a monster doesn't mean that's the standard for KQ puzzle-solving.
I really liked the pie puzzle in KQ5. That was still okay. I think things like "sometimes it's wise to think backwards" in KQ1 are really mean.
If there's going to be a difficulty selection then do it this way: create the game firstly from a difficult standpoint (much more difficult than any Telltale game to date) and then dumb it down for an easy mode selection without dead ends or deaths, possibly. Don't go the route of Curse of Monkey Island and design the game with easy puzzles for non-thinking players first and then add a few extra steps for the harder difficulty. It's gotta be difficult first, dumbed down second.
I am psyched for a new King's Quest. Knowing that Telltale Games is handling the development is great. I have a feeling that we're not going to have to worry about another Mask of Eternity situation.
They already had an episode with death scenes and it was the most enjoyable one in the whole series. I could imagine a King's Quest 7 approach where you can die but the game just rewinds a bit and will let you try again without starting over.
I am totally fine with deaths, as long as the game at least auto-saves or rewinds a bit when they happen. I am not fine with them when they make me focus more on mashing the save button every 25 seconds in fear of having to replay through entire sections of the game repeatedly.
What is the problem with saving your game often and in different slots so you don't have to play it all over again. Did all this auto-save bull*** in the last years make you forget about it?
What does manually jabbing the save button over and over add to the game? If anything, it takes me out of the game, because I spend more time looking at save menus and reloading saves than I do actually playing and experiencing the game world. Auto-saves drastically reduce my interactions with save and load screens, thus increasing my ability to stay immersed.
I really liked the KQ1 remake in that regard. They kept all the puzzles is but asked you at the beginning if you wanted to disable dead ends. A great idea.
Who in their right mind wants a game to include dead ends? Is it enjoyable to spend hours and hours trying to solve a puzzle that you are literally not able to solve, without knowing that you are unable to solve it?
I've never been a King's Quest fan, at all. Primarily because the non-stop deaths (causing me obsessive save syndrome) and presence of dead ends really turn me off from the games. Will I check out Telltale's King's Quest? Maybe. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. I will likely only consider buying it if it contains tough but logical puzzles, and only if there is a less punishing system for deaths, such as the death mechanic previously used in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, for example.
Who in their right mind wants a game to include dead ends? Is it enjoyable to spend hours and hours trying to solve a puzzle that you are literally not able to solve, without knowing that you are unable to solve it?
Well it is a remake of the first KQ which had those dead ends. The remake was very true to the original game and asking if you want them to remove dead ends in the game you play was a good step towards making it accessible for newcomers and keeping the game as it was for those who want it to be just that.
I've never been a King's Quest fan, at all. Primarily because the non-stop deaths (causing me obsessive save syndrome) and presence of dead ends really turn me off from the games. Will I check out Telltale's King's Quest? Maybe. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. I will likely only consider buying it if it contains tough but logical puzzles, and only if there is a less punishing system for deaths, such as the death mechanic previously used in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, for example.
have you ever played King's Quest 7 then? It has this nice reset feature. You can get through it all without saving because the game resets you in a safe spot if you die (shortly before the death). And the puzzles are actually quite good (not too unfair).
It might not be the completely brutal Sierra experience but I still enjoyed it very much. Oh and I think there were no dead ends either. Only this damned firecracker-bug that made me use a tool to slow down my CPU.
What does manually jabbing the save button over and over add to the game?
You have to save often in different slots but you can play these games for quite a while without saving. Once you learned how deadly traps and paths look in these games you learn to save before using them etc. Only in some places I save after every few steps because the next step could cause me to fall. If anyone can play through KQ 1 without saving I would be very impressed but the gaming-experience is so much better when you actually achieved something. You climbed that beanstalk or made it safely over those rocks in the mountain etc. That's really a good feeling.
Please at least play the free remake of the first game. (without dead ends if you must) to get a feeling for what it means to play a Sierra-adventure.
Who in their right mind wants a game to include dead ends? Is it enjoyable to spend hours and hours trying to solve a puzzle that you are literally not able to solve, without knowing that you are unable to solve it?
I've already explained why this is not a bad thing. But I'll summarize again. With all the super easy adventure games our nowadays we need something to balance it out. Dead ends make you think more and not be as lazy about playing a game. The dead ends were never as brutal as people say they were. I for one never had a problem with them once. Why? Because I was trained to look and interact with EVERYTHING in the game JUST IN CASE. I don't want a game that holds my hand and tells me what to do. I'd much rather be thrown into a brand new world and have to figure out just what I'm supposed to do beyond the simple goal that is mentioned at the beginning of the game.
Telltale's games are too easy and I wouldn't mind a challenge for once with some actual punishing game mechanics. There's nothing wrong with them you just have to learn how to think ahead for everything. Not even constant saving turns me off of the concept. To me it's prudent gameplay. I don't want the game to protect me from anything bad that could possibly happen in the game. I say bring it on and let me overcome it out of my own intelligence. It's much more fulfilling that way.
In short, if you've paid attention to the very rich and fully interactive world around you and planned ahead before just running into situations that can get you into trouble, it's practically impossible to be caught in any of these dead-end scenarios. And even if you did, there are enough hints if you have common sense to figure out what you missed or where you slipped up. Games don't let players have common sense anymore because they provide the player with everything they need. I'd rather not have my hand held in a King's Quest game.
Just because a game is 2 or 3 hours long does not mean it is necessary to limit it to a small number of locations, as has been the case with too many of Telltale's games.
It's not like you could go to all the locations in KQ5 right from the start either; you had to go through the story first (in which case, being episodic or not makes little difference). I remember KQ5 being quite linear in its path, come to think of it. It was pretty much village/forest/desert, then mountains, then ocean/island, then Mordack's castle - AFAIK, that was it, and you couldn't really explore much. The desert was the largest area in the game, but it was annoying to navigate through.
I guess what I'm saying is, the number of locations can still be large in episodic games. If you feel too constrained by each episode, you can play the whole season as one game, no? ToMI is pretty large if you put all the episodes together.
have you ever played King's Quest 7 then? It has this nice reset feature. You can get through it all without saving because the game resets you in a safe spot if you die (shortly before the death). And the puzzles are actually quite good (not too unfair).
It might not be the completely brutal Sierra experience but I still enjoyed it very much. Oh and I think there were no dead ends either. Only this damned firecracker-bug that made me use a tool to slow down my CPU.
Is that included in the King's Quest Collection that was in the Great Adventure Bundle last year? I could maybe give it a shot, assuming I can get that terrible buggy client to download it properly.
but the gaming-experience is so much better when you actually achieved something. You climbed that beanstalk or made it safely over those rocks in the mountain etc. That's really a good feeling.
I guess I'm just asking how auto-save vs. manual save takes away that feeling, since they both accomplish essentially the same goal: preventing you from repeating areas/puzzles/etc you've already completed. I have no problem with navigating/solving difficult sequences, I have a problem with walking into a room and being murdered by some strange random event and losing half an hour of progress because I forgot to hit save recently.
I've already explained why this is not a bad thing. But I'll summarize again. With all the super easy adventure games our nowadays we need something to balance it out. Dead ends make you think more and not be as lazy about playing a game. The dead ends were never as brutal as people say they were. I for one never had a problem with them once. Why? Because I was trained to look and interact with EVERYTHING in the game JUST IN CASE.
I already look at and interact with everything in the game in every way possible in every adventure game I've ever played (which is why it takes me so long to play through them ), but the fear of dead ends would make me constantly wonder if I had missed something or if I just hadn't solved the puzzle yet, and I would be devastated if I found out I had to completely restart the game because of a silly oversight at the beginning. To me, this isn't challenge, it's bad design.
Nope. It was Village, desert, forest. You couldn't visit the forest without the amulet. And to get that you had to go to the desert first.
Yes, KQ5 was SOMEWHAT linear. But even in that first area of the game before the mountains you could go anywhere. You weren't locked to the forest alone, for instance. Or the desert. Or the town. You could visit all of these places. You might die for not having the correct items yet which forced you to visit them in order, but you could still go there.
For something like TMI, you were basically locked into one small island, or a couple even smaller islands. That's nothing like the vast countrysides you could explore in all of the King's Quests, even if they were contained. And take KQ6. You could visit 4 of the 5 islands in any order you wanted. Sometimes you couldn't get far on one island right away, and the islands themselves didn't have that many rooms to visit, but even so it was still more than TMI.
Is that included in the King's Quest Collection that was in the Great Adventure Bundle last year? I could maybe give it a shot, assuming I can get that terrible buggy client to download it properly.
Just make sure if you get the bundle you also download the patch for it from http://sierrahelp.com/ which fixes numerous issues and makes each game properly playable. The bundles use an outdated version of DOSBox and configuration files for DOSBox from a completely different version which causes problems. But a quick download of the patch and installation will fix it quickly and painlessly and then you can enjoy each game without headache.
I already look at and interact with everything in the game in every way possible in every adventure game I've ever played (which is why it takes me so long to play through them ), but the fear of dead ends would make me constantly wonder if I had missed something or if I just hadn't solved the puzzle yet, and I would be devastated if I found out I had to completely restart the game because of a silly oversight at the beginning. To me, this isn't challenge, it's bad design.
And what I'm saying is it's not near as brutal and cruel as you're making it out to be. As anyone is making it out to be.
Is that included in the King's Quest Collection that was in the Great Adventure Bundle last year? I could maybe give it a shot, assuming I can get that terrible buggy client to download it properly.
The old Sierra adventures were the first games I ever played as a kid, back on the old Tandy 1000 . I'm sure the people working on this game will respect the series legacy, and style. The game really does need to have a narrator, as I don't think they could capture the feel of the old ones without it. But what it needs most is is Credric jk...
Yes. Just go into the settings toggle it to "Text Only." Easy.
And here I am running the setup program and going into config files and manually changing settings around when all I need to do is click the settings button in game.
And here I am running the setup program and going into config files and manually changing settings around when all I need to do is click the settings button in game.
Yeah, it's pretty easy, you just have to get used to the Sierra interface/controls style.
Although, in the KQ5 talkie CD version (Sierra's very first game with voices), you couldn't turn the voices off, and you couldn't turn on subtitles either. Especially egregious considering how bad the voice acting was--all the characters were played by Sierra employees.
I agree with a lot of people in that exploration and puzzle difficulty is a key component of this series. Back to the Future can be as accessible as you can make it, but King's Quest why can't you do that for the die hard fans. I want to see Telltale do one challenging series & just see how it goes..
If that were the case none of the series would recycle environments in different episodes because you have to download them again anyways, so they might as well be brand new. There clearly are issues with how much time they can spend in development too, not just file size concerns.
Um, I don't quite get what you are saying? They recycle environments becuase they reuse them in the games. They only recycle environments when they need them. The old Telltale series' usually had a central hub that they would use in each episode, like Sam & Max's street, and there would be new puzzles to solve in them in every episode.
I just don't see how redownloading or not redownloading a recycled environment over a new environment has any baring on my point, especially when the new environments are usually changed somewhat, often only to the smallest degree like a new Bosco disguise or a new job for Sybil written on her sign. You're second point is spot one though, development time does affect what they can and cannot put in these episodes.
Yeah, it's pretty easy, you just have to get used to the Sierra interface/controls style.
Although, in the KQ5 talkie CD version (Sierra's very first game with voices), you couldn't turn the voices off, and you couldn't turn on subtitles either. Especially egregious considering how bad the voice acting was--all the characters were played by Sierra employees.
Which is why I am so happy to have play the floppy-disk version without the voices.
I'd never heard the voiced version before a few minutes ago when I went to watch clips of it on youtube. Now I fully understand why people were so annoyed by Cedric. I never really minded him, but now I get it completely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFdmad5QfQg
Nope. It was Village, desert, forest. You couldn't visit the forest without the amulet. And to get that you had to go to the desert first.
Well, sort of. You couldn't *survive* the forest without the amulet. It's a subtle difference :P.
And what I'm saying is it's not near as brutal and cruel as you're making it out to be. As anyone is making it out to be.
I agree that KQV is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be -- I mean, I beat it when I was 10 without a walk-through -- I just maintain that dead-ends are poor game design in spite of any arguments you may make. A game, almost by definition, is something you can win or lose. In that sense, I love the deaths as it *is* possible to screw up and lose hilariously unlike in Lucasarts titles, but it also should never become impossible to win in a single player game. Having the possibility to eliminate one solution is fine, but there should be another; maybe a more intricate puzzle to punish the player for missing something, but not a full-stop.
I just maintain that dead-ends are poor game design in spite of any arguments you may make. A game, almost by definition, is something you can win or lose. In that sense, I love the deaths as it *is* possible to screw up and lose hilariously unlike in Lucasarts titles, but it also should never become impossible to win in a single player game. Having the possibility to eliminate one solution is fine, but there should be another; maybe a more intricate puzzle to punish the player for missing something, but not a full-stop.
I have to agree with this, MI. The best way to handle this type of thing would be alternate puzzle solutions that garner less points, not actually grinding your game to a halt. If you are to "lose" the game, it should be via death, and not putting your game into an incompletable state.
I agree with a lot of people in that exploration and puzzle difficulty is a key component of this series. Back to the Future can be as accessible as you can make it, but King's Quest why can't you do that for the die hard fans. I want to see Telltale do one challenging series & just see how it goes..
I've been thinking, what if the game takes an approach to dead ends with elements from games like Braid and Radiant Historia? (Maybe even The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom) Instead of having to replay the whole game over just to take a different path, you rewind to the point you made the choice, and open up the new path. A system like that would keep stop the game from being in an unwinable state, but you'd still have to figure out where all the possible branches in the story are, and how to get where you need to go when items can be used in multiple spots.
I'd liken it to the way I've been playing Solitare on Windows Vista versus the old version in XP and before. For those that don't know, in the Vista version of Solitare you can undo as many moves as you want. You can rewind all the way to the beginning of a game. This does make it easier to win in general, often trivially so for some hands, but I find it creates a very different sort of puzzle for difficult and losing hands. It's figuring out the difference between the last two that's the new puzzle for me. I can undo moves to my hearts content, but can I figure out the necessary steps to finish? Did I miss a strategy in trying to juggle the multiple paths, or is this game really a losing hand no matter how it's played?
I think something like that might be a very interesting way to approach a modern King's Quest game. Same type of puzzles, same dead ends, just a more fluid interface than starting the game from scratch over and over.
I've been thinking, what if the game takes an approach to dead ends with elements from games like Braid and Radiant Historia? (Maybe even The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom) Instead of having to replay the whole game over just to take a different path, you rewind to the point you made the choice, and open up the new path. A system like that would keep stop the game from being in an unwinable state, but you'd still have to figure out where all the possible branches in the story are, and how to get where you need to go when items can be used in multiple spots.
I'd liken it to the way I've been playing Solitare on Windows Vista versus the old version in XP and before. For those that don't know, in the Vista version of Solitare you can undo as many moves as you want. You can rewind all the way to the beginning of a game. This does make it easier to win in general, often trivially so for some hands, but I find it creates a very different sort of puzzle for difficult and losing hands. It's figuring out the difference between the last two that's the new puzzle for me. I can undo moves to my hearts content, but can I figure out the necessary steps to finish? Did I miss a strategy in trying to juggle the multiple paths, or is this game really a losing hand no matter how it's played?
I think something like that might be a very interesting way to approach a modern King's Quest game. Same type of puzzles, same dead ends, just a more fluid interface than starting the game from scratch over and over.
The Last Express does exactly this. It would be awesome if Telltale could implement something similar.
I hate dead ends because it's often a mistake of not seeing something or a minor error. I play absurdly methodical in adventure games, but I'll have a brain fart or miss an item just like everyone else.
I hate dead ends more when you don't even realize you're in a dead end and waste hours looking for an object you'll never get. It then becomes a race between your patience and integrity versus looking up something in a guide, something I hate to do.
Dead ends feel like punishing players for something hardly their own fault, and the fix isn't something simple. It's replay the entire game. Or save every 5 feet. For a lot of people that will end up with "save every 5 feet."
I know some people like the risk and danger dead ends add, but I feel it adds mostly tedious replay.
I think people would probably find dead ends less annoying in an episodic game, though. I can understand getting upset if you have to replay an entire 20-hour game because you missed something early on, but replaying a three- or four-hour game isn't that bad. A lot of people here say they replay Telltale's games pretty frequently anyway.
For a lot of people that will end up with "save every 5 feet.
Which is kinda hard (well, WAS hard) considering the low number of save slots and limited disk space we had. I remember, when I was a kid and our all family played SQ2... well... we got stuck just before the landing platform (where we have to summon the beast), that's almost the end of the game. The reason? Didn't check the lockers at the VERY beginning of the game.
Though I don't think that Sierra's dead ends were intentional (in fact, AFAIK they tried hard to remove them in the 90s), so... no intentional by design dead ends, please.
Well, sort of. You couldn't *survive* the forest without the amulet. It's a subtle difference :P.
Yeah, I just said that because you were referring to the linear puzzle design of the gameplay. So, linearly, you have to go to the desert first.
I agree that KQV is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be -- I mean, I beat it when I was 10 without a walk-through -- I just maintain that dead-ends are poor game design in spite of any arguments you may make. A game, almost by definition, is something you can win or lose. In that sense, I love the deaths as it *is* possible to screw up and lose hilariously unlike in Lucasarts titles, but it also should never become impossible to win in a single player game. Having the possibility to eliminate one solution is fine, but there should be another; maybe a more intricate puzzle to punish the player for missing something, but not a full-stop.
I don't really agree with this for the same reasons I explained elsewhere. Dead ends to me are just another challenge. Not a mark of bad game design.
I have to agree with this, MI. The best way to handle this type of thing would be alternate puzzle solutions that garner less points, not actually grinding your game to a halt. If you are to "lose" the game, it should be via death, and not putting your game into an incompletable state.
Totally. I'm not necessarily saying that this new KQ needs to have dead ends in it. I'm just defending dead ends as a game mechanic.
Comments
And let's face it the only thing that can make him angrier is if Telltale got the liscense to make a reboot of this.
But they're still stupid easy with hints off. I beat BTTF episode 2 in two days (only because I had some other obligations in the way or it would have been one evening) and figured everything out on my own.
That's true of other games in Sierra's catalogue, but with Space Quest it was pretty much what you see is what you get. The Two Guys created and developed every Space Quest game together (with the addition of Gary Oldfield, who Scott himself says was pretty much the Third Guy from Andromeda) up to SQ4. Mark Crowe designed SQ5 by himself, and SQ6 was designed mostly by Josh Mandel. Josh quit Sierra in the middle of development and SQ6 was completed and slapped together at the last minute by Scott Murphy and Leslie Balfour.
Unlike the other Sierra titles, you always got what was on the box. Josh Mandel didn't do anything in any other SQ games besides the hint book in SQ4 and possibly some other small bits of writing. But he didn't design any SQ games besides SQ6. And he didn't even complete that, great as he is.
Absolutely.
Please stop with the antagonizing messages. Dashing is certainly heatedly passionate but he's bringing more valid points to the table than anybody else here on the other side of the debate.
Sheesh, I was joking. In fact, I knida agree with him a little. I mean the direction Telltale's games are going now, what with the puzzles and stuff I think it actually might turn out bad in retrospect. Though I never meant any of that in an antagonizing way and I appoligize if I offended anyone.
On top of that, it gives me access to what you all really care about.
As I read through these comments, I am making notes of what people declare as "must-haves" and others heavily agree on. I'm reading the nay sayers and paying attention. These are the people I'm going to have to work the hardest to please.
And I'll say it again. I'm a fan, too. I just emailed my best friend to warn him that when the series is done, I'm flying out to the East Coast so we can stay up and play through them just as we did when we were young-- swapping the keyboard and chugging pepsis.
And I want to say that we (me at least!:P) really love the Telltale artists, and appreciate how much they care for people on this forum, even if we repeadetly get angry with you for everything. But I think that all this people on this board means a LOT of love for your games. And most of that bad things we say are because we appreciate or have appreciated your daily work.
And we have to thank you for some amazing hours you gave on our lives with your games.
Now you moved my heart
Hope that you don't spoil him anything!
Keep on the good work!
Awesome.
We won't know anything until the E3 event in June.
1. A return to a variety of challenging puzzles. This isn't BTTF where the game-play has to be dumbed-down for mainstream gamers - this is KQ, the grand-daddy of adventure games. I demand to kept more busy thinking about puzzles than watching cinematics.
2. Fairy tales characters. There's always fairy tale characters. And you always find yourself in their stories somehow. And you either end up helping them, robbing them, or killing them.
3. Exploration. A larger world, like in Homestar Runner or Bone. KQ games are not meant to feel claustrophobic, like in BTTF where I'm trapped in the town square all the time.
4. Keeping it family-friendly. The big thing about KQ compared to other adventure games is that it doesn't employ edgy sarcastic humor or crude innuendos which would otherwise turn it into "Shrek." It should be a nice light-hearted family adventure (where you can die.)
My Must-Not Haves:
1. Characters crying. All the time. (see: KQ7, TSL) KQ may be serious at times, but it doesn't need to be emotionally dramatic.
2. No notorious Roberta Williams puzzles. Just because she thought it's okay to throw a pie at a monster doesn't mean that's the standard for KQ puzzle-solving.
3. A customizable HUD where you can hide all the buttons you don't want to use. Goals, Hints, Story So Far - I keep clicking them by accident hoping to hit a "menu" button when I want to save. Also, add a menu button.
4. Musical numbers. Once again, see KQ7.
1>. Perhaps a KQIX and more sometimes in the future.
2>. Level of difficulty (provided as options to increase appeal to more gamers). For me personally, I like tough puzzles. Tough puzzles mean more chances of getting stuck, retrying, and dying.
3>. Narrator and voice acting. Telltale has been superb in Monkey Island and recently Back to the Future.
4>. As for graphics, it is nice to see some animation like KQVII but with KQ perhaps the normal style mixed with animation would be great (i.e. balance).
Details in background: sound of flowing water, chirping birds, leaves blown by the wind, etc.
My must-not-have:
1>. First person --> I never enjoy first person adventure. I like to be able to see my character on the screen.
2>. Too much animation (this depends on the game and what range of gamers we're trying to reach).
3>. Too much darkness (there are certain games nowadays that have constant gloomy feeling to it).
4>. Easy puzzles. Story being too short.
I really liked the pie puzzle in KQ5. That was still okay. I think things like "sometimes it's wise to think backwards" in KQ1 are really mean.
I am totally fine with deaths, as long as the game at least auto-saves or rewinds a bit when they happen. I am not fine with them when they make me focus more on mashing the save button every 25 seconds in fear of having to replay through entire sections of the game repeatedly.
What does manually jabbing the save button over and over add to the game? If anything, it takes me out of the game, because I spend more time looking at save menus and reloading saves than I do actually playing and experiencing the game world. Auto-saves drastically reduce my interactions with save and load screens, thus increasing my ability to stay immersed.
Who in their right mind wants a game to include dead ends? Is it enjoyable to spend hours and hours trying to solve a puzzle that you are literally not able to solve, without knowing that you are unable to solve it?
I've never been a King's Quest fan, at all. Primarily because the non-stop deaths (causing me obsessive save syndrome) and presence of dead ends really turn me off from the games. Will I check out Telltale's King's Quest? Maybe. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. I will likely only consider buying it if it contains tough but logical puzzles, and only if there is a less punishing system for deaths, such as the death mechanic previously used in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, for example.
Please don't murder me, rabid KQ fans.
Well it is a remake of the first KQ which had those dead ends. The remake was very true to the original game and asking if you want them to remove dead ends in the game you play was a good step towards making it accessible for newcomers and keeping the game as it was for those who want it to be just that.
have you ever played King's Quest 7 then? It has this nice reset feature. You can get through it all without saving because the game resets you in a safe spot if you die (shortly before the death). And the puzzles are actually quite good (not too unfair).
It might not be the completely brutal Sierra experience but I still enjoyed it very much. Oh and I think there were no dead ends either. Only this damned firecracker-bug that made me use a tool to slow down my CPU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_MgmAVppXU
You have to save often in different slots but you can play these games for quite a while without saving. Once you learned how deadly traps and paths look in these games you learn to save before using them etc. Only in some places I save after every few steps because the next step could cause me to fall. If anyone can play through KQ 1 without saving I would be very impressed but the gaming-experience is so much better when you actually achieved something. You climbed that beanstalk or made it safely over those rocks in the mountain etc. That's really a good feeling.
Please at least play the free remake of the first game. (without dead ends if you must) to get a feeling for what it means to play a Sierra-adventure.
I've already explained why this is not a bad thing. But I'll summarize again. With all the super easy adventure games our nowadays we need something to balance it out. Dead ends make you think more and not be as lazy about playing a game. The dead ends were never as brutal as people say they were. I for one never had a problem with them once. Why? Because I was trained to look and interact with EVERYTHING in the game JUST IN CASE. I don't want a game that holds my hand and tells me what to do. I'd much rather be thrown into a brand new world and have to figure out just what I'm supposed to do beyond the simple goal that is mentioned at the beginning of the game.
Telltale's games are too easy and I wouldn't mind a challenge for once with some actual punishing game mechanics. There's nothing wrong with them you just have to learn how to think ahead for everything. Not even constant saving turns me off of the concept. To me it's prudent gameplay. I don't want the game to protect me from anything bad that could possibly happen in the game. I say bring it on and let me overcome it out of my own intelligence. It's much more fulfilling that way.
In short, if you've paid attention to the very rich and fully interactive world around you and planned ahead before just running into situations that can get you into trouble, it's practically impossible to be caught in any of these dead-end scenarios. And even if you did, there are enough hints if you have common sense to figure out what you missed or where you slipped up. Games don't let players have common sense anymore because they provide the player with everything they need. I'd rather not have my hand held in a King's Quest game.
It's not like you could go to all the locations in KQ5 right from the start either; you had to go through the story first (in which case, being episodic or not makes little difference). I remember KQ5 being quite linear in its path, come to think of it. It was pretty much village/forest/desert, then mountains, then ocean/island, then Mordack's castle - AFAIK, that was it, and you couldn't really explore much. The desert was the largest area in the game, but it was annoying to navigate through.
I guess what I'm saying is, the number of locations can still be large in episodic games. If you feel too constrained by each episode, you can play the whole season as one game, no? ToMI is pretty large if you put all the episodes together.
Is that included in the King's Quest Collection that was in the Great Adventure Bundle last year? I could maybe give it a shot, assuming I can get that terrible buggy client to download it properly.
I guess I'm just asking how auto-save vs. manual save takes away that feeling, since they both accomplish essentially the same goal: preventing you from repeating areas/puzzles/etc you've already completed. I have no problem with navigating/solving difficult sequences, I have a problem with walking into a room and being murdered by some strange random event and losing half an hour of progress because I forgot to hit save recently.
Where can I find the remake?
I already look at and interact with everything in the game in every way possible in every adventure game I've ever played (which is why it takes me so long to play through them
Yes, KQ5 was SOMEWHAT linear. But even in that first area of the game before the mountains you could go anywhere. You weren't locked to the forest alone, for instance. Or the desert. Or the town. You could visit all of these places. You might die for not having the correct items yet which forced you to visit them in order, but you could still go there.
For something like TMI, you were basically locked into one small island, or a couple even smaller islands. That's nothing like the vast countrysides you could explore in all of the King's Quests, even if they were contained. And take KQ6. You could visit 4 of the 5 islands in any order you wanted. Sometimes you couldn't get far on one island right away, and the islands themselves didn't have that many rooms to visit, but even so it was still more than TMI.
Just make sure if you get the bundle you also download the patch for it from http://sierrahelp.com/ which fixes numerous issues and makes each game properly playable. The bundles use an outdated version of DOSBox and configuration files for DOSBox from a completely different version which causes problems. But a quick download of the patch and installation will fix it quickly and painlessly and then you can enjoy each game without headache.
And what I'm saying is it's not near as brutal and cruel as you're making it out to be. As anyone is making it out to be.
It is included in the collection.
http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq1/
you obviously never played KQ5.
Is that a no, then?
Yes. Just go into the settings toggle it to "Text Only." Easy.
And here I am running the setup program and going into config files and manually changing settings around when all I need to do is click the settings button in game.
Although, in the KQ5 talkie CD version (Sierra's very first game with voices), you couldn't turn the voices off, and you couldn't turn on subtitles either. Especially egregious considering how bad the voice acting was--all the characters were played by Sierra employees.
Um, I don't quite get what you are saying? They recycle environments becuase they reuse them in the games. They only recycle environments when they need them. The old Telltale series' usually had a central hub that they would use in each episode, like Sam & Max's street, and there would be new puzzles to solve in them in every episode.
I just don't see how redownloading or not redownloading a recycled environment over a new environment has any baring on my point, especially when the new environments are usually changed somewhat, often only to the smallest degree like a new Bosco disguise or a new job for Sybil written on her sign. You're second point is spot one though, development time does affect what they can and cannot put in these episodes.
Which is why I am so happy to have play the floppy-disk version without the voices.
I'd never heard the voiced version before a few minutes ago when I went to watch clips of it on youtube. Now I fully understand why people were so annoyed by Cedric. I never really minded him, but now I get it completely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFdmad5QfQg
I agree that KQV is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be -- I mean, I beat it when I was 10 without a walk-through -- I just maintain that dead-ends are poor game design in spite of any arguments you may make. A game, almost by definition, is something you can win or lose. In that sense, I love the deaths as it *is* possible to screw up and lose hilariously unlike in Lucasarts titles, but it also should never become impossible to win in a single player game. Having the possibility to eliminate one solution is fine, but there should be another; maybe a more intricate puzzle to punish the player for missing something, but not a full-stop.
I have to agree with this, MI. The best way to handle this type of thing would be alternate puzzle solutions that garner less points, not actually grinding your game to a halt. If you are to "lose" the game, it should be via death, and not putting your game into an incompletable state.
^ This. I will buy this.
I'd liken it to the way I've been playing Solitare on Windows Vista versus the old version in XP and before. For those that don't know, in the Vista version of Solitare you can undo as many moves as you want. You can rewind all the way to the beginning of a game. This does make it easier to win in general, often trivially so for some hands, but I find it creates a very different sort of puzzle for difficult and losing hands. It's figuring out the difference between the last two that's the new puzzle for me. I can undo moves to my hearts content, but can I figure out the necessary steps to finish? Did I miss a strategy in trying to juggle the multiple paths, or is this game really a losing hand no matter how it's played?
I think something like that might be a very interesting way to approach a modern King's Quest game. Same type of puzzles, same dead ends, just a more fluid interface than starting the game from scratch over and over.
The Last Express does exactly this. It would be awesome if Telltale could implement something similar.
I hate dead ends more when you don't even realize you're in a dead end and waste hours looking for an object you'll never get. It then becomes a race between your patience and integrity versus looking up something in a guide, something I hate to do.
Dead ends feel like punishing players for something hardly their own fault, and the fix isn't something simple. It's replay the entire game. Or save every 5 feet. For a lot of people that will end up with "save every 5 feet."
I know some people like the risk and danger dead ends add, but I feel it adds mostly tedious replay.
Which is kinda hard (well, WAS hard) considering the low number of save slots and limited disk space we had. I remember, when I was a kid and our all family played SQ2... well... we got stuck just before the landing platform (where we have to summon the beast), that's almost the end of the game. The reason? Didn't check the lockers at the VERY beginning of the game.
Though I don't think that Sierra's dead ends were intentional (in fact, AFAIK they tried hard to remove them in the 90s), so... no intentional by design dead ends, please.
Yeah, I just said that because you were referring to the linear puzzle design of the gameplay. So, linearly, you have to go to the desert first.
I don't really agree with this for the same reasons I explained elsewhere. Dead ends to me are just another challenge. Not a mark of bad game design.
Totally. I'm not necessarily saying that this new KQ needs to have dead ends in it. I'm just defending dead ends as a game mechanic.