I don't know if this is complete but this is the list I put up on the kQ omnipedia concerning KQ6 (it has many of the ones you brought up);
There are several ways to make the game unwinnable or unplayable. If Alexander visits the Winged Ones twice without having all of the required items he will be tossed into the catacombs with no way to proceed or escape (the winged ones will issue a warning if you are missing items the first time). This leads to dead ends. Items needed involve the hole in the wall, a brick, the tinderbox, the red scarf. It's possible to lose the hole in the wall in the catacombs if used incorrectly too many times. Another dead end involves entering the castle without the nightingale during the short path, you will have no way to distract the guard. Waiting too long after distracting the guard, you will lose chance of infiltrating the vizer's bedroom or talking to Cassima if you save after they return. If you forget mint and/or correct bottle you will not be able to defeat Shamir. If you forget the skeleton key in the land of the dead during the long path, you cannot get the needed letter from the chest, to get past Saladin. Forgetting to give the dagger to Cassima will lead to a dead end in the final battle. If you break the rotten egg on yourself you will not be able to charm Night Mare, if you do this after visiting the Druids you cannot proceed along the long path any further, and you no longer have the dress for the short path. If you forget the river Styx water you cannot get into the castle. If you forget the gauntlet you cannot get past Samhain. If you forget the copper coins you cannot get past Charon.
The short path is something you can do at any time, all you need is the mechanical nightingale and the peppermint from the cave at Isle of the Sacred Mountain, and you can get those any time. You just can't go to the druids and get captured, which will destroy Beauty's dress.
While you can do 'short path', before being captured by the Druids, it is possible to get into dead-ends once in the castle, if the player forgets/fails to bring pepperment, or the nightengale. You can enter the castle without those items (and there is really no warning that you need those items). If you lack those items, you will be stuck, and will ultimately die. Either captured by the guards, or killed by Shamir.
1) Forgetting an item. Ideally this can be avoided by letting the player go back for it, but obviously, in some situations it just doesn't make sense. I'm okay with this kind of dead end, since it's usually fairly obvious that you're entering an area that you might not be able to return, so you can leave a save behind. A good example is King's Quest 3. You know that once you get on the boat, you won't be returning to that area.
2) Doing something wrong. This is, in my opinion, a much worse dead end, and should be avoided whenever possible, mostly because these are usually extremely difficult if not impossible to notice ahead of time. Failing to save the rat from the cat in King's Quest V is one thing. Obviously you were supposed to save her. Feeding the pie to the eagle is another. There's no indication that you did anything wrong, and even when you reach the yeti, it's such an obscure solution that you're unlikely to think "If only I still had that pie!"
In short: i think dead ends should be avoided, but not at the cost of story or logic, but there should always be some sort of indicator that you might want to leave a save behind.
"Feeding the pie to the eagle is another. There's no indication that you did anything wrong,"
Sure there is, the eagle is starving, the game points it out to you if you look at it, or attempt to talk to it. You really only have one item that you can feed it, as far as I know.
I do agree that the pie is fairly obtuse puzzle. Most people probably aren't thinking in slapstick.
You can feed him the pie instead of the meat. The game will give you no indication that you've just made a fatal decision. And, like I said, it's unlikely anybody trying to get past the yeti will realize their mistake was giving the eagle the wrong food.
This is, admittedly, an extreme example, and probably the worst dead end I've ever encountered, but it summarized the potential problem with dead ends.
But your own argument says that if you forgot an item, then it is ok to have the dead end. If you forgot the leg of lamb and only had the pie, then you forgot an item. Which do you think an eagle would want more, pie or lamb? The obvious choice is the lamb. You only have a problem if you forget an item or make a stupid decision. I have no problem with that one at all.
You can feed him the pie instead of the meat. The game will give you no indication that you've just made a fatal decision.
Do you really need the game to tell you that feeding meat to a starving eagle is better than feeding it custard pie? Anyway, there is an indication: you don't get any points if you feed him the pie; you get 3 if you feed him the meat.
As there's usually a basis in the context of the puzzle for determining what you did wrong, I don't see how the "doing something wrong" kind of dead-end is any worse, let alone much worse, than the "forgetting an item" kind. In fact, I'm not sure there's any difference between the two -- haven't you done something wrong either way?
I'll admit, feeding the eagle the meat is the much more obvious choice. I think if you missed the meat, however, it actually demonstrates my point that much more. Let's assume we have two versions of the game, the original, and one that doesn't let you give the eagle the pie.
In the modified version, you reach the eagle and can't save him. Anyone paying attention to how the game works is going to realize that this is important and reload an earlier save, looking for something to feed the eagle. They'll eventually spot the meat and say "Hey! That's exactly what I need!"
In the unmodified version, however, they reach the yeti before they get stuck and have to reload. Now they're wandering around the original area looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Instead of looking for something to feed the eagle, you're looking for a means to defeat the yeti.
And that's the difference between the two types of dead ends. With the second type, the mistake you made and the puzzle that's actually killing you are disconnected.
Now they're wandering around the original area looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Instead of looking for something to feed the eagle, you're looking for a means to defeat the yeti.
But... it's an adventure game. You should be looking for anything and everything you might have missed, and any possible way you might be able to do something differently.
What you describe can easily happen in a game without deaths and dead-ends. You know you need to get through a door, but you don't know how. Do you look for a means to open the door directly, or is there a seemingly unrelated interim puzzle that needs to be solved before you have access to the means for opening the door?
e. I think if you missed the meat, however, it actually demonstrates my point that much more. Let's assume we have two versions of the game, the original, and one that doesn't let you give the eagle the pie.
Um, actually by then you'd be dead. If you don't eat half the lamb early on in the mountains you starve (this leads to another death scene). You die not long before reaching the frozen waterfall/sled hill. You get the first hunger warning shortly after entering the mountains. If you ignored that warning, then its your problem, .
So you won't get far, if you somehow missed the meat in the Inn! Btw, you can return down the mountain to get the meat at any time before the 'starvation trigger'. You were warned, so you better go look for something to eat.
BTW, I think you lose points if you eat the pie! or at least get zero points for eating the pie. Though it might work for the 'hunger warning', and prevent you from starving.
You don't receive points for eating the second half of the lamb, though I don't think you lose any either.
Giving a pie to an eagle would not be my first choice, when I have half a leg of lamb in my inventory, and you know eagles are flesh eaters!
I still hate the design with Genie Lamp in kq5. The only way you can figure out what it does is open it and that kills you. Plus in the Bandits den you can miss the gold coin when you leave with no way to get back into it, give madam muska the golden needle, and then have no way to get the cape to survive the cold. Plus you can forget the locket in the roc nest and then Cassima won't help you.
You can give the tailor the gold coin instead of the needle and you'll still get the cloak.
The Roc's nest isn't really fair. You can't do anything in that scene at all except for look and interact. Obviously that's a huge hint. Coupled with the fact that there's an animated glint right next to you there's little chance you'll miss it.
I still hate the design with Genie Lamp in kq5. The only way you can figure out what it does is open it and that kills you. Plus in the Bandits den you can miss the gold coin when you leave with no way to get back into it, give madam muska the golden needle, and then have no way to get the cape to survive the cold. Plus you can forget the locket in the roc nest and then Cassima won't help you.
Let's be fair you won't become stuck if you kill yourself with the genie. You can't save during the death sequence. That's actually one if the more forgiving kind of deaths.
And there no way to become stuck I you have both gold coin and gold needle. Both can be traded with either character for alternate solutions. Although I think you get more points for returning the needle to it's rightful owner.
Also the hidden flashy item to be found was part of many early Sierra games! Flashy items are quite obvious. Even to this day games use the flashing to designate important items. See Call of Duty. I always found that if something flashes I need to pick it up!
Now hidden items those can be annoying! Remember the hidden bridle in KQ4, now that was obscure and not obvious at all! Once you missed it you missed it.
You can give the tailor the gold coin instead of the needle and you'll still get the cloak.
I know you can switch who you give the coin and the needle but if you grab the lamp and forget the coin (cause you don't have much time in the treasure room and you might miss it) and give the golden needle to the gypsy, then you're stuck later after you did all the stuff in the forbidden forest. If you saved only one game and you have no way to get that coin cause you can't get back in the treasure room and have to restart the whole game. I had to do something similar when you enter the forbidden forest and not having the lamp cause I gave the gypsy the needle. Then your stuck cause you can't leave. The nice thing there was it was early in the game.
Let's be fair you won't become stuck if you kill yourself with the genie. You can't save during the death sequence. That's actually one if the more forgiving kind of deaths.
Yes I know, what I didn't like is that the only way you can figure out it's bad is open it and dying. Normally from Aladdin and all the other genies in lamps grant you wishes. That was far from the worst puzzle in kq5. It's not a stuck puzzle, it's just trial and error.
Now hidden items those can be annoying! Remember the hidden bridle in KQ4, now that was obscure and not obvious at all! Once you missed it you missed it.
I hated that one! That was easy to miss and there was no way to come back to it. There at least should have been a warning not allowing you to leave until you picked it up.
...ok not really. But it's a fair point that if you're playing a Sierra game you should know to have multiple saves. Especially by the time you get to KQ5, if you've been playing them consecutively.
Also, you can't just get swallowed by the whale again and get spit back out at the island?
They tell you in every Sierra manuals: save early, save often! They go out of their way to warn you these dead ends exist and are intensional!
Yes I know, what I didn't like is that the only way you can figure out it's bad is open it and dying. Normally from Aladdin and all the other genies in lamps grant you wishes. That was far from the worst puzzle in kq5. It's not a stuck puzzle, it's just trial and error.
You haven't read very many persian and Arabic myths right? Genie in the legends can be evil! Anyone who has played QFG 2 might remember Iblis, in the original myths aka Shaitan!
Also, you can't just get swallowed by the whale again and get spit back out at the island
I'm not sure the whale reappears again after you are swallowed once, it's a scripted sequence. ...and by the way you can get eaten by the whale or end up on the island without all the require items. No warnings. If no feather you will ultimately suffocate. If no fish you will dehydrate in the Desert Island! Take too long to help the bird it will fly off. Alot of things about that island was designed as a dead end.
Actually it's very possible to use up the love arrows which will lead to another dead end associates with the unicorn!
...ok not really. But it's a fair point that if you're playing a Sierra game you should know to have multiple saves. Especially by the time you get to KQ5, if you've been playing them consecutively.
Also, you can't just get swallowed by the whale again and get spit back out at the island?
I didn't do it often where I'd only save in one spot and at the time the only Sierra adventure games I'd played was Quest for Glory series, which I always thought was more forgiving than KQ. Sure you could save your game there and get stuck but I always thought they gave you more of a warning (ex:dryad telling you about the dispel potion being needed). And no KQ5 CD was my first King's Quest Game from the Sierra Originals, I didn't play them in order. I quickly figured out to save often but it was a pain before I did.
I will agree that Sierra games aren't as easily approachable mid-stream as LucasArts games. But that just means they've upped the ante. It's a little more hardcore. A little more challenging. You learn to love it.
There's certainly room for harder games. Ninja Gaiden has a pretty good reputation in the modern gaming world for its difficulty. I suppose the ultimate test is to make a more challenging adventure game and let the sales determine whether the market.
The Sierra game I always thought it was easiest to stuck in was Leisure Suit Larry 2 which I thought was weird cause the rest of the series wasn't as unforgiving. In LSL 5 and 7 they didn't even have dying. I know this topic's about kq dead ends but I had to say that cause I still remember times I had to restore to and earlier area. But hey it made the game more challenging and more enjoyable when you beat it.
They tell you in every Sierra manuals: save early, save often! They go out of their way to warn you these dead ends exist and are intensional!
Condescending tone aside, you realise that "save often" and "save in multiple slots" are mutually exclusive instructions, right? Just a nit-pick, but still frustrating.
You haven't read very many persian and Arabic myths right? Genie in the legends can be evil! Anyone who has played QFG 2 might remember Iblis, in the original myths aka Shaitan!
I think this is a classic case of something I've read a lot of with those who defend dead-ends, namely, that it's easy to make these connections in retrospect. Even while chastising the poster for his lack of knowledge related to "persian and Arabic myths" you can only say that Genies can be evil. Well, yeah, most things can be evil. But how is the gamer supposed to infer that from the information provided without trial and error (or luck)? What if your only experience with Genies is the one from Aladdin?
Now, sure, with enough time you could construct some bizarre logic train which links all the dead-ends with some rational thought process, but I simply don't believe that most gamers found the logic rational at the time. That makes these poor puzzles as far as I'm concerned
Well, you can't "save early" if you don't have multiple slots.
And what about the people who don't know most of the fairy tales? How are they supposed to figure out puzzles related to them? It's supposed to be common knowledge. Or do some research. When KQ2+ was translated to foreign languages many many people had problems with the bookshelf riddle puzzle (of fairy tales) because it wasn't common knowledge to them. Does that mean the choice of puzzle was a bad idea?
You realize the save early, save often rule came with an extended instructions in the manual right? About multiple saves, at different points in the game before and after major puzzles, etc?
Btw I made the one save mistake when I first played Sierra games, KQ5 was my first IIRC. Believe me I learned my mistake fast! People now a days lack patience, have short attention spans, and want everything spoon fed to them, by cracky!
As for fairy tales, if one is going to play a series that advertised itself as bringing fairy tales and myth to life, they should expect that puzzles may be based off any number of myths. I remember KQ1 and KQ2 manuals even said to scour libraries or look at fairy stories for clues!
KQ2 manual for example;
Study all the ancient lores for clues. Along the way collect as many treasures as you can - treasures fit for a queen.
Btw, I think the evil genie, the Harpies, the bandits, and the Roc, princes/princess trapped in a glass bottle by an evil wizard vizier, the evil villain's island home, and few other things in KQ5 are inspired by the plot of the Seven Voyages of Sinbad! Or a least one of the other 60's Sinbad films. They are great films check them out!
Space Quest was similar except some puzzles required nerdy or geeky level knowledge of SCI-FI movies, shows and books.
The main problem I tend to have with dead ends, especially in old KQ games was that there was no way to know whether you had actually reached a dead end, or if you were just stumped on a particularly difficult puzzle. Some of the dead ends in KQ5 would end with taking the player to the end screen after a few minutes of noodling around (like in the cellar).
As an impatient spazz of a child with no access to the internet, I would end up spending weeks tackling a few of the tougher puzzles (the witch in KQ5 and the catacombs in KQ6 come to mind). I'd hate to have spent that much time aimlessly wandering if I hit a dead end, especially if I'd never be told if I hit one or not.
"Do I restart? What if it's just one item I need to find? What should I do?"
I can't remember which games exactly but I remember playing a few adventure games with difficulty modes. So if you played on hard difficulty the game gave you more and challenging puzzles. If you played on easy it skipped some puzzles.
I think Loom had a system like that somewhat, but there is was another one that isn't coming to my mind.
I have on this forum consistently defended the idea that dead-ends are a legitimate game design choice, that Sierra was not misguided or lazy or evil for including them. At the same time, if Telltale makes a kick-ass KQ game, with challenging puzzles and a richly interactive game-world, that's delightful and dangerous in all the right ways, but doesn't include dead-ends, I will with equal vigor defend Telltale's choice to omit them. Just sayin'...
If a new release of KQ5 was made that omitted the dead ends, it would lose alot of the more unique hidden death scenes! That would be sad!
About as sad as KQ7 removing several death scenes, and puzzles to make things easier for faster computers, intead of fixing the timer problems in a better way!
I don't like one click interaction with games. Too linear. Eventually you can just click on everything until every puzzle is solved without having to really think about the progression, your options, and what you can and can't do. Some games managed to still get away with difficult puzzles with it, but most of the time I don't like it. That said, I'm open to new methods of playing adventure games. I'm a huge fan of parsers, especially difficult ones in text adventures where you have to be more specific. I like huge difficulty. I like getting stuck. I like trial and error. I like the long list of verbs in early Lucasarts games. I really don't share vincetwelve and theo's opinions at all. I get the immersion thing, but I never had a problem with that in adventure games. I want to play a damn game, not a damn movie. Telltale nearly lost me after they started simplifying things too much. Now you can't even explore outside boundaries in their damn game. I mean, boundaries are good, but not when they confine you to the space of a puzzle or item giving you no choice but getting every puzzle right immediately. No, the Sierra method of game design which requires trial and error and has dead ends and deaths and ways to get stuck, and the same with text adventures, are the kinds of adventures I like the most.
Not every puzzle has to be difficult though. Sometimes memorability is better than difficulty, and that's what makes Lucasarts' and Revolution games and games like the Journey Down or Legend of Kyrandia great. They're not blister your brain difficult, with the exception of Maniac Mansion and The Dig, but they're lovely and memorable. Actually, I think The Dig was a one click interface, but I can't remember. If it was, it's a rare instance for me where it was hard as nails, and incredible in its design, and really underrated, but still used a really simple interface.
Any experienced adventure gamer should be looking for dead ends or possible ways to lose in an unfamiliar game. Mazes have dead ends, and solving them requires finding the route that goes from one end to the other. So I compare adventure games to mazes with obstacles in the right path. A maze without dead ends would be a straight line. One click, okay two click games are really, to me, like a maze with less or no dead ends and only obstacles, making it incredibly linear and easy. I also consider dying a dead end, btw. There's no such thing as a non-limiting adventure game, because even mazes are limiting no matter how difficult they are. There are just easy adventure games, and hard adventure games, and no matter what the open-endedness comes to a halt at a point, and most adventure games have an end. And I prefer hard adventure games, hell, even mindnumbing tear-your-hair out ones. It's possible to make an open-ended adventure game I guess, but by the time you solved all the puzzles, you'd just be wandering around doing basic stuff like looking at that guy again or talking to that dragon and re-reading the dialog options you already exhausted. Well, I guess there could be more to exploring it all after the main story, but adventure games are more fun to me when they have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a more open, but not open-ended, approach to getting through it.
You could also have an adventure game like a maze that has obstacles in the right path and obstacles in the wrong path as well, but THAT I would consider bullshit design because the game had you to do a bunch of work in a puzzle designed to send you to a dead end, and that would piss anyone off. It's like a puzzle where you do something difficult only for the outcome to be to lose all of your inventory for good.
EDIT: Well, okay, you can have dead ends in two click games, and the amount of verbs or a parser only affects the difficulty and amount of things you can choose, not so much dead ends, but my comparison on mazes and adventure games still stands.
EDIT EDIT: I think any dead ends should be intentional though, and unintentional ones are also bullshit. Keeping gameplay balanced is also important.
On being able to work your way back from a dead end on a maze: Yeah, that's called restoring a save game. Seriously though, working your way back from a dead end in a maze is cheating unless you start over from the beginning in my opinion. In an adventure game, the only way to work your way back from a dead end should be restoring a save game or restarting.
You realize the save early, save often rule came with an extended instructions in the manual right? About multiple saves, at different points in the game before and after major puzzles, etc?
There's nothing more fun than reading the extended edition of the rules, after all. Honestly, I sometimes think that King's Quest players must just hate having fun
Btw I made the one save mistake when I first played Sierra games, KQ5 was my first IIRC. Believe me I learned my mistake fast! People now a days lack patience, have short attention spans, and want everything spoon fed to them, by cracky!
Yeah, get off my lawn kids, you're the worst! Everything in the past was great! All the current things suck! Let's all go back to the 80's!
As for fairy tales, if one is going to play a series that advertised itself as bringing fairy tales and myth to life, they should expect that puzzles may be based off any number of myths. I remember KQ1 and KQ2 manuals even said to scour libraries or look at fairy stories for clues!
This misses the point. The point is that by "scouring" libraries you'd come to the conclusion that genies can be either good or evil, the precise dilemma you're presented with in the game. The additional information has done nothing to help you solve the puzzle and the game doesn't give you enough further information to push you in the direction of the correct decision.
Let me use an example: Suppose I made a game in which there is a fork in the road. Taking the path to the left has a massive rock drop on your head. Taking the path to the right leads you to victory and princesses or whatever. This is a bad puzzle as it can only be solved through trial and error. If I were to give you a "hint" and say that one of the paths leads to death and the other to victory and that forked paths occur commonly in folklore and poetry you'd punch me in the face, because that doesn't help you one iota.
You obviously haven't read 'make choice' books, 'Choose Your Own Adventure'!
Those are built upon the trial and error approach, and that's what made those books fun to read, and gave a sense of exploration and adventure!
What choices lead to dead ends, or miserable outcomes or even death? Which ones let the reader move on to a successful conclusion?
Here for example was a Choose Your Own Adventure based on the classic Zork game series (a precursor to the KQ style adventure games, back when games of thist sort were all text). http://www.boraski.com/zork/
Many pen & paper RPG format use the tried and true decisions with consequences format, except that a roll of the die and individual players skill sets might decide that choice for you! But this was based largely off the 'make choice' style of old books! Its no wonder that the RPGs even inspired 'make choice' books of their own!
Some game historians even suggest that the adventure game genre, and even some other genres evolved out of the "CYOA" format!
In real life, decisions have consequences, and you may not always know what the outcome is! Life is like a classic Adventure game.
But seriously, I'm sorry, but what you are asking for is the regular Telltale format (I.E. BTTF), and not a King's Quest style. The classic 'make choice', trial and error format, was what made KQ challenging and fun. It was what gave the games the sense of 'exploration'. No one is forcing you to buy a KQ game, if you don't like them.
There's nothing more fun than reading the extended edition of the rules, after all. Honestly, I sometimes think that King's Quest players must just hate having fun.
No, we just have a different idea of what we consider fun compared to other people, apparently. Reading game documentation was fun. It was often written in such a way as to be part of the lore. Also, anyone who's new to a game series should be reading the manual just as much as people who are new to electronics need to read the instructions on how to operate them properly.
There's nothing more fun than reading the extended edition of the rules, after all. Honestly, I sometimes think that King's Quest players must just hate having fun
Yeah, get off my lawn kids, you're the worst! Everything in the past was great! All the current things suck! Let's all go back to the 80's!
Wow, what persuasive comments! Ad hominem attacks are always the best way to make your points. :rolleyes:
You need to get over your delusions of grandeur: you are not in charge of defining what is fun and what is not fun for anyone but yourself. And you're tilting at windmills with your caricature of KQ fans as being motivated only by mindless nostalgia. Besides, reverse nostalgia -- equating newer with better -- is just as mindless.
But seriously, I'm sorry, but what you are asking for is the regular Telltale format (I.E. BTTF), and not a King's Quest style. The classic 'make choice', trial and error format, was what made KQ challenging and fun. It was what gave the games the sense of 'exploration'. No one is forcing you to buy a KQ game, if you don't like them.
Agree. Please, adventure game-makers and Telltale in particular, stop making the same flippin' game over and over again! I like the "Tellltale format" in S&M and W&G, etc., but we need variety and reviving KQ is just the place to do it.
Besides, trial-and-error was not as prevalent in KQ as it's made out to be. There were plenty of puzzles that could be approached logically and solved on the first try if one thought carefully and/or was observant enough to find the right clues. Of course, to a player who doesn't think carefully and/or misses the relevant clues, a perfectly logical puzzle will seem just like a trial-and-error one. It's these un-thoughtful and un-careful players who have perpetuated the myth that Sierra was all about trial-and-error.
Moreover, too many adventure gamers fail to distinguish between truly random puzzles that can only be solved by brute force trial-and-error and non-random puzzles that need to be solved through trial-and-error-and-feedback, such that subsequent trials are more informed than previous ones. Conducting trials and using the results to identify patterns and narrow down choices -- ie. the scientific method -- is a wonderful type of puzzle that unfortunately gets lumped into the dreaded "trial-and-error" category as adventure gamers hammer away at complexity and variety in the genre. (Trial-and-error-and-feedback is especially common in the best contraption-style puzzles, and Telltale actually had a nice one in episode 4 of The Devil's Playhouse.)
I could ramble and stray further on the topic of trial-and-error but I'll stop now.
Comments
There are several ways to make the game unwinnable or unplayable. If Alexander visits the Winged Ones twice without having all of the required items he will be tossed into the catacombs with no way to proceed or escape (the winged ones will issue a warning if you are missing items the first time). This leads to dead ends. Items needed involve the hole in the wall, a brick, the tinderbox, the red scarf. It's possible to lose the hole in the wall in the catacombs if used incorrectly too many times. Another dead end involves entering the castle without the nightingale during the short path, you will have no way to distract the guard. Waiting too long after distracting the guard, you will lose chance of infiltrating the vizer's bedroom or talking to Cassima if you save after they return. If you forget mint and/or correct bottle you will not be able to defeat Shamir. If you forget the skeleton key in the land of the dead during the long path, you cannot get the needed letter from the chest, to get past Saladin. Forgetting to give the dagger to Cassima will lead to a dead end in the final battle. If you break the rotten egg on yourself you will not be able to charm Night Mare, if you do this after visiting the Druids you cannot proceed along the long path any further, and you no longer have the dress for the short path. If you forget the river Styx water you cannot get into the castle. If you forget the gauntlet you cannot get past Samhain. If you forget the copper coins you cannot get past Charon.
1) Forgetting an item. Ideally this can be avoided by letting the player go back for it, but obviously, in some situations it just doesn't make sense. I'm okay with this kind of dead end, since it's usually fairly obvious that you're entering an area that you might not be able to return, so you can leave a save behind. A good example is King's Quest 3. You know that once you get on the boat, you won't be returning to that area.
2) Doing something wrong. This is, in my opinion, a much worse dead end, and should be avoided whenever possible, mostly because these are usually extremely difficult if not impossible to notice ahead of time. Failing to save the rat from the cat in King's Quest V is one thing. Obviously you were supposed to save her. Feeding the pie to the eagle is another. There's no indication that you did anything wrong, and even when you reach the yeti, it's such an obscure solution that you're unlikely to think "If only I still had that pie!"
In short: i think dead ends should be avoided, but not at the cost of story or logic, but there should always be some sort of indicator that you might want to leave a save behind.
Sure there is, the eagle is starving, the game points it out to you if you look at it, or attempt to talk to it. You really only have one item that you can feed it, as far as I know.
I do agree that the pie is fairly obtuse puzzle. Most people probably aren't thinking in slapstick.
This is, admittedly, an extreme example, and probably the worst dead end I've ever encountered, but it summarized the potential problem with dead ends.
Do you really need the game to tell you that feeding meat to a starving eagle is better than feeding it custard pie?
As there's usually a basis in the context of the puzzle for determining what you did wrong, I don't see how the "doing something wrong" kind of dead-end is any worse, let alone much worse, than the "forgetting an item" kind. In fact, I'm not sure there's any difference between the two -- haven't you done something wrong either way?
In the modified version, you reach the eagle and can't save him. Anyone paying attention to how the game works is going to realize that this is important and reload an earlier save, looking for something to feed the eagle. They'll eventually spot the meat and say "Hey! That's exactly what I need!"
In the unmodified version, however, they reach the yeti before they get stuck and have to reload. Now they're wandering around the original area looking for the solution to the wrong problem. Instead of looking for something to feed the eagle, you're looking for a means to defeat the yeti.
And that's the difference between the two types of dead ends. With the second type, the mistake you made and the puzzle that's actually killing you are disconnected.
But... it's an adventure game. You should be looking for anything and everything you might have missed, and any possible way you might be able to do something differently.
What you describe can easily happen in a game without deaths and dead-ends. You know you need to get through a door, but you don't know how. Do you look for a means to open the door directly, or is there a seemingly unrelated interim puzzle that needs to be solved before you have access to the means for opening the door?
Um, actually by then you'd be dead. If you don't eat half the lamb early on in the mountains you starve (this leads to another death scene). You die not long before reaching the frozen waterfall/sled hill. You get the first hunger warning shortly after entering the mountains. If you ignored that warning, then its your problem,
So you won't get far, if you somehow missed the meat in the Inn! Btw, you can return down the mountain to get the meat at any time before the 'starvation trigger'. You were warned, so you better go look for something to eat.
BTW, I think you lose points if you eat the pie! or at least get zero points for eating the pie. Though it might work for the 'hunger warning', and prevent you from starving.
You don't receive points for eating the second half of the lamb, though I don't think you lose any either.
Giving a pie to an eagle would not be my first choice, when I have half a leg of lamb in my inventory, and you know eagles are flesh eaters!
The Roc's nest isn't really fair. You can't do anything in that scene at all except for look and interact. Obviously that's a huge hint. Coupled with the fact that there's an animated glint right next to you there's little chance you'll miss it.
Let's be fair you won't become stuck if you kill yourself with the genie. You can't save during the death sequence. That's actually one if the more forgiving kind of deaths.
And there no way to become stuck I you have both gold coin and gold needle. Both can be traded with either character for alternate solutions. Although I think you get more points for returning the needle to it's rightful owner.
Also the hidden flashy item to be found was part of many early Sierra games! Flashy items are quite obvious. Even to this day games use the flashing to designate important items. See Call of Duty. I always found that if something flashes I need to pick it up!
Now hidden items those can be annoying! Remember the hidden bridle in KQ4, now that was obscure and not obvious at all! Once you missed it you missed it.
I know you can switch who you give the coin and the needle but if you grab the lamp and forget the coin (cause you don't have much time in the treasure room and you might miss it) and give the golden needle to the gypsy, then you're stuck later after you did all the stuff in the forbidden forest. If you saved only one game and you have no way to get that coin cause you can't get back in the treasure room and have to restart the whole game. I had to do something similar when you enter the forbidden forest and not having the lamp cause I gave the gypsy the needle. Then your stuck cause you can't leave. The nice thing there was it was early in the game.
Let's be fair you won't become stuck if you kill yourself with the genie. You can't save during the death sequence. That's actually one if the more forgiving kind of deaths.
Yes I know, what I didn't like is that the only way you can figure out it's bad is open it and dying. Normally from Aladdin and all the other genies in lamps grant you wishes. That was far from the worst puzzle in kq5. It's not a stuck puzzle, it's just trial and error.
Now hidden items those can be annoying! Remember the hidden bridle in KQ4, now that was obscure and not obvious at all! Once you missed it you missed it.
I hated that one! That was easy to miss and there was no way to come back to it. There at least should have been a warning not allowing you to leave until you picked it up.
I stopped reading here.
...ok not really. But it's a fair point that if you're playing a Sierra game you should know to have multiple saves. Especially by the time you get to KQ5, if you've been playing them consecutively.
Also, you can't just get swallowed by the whale again and get spit back out at the island?
They tell you in every Sierra manuals: save early, save often! They go out of their way to warn you these dead ends exist and are intensional! You haven't read very many persian and Arabic myths right? Genie in the legends can be evil! Anyone who has played QFG 2 might remember Iblis, in the original myths aka Shaitan!
I'm not sure the whale reappears again after you are swallowed once, it's a scripted sequence. ...and by the way you can get eaten by the whale or end up on the island without all the require items. No warnings. If no feather you will ultimately suffocate. If no fish you will dehydrate in the Desert Island! Take too long to help the bird it will fly off. Alot of things about that island was designed as a dead end.
Actually it's very possible to use up the love arrows which will lead to another dead end associates with the unicorn!
I didn't do it often where I'd only save in one spot and at the time the only Sierra adventure games I'd played was Quest for Glory series, which I always thought was more forgiving than KQ. Sure you could save your game there and get stuck but I always thought they gave you more of a warning (ex:dryad telling you about the dispel potion being needed). And no KQ5 CD was my first King's Quest Game from the Sierra Originals, I didn't play them in order. I quickly figured out to save often but it was a pain before I did.
Condescending tone aside, you realise that "save often" and "save in multiple slots" are mutually exclusive instructions, right? Just a nit-pick, but still frustrating.
I think this is a classic case of something I've read a lot of with those who defend dead-ends, namely, that it's easy to make these connections in retrospect. Even while chastising the poster for his lack of knowledge related to "persian and Arabic myths" you can only say that Genies can be evil. Well, yeah, most things can be evil. But how is the gamer supposed to infer that from the information provided without trial and error (or luck)? What if your only experience with Genies is the one from Aladdin?
Now, sure, with enough time you could construct some bizarre logic train which links all the dead-ends with some rational thought process, but I simply don't believe that most gamers found the logic rational at the time. That makes these poor puzzles as far as I'm concerned
And what about the people who don't know most of the fairy tales? How are they supposed to figure out puzzles related to them? It's supposed to be common knowledge. Or do some research. When KQ2+ was translated to foreign languages many many people had problems with the bookshelf riddle puzzle (of fairy tales) because it wasn't common knowledge to them. Does that mean the choice of puzzle was a bad idea?
Btw I made the one save mistake when I first played Sierra games, KQ5 was my first IIRC. Believe me I learned my mistake fast! People now a days lack patience, have short attention spans, and want everything spoon fed to them, by cracky!
As for fairy tales, if one is going to play a series that advertised itself as bringing fairy tales and myth to life, they should expect that puzzles may be based off any number of myths. I remember KQ1 and KQ2 manuals even said to scour libraries or look at fairy stories for clues!
KQ2 manual for example;
Btw, I think the evil genie, the Harpies, the bandits, and the Roc, princes/princess trapped in a glass bottle by an evil wizard vizier, the evil villain's island home, and few other things in KQ5 are inspired by the plot of the Seven Voyages of Sinbad! Or a least one of the other 60's Sinbad films. They are great films check them out!
Space Quest was similar except some puzzles required nerdy or geeky level knowledge of SCI-FI movies, shows and books.
As an impatient spazz of a child with no access to the internet, I would end up spending weeks tackling a few of the tougher puzzles (the witch in KQ5 and the catacombs in KQ6 come to mind). I'd hate to have spent that much time aimlessly wandering if I hit a dead end, especially if I'd never be told if I hit one or not.
"Do I restart? What if it's just one item I need to find? What should I do?"
I think Loom had a system like that somewhat, but there is was another one that isn't coming to my mind.
Thief series did the something similar.
About as sad as KQ7 removing several death scenes, and puzzles to make things easier for faster computers, intead of fixing the timer problems in a better way!
There's nothing more fun than reading the extended edition of the rules, after all. Honestly, I sometimes think that King's Quest players must just hate having fun
Yeah, get off my lawn kids, you're the worst! Everything in the past was great! All the current things suck! Let's all go back to the 80's!
This misses the point. The point is that by "scouring" libraries you'd come to the conclusion that genies can be either good or evil, the precise dilemma you're presented with in the game. The additional information has done nothing to help you solve the puzzle and the game doesn't give you enough further information to push you in the direction of the correct decision.
Let me use an example: Suppose I made a game in which there is a fork in the road. Taking the path to the left has a massive rock drop on your head. Taking the path to the right leads you to victory and princesses or whatever. This is a bad puzzle as it can only be solved through trial and error. If I were to give you a "hint" and say that one of the paths leads to death and the other to victory and that forked paths occur commonly in folklore and poetry you'd punch me in the face, because that doesn't help you one iota.
Those are built upon the trial and error approach, and that's what made those books fun to read, and gave a sense of exploration and adventure!
What choices lead to dead ends, or miserable outcomes or even death? Which ones let the reader move on to a successful conclusion?
Here for example was a Choose Your Own Adventure based on the classic Zork game series (a precursor to the KQ style adventure games, back when games of thist sort were all text).
http://www.boraski.com/zork/
Many pen & paper RPG format use the tried and true decisions with consequences format, except that a roll of the die and individual players skill sets might decide that choice for you! But this was based largely off the 'make choice' style of old books! Its no wonder that the RPGs even inspired 'make choice' books of their own!
Some game historians even suggest that the adventure game genre, and even some other genres evolved out of the "CYOA" format!
In real life, decisions have consequences, and you may not always know what the outcome is! Life is like a classic Adventure game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXlkGmitusk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwZNBLHN0Ls&feature=player_embedded
But seriously, I'm sorry, but what you are asking for is the regular Telltale format (I.E. BTTF), and not a King's Quest style. The classic 'make choice', trial and error format, was what made KQ challenging and fun. It was what gave the games the sense of 'exploration'. No one is forcing you to buy a KQ game, if you don't like them.
No, we just have a different idea of what we consider fun compared to other people, apparently. Reading game documentation was fun. It was often written in such a way as to be part of the lore. Also, anyone who's new to a game series should be reading the manual just as much as people who are new to electronics need to read the instructions on how to operate them properly.
If you didn't read the manual to Life and Death series you'd probably end up killing your patient!
Wow, what persuasive comments! Ad hominem attacks are always the best way to make your points. :rolleyes:
You need to get over your delusions of grandeur: you are not in charge of defining what is fun and what is not fun for anyone but yourself. And you're tilting at windmills with your caricature of KQ fans as being motivated only by mindless nostalgia. Besides, reverse nostalgia -- equating newer with better -- is just as mindless.
Agree. Please, adventure game-makers and Telltale in particular, stop making the same flippin' game over and over again! I like the "Tellltale format" in S&M and W&G, etc., but we need variety and reviving KQ is just the place to do it.
Besides, trial-and-error was not as prevalent in KQ as it's made out to be. There were plenty of puzzles that could be approached logically and solved on the first try if one thought carefully and/or was observant enough to find the right clues. Of course, to a player who doesn't think carefully and/or misses the relevant clues, a perfectly logical puzzle will seem just like a trial-and-error one. It's these un-thoughtful and un-careful players who have perpetuated the myth that Sierra was all about trial-and-error.
Moreover, too many adventure gamers fail to distinguish between truly random puzzles that can only be solved by brute force trial-and-error and non-random puzzles that need to be solved through trial-and-error-and-feedback, such that subsequent trials are more informed than previous ones. Conducting trials and using the results to identify patterns and narrow down choices -- ie. the scientific method -- is a wonderful type of puzzle that unfortunately gets lumped into the dreaded "trial-and-error" category as adventure gamers hammer away at complexity and variety in the genre. (Trial-and-error-and-feedback is especially common in the best contraption-style puzzles, and Telltale actually had a nice one in episode 4 of The Devil's Playhouse.)
I could ramble and stray further on the topic of trial-and-error but I'll stop now.