What you'd like to see in TTG's Kings Quest (merged threads)
I've noticed in KQ games--ESPECIALLY KQ5--you get a lot of interesting things, both in the art and story, which are never explained but nonetheless entice. For example, look at the shot of the Roc carrying off Graham:
Note in the foreground there is a primitive village. It's there and it's made clear, yet we never learn anything about it, or visit it. It's just there to entice the eyes and get you wondering.
Or this snowy vista. Endless miles of snow lay beyond, perhaps kingdoms of ice and caves among the mountains in the distance--but we don't know. We aren't told. It's just there.
Then you have some of the characters. We never learn much about Mordack, but he comes off as a very powerful, dark, evil fellow right out of a pulp fantasy story. We don't know all that much about him, but we can see he's clearly obsessed with the occult, with snakes, and with some kind of cult (note his Satanic looking altar in the last photo ). None of this is explained to us, but that makes it all the more interesting.
Or, look at these scenes when Graham is in the boat.
Dozens of rocky islands are seen far off in the horizon, but we never visit them, and we're never told anything about them. And it leads the mind to wonder--what IS on those islands? What creature or people reside there? Your mind can run wild with speculation.
I think that a TT King's Quest game should have little things like this--places we can't explore that are just at the edge of the screen, far away places that tantalize the imagination, interesting characters who we don't learn the whole story of--Because it allows you to have things left up to your own imagination, to dream up your own stories and backstories about these characters and locations.
It leaves you hungrier for more--and such things have sustained the fan community for years. For example, single, cryptic message about something called the Black Cloak Society kept fans' imaginations fired for nearly 20 years, without us ever being told much of anything about this society other than it's name. Less is more in King's Quest, and in KQ, all of these lands, and characters are left purposely unexplained, and are never returned to, never explored in full, and it serves a good purpose:
It entices you, the same way a scantily clad woman is enticing and intriguing to the eye without revealing everything; It makes your mind wonder, and lights your imagination up. If you're told everything about a character or, are allowed to explore every crevice of a land, you lose the ability to imagine and dream yourself, and you become less an active participant in this wild, alien fantasy world and more a mere observer with everything about it being spoonfed to you.
Note in the foreground there is a primitive village. It's there and it's made clear, yet we never learn anything about it, or visit it. It's just there to entice the eyes and get you wondering.
Or this snowy vista. Endless miles of snow lay beyond, perhaps kingdoms of ice and caves among the mountains in the distance--but we don't know. We aren't told. It's just there.
Then you have some of the characters. We never learn much about Mordack, but he comes off as a very powerful, dark, evil fellow right out of a pulp fantasy story. We don't know all that much about him, but we can see he's clearly obsessed with the occult, with snakes, and with some kind of cult (note his Satanic looking altar in the last photo ). None of this is explained to us, but that makes it all the more interesting.
Or, look at these scenes when Graham is in the boat.
Dozens of rocky islands are seen far off in the horizon, but we never visit them, and we're never told anything about them. And it leads the mind to wonder--what IS on those islands? What creature or people reside there? Your mind can run wild with speculation.
I think that a TT King's Quest game should have little things like this--places we can't explore that are just at the edge of the screen, far away places that tantalize the imagination, interesting characters who we don't learn the whole story of--Because it allows you to have things left up to your own imagination, to dream up your own stories and backstories about these characters and locations.
It leaves you hungrier for more--and such things have sustained the fan community for years. For example, single, cryptic message about something called the Black Cloak Society kept fans' imaginations fired for nearly 20 years, without us ever being told much of anything about this society other than it's name. Less is more in King's Quest, and in KQ, all of these lands, and characters are left purposely unexplained, and are never returned to, never explored in full, and it serves a good purpose:
It entices you, the same way a scantily clad woman is enticing and intriguing to the eye without revealing everything; It makes your mind wonder, and lights your imagination up. If you're told everything about a character or, are allowed to explore every crevice of a land, you lose the ability to imagine and dream yourself, and you become less an active participant in this wild, alien fantasy world and more a mere observer with everything about it being spoonfed to you.
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The limitations of older systems lent themselves to some amazingly tantalizing concept that were never further explored. This one shot, Tree Top Town from Donkey Kong Country, has held my imagination for two decades since I first passed through it. You never meet its inhabitants or wander into their houses, but it just sparks the imagination.
I feel the same should apply to the sight of a distant village in the horizon. If the player character refused to even acknowledge it (like most of the environments in many of the Lucasfilm/LucasArts games), it would render it insubstantial to us. I think this was implicit in the original post, or at least that is how I interpreted it.
But as stated in the original post, it would kill the imaginative engagement if everything was hermetically sealed with exposition or mere explanation, which is why in this example it would be better to have the player character willing to comment on the village in the horizon, but at least somewhat unfamiliar with it. Then we would share his curiosity.
So my personal modification of the wish would be, "Less is more; too much is less; too little is nothing."
Simo, I couldn't have said it better myself!
I agree with you as well.
This "Less is more" visual principle is a key to any KQ game. KQ7 and 8 sadly lacked the evocative and inciting descriptions of such locations --but even in those games, there were intriguing places you couldn't go, even if they weren't described.
I find that real time 3D adventure worlds fail to pull this off because of the strange angles and less details that can be created. There's something odd in digital paintings/digital drawings in that there is some mystery between the pixels. I am arguing this point in another thread, as an artist myself and an adventure game maker, I WAS finding it increasingly frustrating that adventure games were using 3D engines, its only in the past year or 2 I have been seeing a LOT more 2D backgrounds (it can be 3D modeled, but prerendered with Photoshop touch up) coming out and they look really enticing.
When I heard TT was doing KQ, I freaked, because I knew immediately that TT would use their 3D engine, thus, frankly, destroying part of what makes KQ so memorable, and I had to come here and flood the KQ forum
JJ Abrams?
Then again, I'm someone who prefers the Connery/Moore era of the James Bond series and the 1960s Batman TV show and movies to their modern, more realistic and more plot driven analogues.
For example, KQ5:
-Cedric himself, 'nuff said.
-King ANThony, king of the Ants
-Queen BEEtrice, queen of the Bees
-Queen ICEbella, queen of the snowy mountains
-Hitting a cat with a shoe to save a rat who later saves you
-Having the townspeople be an odd mix of midwestern sounding folk (Shoe shop owners), people who sound they're from Germany (the toymaker), Scottish sounding people (the gnome), and stereotypical 'gay' accent (tailor).
-Defeating a yeti with a pie to the face
-Saving yourself from HARPies by playing a HARP
-The puns when you died. For example, "That old witch caught Graham toadally off guard."
-Using a bag of dried peas to defeat the blue beast (Mordack's castle)
-The Cheese Saves You ending--Having old cheese be the power to Mordack's wand machine, thus ensuring your ability to defeat him.
The game is pretty much epically cheesy, or campy. It's light. It's fun. There's little real logic in the game or it's puzzles and it throws some funny "WTF, really?" moments at you. Not bad WTF moments, but humorous and memorable ones, and they actually make the game even more enjoyable.
I mean name me another fantasy game which has something along the lines of you dispatching a yeti simply by throwing a pie in it's face. That's something straight out of a 1920s comedy.
The random, cheesiness of the game is one of it's most memorable, and IMO, best qualities. It has a lot of silly stuff without going off the edge into self parody or just coming off like a bad joke. It's delightfully cheesy. It's simple, sweet, memorable, and lovable. It's endearing to adults and children alike.
I'll put it this way: I introduced my 4 year old niece to KQ5 (I figured I'd try KQ5 first to test the waters as KQ5 was the KQ game that hooked me at 5) a few months ago, and she fell in LOVE with it. This is a child who was raised in the era of 3D movies, 3D action/fast paced games, IPODs and all of that, so one would expect a 20 year old game like KQ5 would bore her, or simply be uninteresting--There are much faster paced games and things out for her generation. Yet every time she comes over my house, even if it's weeks without seeing her, she demands we play King's Quest. It's led to me having completed KQ5 with her and moving on to the other games.
I remember trying to play KQ1 a looong time ago. I kept dying.
I never tried playing the games since then... but now I'm intrigued to start over. What am I looking at? What makes this series so great?
What makes you guys keep playing/replaying the games?
wth are you on about?
love of nature? innocence rooted in earthiness? what does that even mean and how does it have anything to do with King's Quest?
and how can you say the lead characters in KQ have a total lack of guile? You're saying for Alex to turn Manannan into a cat shows lack of guile?
Bt
Love of nature: Roberta Williams clearly loves unspoilt nature and this comes through in the games. Most of the games are set mainly outdoors and a lot of the interaction is with the very elements themselves. As a point of comparison, I see much less appreciation of or interaction with nature in the Monkey Island series. It seems to be more about human-made (or human-modified) environments.
Innocence rooted in earthiness: It is a very straightforward world. There is nothing deconstructive or postmodern about it. The heroes are extremely heroic. So it is innocent that way. But it is not idealised to the point of being clinical. (Except for King's Quest VII, which tried to be as Disney as possible.) I added the qualification about earthiness because innocence is not the same to me as mere tweeness or family-friendliness. It is not a particularly safe world and there are some very dark aspects to it: slavery, cannibalism, pushing old ladies into ovens...
Lack of guile and cynicism: I was talking about the stories as they are related to the audience, not the characters in the stories. Silverwolfpet asked what we like about the series, so I was talking about that. Of course I would not describe (all) the characters as guileless or uncynical.
This is a very good analysis actually. I'd agree with all your points. And I'd also agree that those are things that I like about the series, though I probably wouldn't have immediately thought to word it that way. Nice thinking.
Well, I can venture a guess - at first glace, your answer seemed to be some dreamy, hippie-sounding nonsense - as if you'd laid qualities on the game that it didn't merit. It was just your choice of wording; it was whimsical, light, ponderous and philosophical. Your follow-up explanation enunciated your points wonderfully, and it made me understand what you were going for - because honestly, I thought you were spouting flowery nonsense at first too.
Bt
I am a pretty big fan.. KQ6 and MI are what make me a really big fan of the genre.
I was just trying to say what I wanted to say briefly and concisely, but I guess I have to agree with you guys and say my first post was not concise, just opaque.
So my bad for that - and Chyron's bad for not asking more politely.
Lambonius and Blackthorne, thank you very much for your kind comments. Good to know my second attempt was more successful.
P.S. My comment about Monkey Island is not intended as a criticism. If it were, it would be unfair. MI is a humorous pirate-themed series. Everything about this premise leads naturally (pun not intended) to using a lot of human environments.
Nature is not very funny as such, but many human inventions are - or at least offer more scope for humour; piracy is obviously something that happens between people; and a series would surely run out of jokes fast if it did not rely mainly on human-made (or, again, human-modified) environments.
So it is just the nature of the beast, not a flaw.
In a way, this embodies what makes KQ great. They are as Blackthorne put it, "whimsical, light, and ponderous." Not that everything is whimsical and light, but the series as a whole is. The stories revolve around fairytales and are just straight up fun.
I think what I would like to see:
a lot of explorable natural scenes, especially some that appear normal at first, but as you play around with the various natural elements, like a fallen log, or tree knot, or rock, you find that it's not so normal after all.
Commentary on most objects in each scene, I like to hear/read what the character says about non-important objects.
Natural sounds, like birds, ocean waves, etc.
2D graphics
Death scenes (perhaps you can do it like Monkey Island 1, where you die, but you bounce back humorously).
I haven't played Kings Quest V in a very long time, but that Wizard you meet at the start, I'd like to see him make a return, I'd like to be able to go back to that scene with his house too, that would be awesome.
Deaths (with retry button maybe)
Fantasy world based on real world myths and legends.
More challenging puzzles then we have seen recently.
These are just things off of the top of my head
I think the most common requests are:
-Death Sequences
-Graham as main character
-Numerous, challenging puzzles
-More Explorable Hot-Spots
-No Stylized Cartoon Graphics
-Fairy tale and myth-inspired situations and environments
-The feeling of a large open world
And a lot of God-I-Hope-Nots in terms of TSL-style fan-service.
Each episode would have to cover a wide variety of areas. For instance, say KQ5 was a Telltale "season". The first episode would take place in the first main area (the town, dark forest, desert, wooded areas, etc). The second episode would be the snowy mountains, the beach, and sailing the ocean (though puzzles would have to be longer). And the final episode would be Mordack's island. Now, that's only 3 episodes, but honestly I'd rather have 3 long episodes than 5 short ones. And I wouldn't mind waiting longer either. But if it absolutely must be 5 episodes then trimming each one down a bit or cutting them in half would make a great 5-episode King's Quest "season". But there has to be a lot of areas to explore in each episode. You shouldn't have to wait for a new episode to explore somewhere that's in the same area as the first episode (the first areas of KQ5 being an example).
Some other things, the game shouldn't help you along. There should be one goal in mind (not many) as defined by the plot and introduction/story. The rest is up to the player on how to figure out how to reach the end of that goal by discovering obstacles and solving the puzzles of those obstacles. Take KQ1. What's the goal? Find 3 treasures. How? What do you mean how? That's the game. Figure it out! This is an adventure game! Take KQ4. What's the goal? Save your father by finding a magical fruit and try to help the fairy Genesta by getting her medallion back. How? Figure it out. Honestly, the stories of King's Quest weren't that complicated. There was just a lot of convolution in attaining the end goal because of the large world that was created. Solve one puzzle to solve another to solve another etc where everything is connected until you can move on to the next area of obstacles and repeat the process to reach that ultimate goal. I don't even think KQ7 or even MOE was that complicated story-wise. King's Quest really took the best of good (but simple) storytelling and excellent game mechanics to create the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
Take KQ5 again. What's the goal? Save your family. How do you do that? Well, Cedric flies you to Serenia and that's a large step closer but the fairy dust wears off. Crispin tells you that Mordack's island lies beyond the mountains. So how do you go beyond the mountains? There's a snake (a pooooisonous snake!) in the way. How do you get rid of it? Who knows? Come back to it later. You'll have to do some looking around. As you explore you discover new areas, items, puzzles, and characters with dilemmas that you must help them with. And you realise that you've got a lot to do before you can even think about going over those mountains because there's a whole realm of areas on this side of the mountain that holds some purpose yet. You solve each puzzle and help each character and get something in return for it all the while discovering solutions to puzzles you've seen previously because you didn't have the proper item before (the 'Aha! I can use this now!' moments, those were huge in King's Quest). Each solved obstacle lets you get closer and closer to the journey's end and the attaining the ultimate goal. But you figured it all out on your own.
The point in all this is there is no clear cut sign pointing you in the direction you have to go in King's Quest games beyond your own curiosity and ingenuity. All you have is a conflict/dilemma and a goal. The rest is up to you to figure out for yourself.
The game also has to feel dangrous. This is a large adventurous and perilous world. YOU are the character. You aren't PLAYING the character. So everything should feel dangerous around you. If you make a wrong step you pay for it. Because that's the way the world is. It adds to the realism and immersion. That's huge. Deaths as well as not being able to continue immediately before your death is crucial. Autosaves in certain areas would be fine I think, but "retries" are horrible for portraying this feeling of danger to your experience. A Restore/Restart/Quit window with autosaves that don't take place right before a death is the way to go in my opinion.
So to sum up:
-Only one goal in mind. Everything else you figure out on your own as you discover the world.
-The world has to be big and full of life and obstacles to get in your way to block you from that goal. Don't give the WHOLE world away all at once, but a lot of it. There has to be some excitement to see new areas, which is what puzzles like getting rid of the snake and fixing the boat in KQ5 were all about. Getting to that new area at last!
-The game has to be dangerous and cause real feelings of suspense, thrill, and excitement. There has to be a possibility of utter failure in the gaming experience if this is to work.
Perfectly stated, dude.
I'm of course joking in that it's completely unrealistic, but I'm not joking when I say it's something I would really love to see