As someone who has been following the news on this, there are no friggin hidden gems in there. It is exactly how I stated it was.
Game was announced.
TT team member talks about researching it a bit (over 2 years ago now?)
.... nothing
I can't think of anything substantial that has ever been said about the game other than those 2 things, the one or to other times it came up it was just a 'mention'.
So people can ask what happened to the Telltale KQ project all they want, a timeline isn't going to answer their question any better then saying there has been no information on it in a long time.
Another news was given aroound June 7-9, 2011, around the time of E3 event. Which places that comment about 1 1/2 years ago. That was when the game (and several other Telltale series including Walking Dead & Fables) was said to be pushed back for a 2012 release (which has come and gone).
Yeah, but it's not your responsibility Baggins. If people want to know King's Quest information, they can search this site, google, or visit your wiki - there's tons of info there!!!
Well, based on what I've discovered. We know that Telltale never intended to release King's Quest until after Walking Dead, and Fable. Both Fable and Walking Dead got delayed (with fable delayed almost 2 years). The last announcement for KQ was 8 months ago, May 2012. We know even then that plans for the game would have to wait until after Fable's release. We know though at that point they were starting to build the team for KQ. Perhaps staff were able to move off some of the smaller game series (such as Law and Order, and others to start moving onto KQ). A little over a month later, Walkign Dead season 2 was announced, but we haven't heard anything about King's Quest since. Even fable has had limited information.
If Telltale's option has expired or removed, we can infer that it had to have occured after May 2012, but not before. As they were just starting to put the team together at that point.
Yeah, but it's not your responsibility Baggins. If people want to know King's Quest information, they can search this site, google, or visit your wiki - there's tons of info there!!!
Bt
What a bad attitude. You are not king of the forum. Baggins did a helpful thing in getting information all in one place for people who might be interested to know the history of the project, such that it has been shared with us. To say, "just let people Google on their own" shows you don't care much about helping keep KQ fans in-the-know. Information summaries save people time. Not everyone follows these forums on a daily basis (or wants to sift through some people's' self-indulgent, jokey comments while searching for worthwhile info) or wants to jump around to different sites trying to piece together what has been happening with TTG's KQ.
So, let me say a big thank you to Baggins for his/her time and effort!!
So, my general feeling is that KQ was put on the back burner in favor of TWD. But, fast forward through TWD's resounding success, the increased Telltale fanbase, and higher anticipation for Fables as a result of the previous two items, combined with hype for TWD Season 2, and you simply may have a decision that boils down to priorities.
I think TWD's success might have surprised even Telltale. Two years ago KQ was something Telltale would have wanted to appeal to more adventure game fans and build up their repertoire. At that time they were coming off ToMI, Sam & Max, and just releasing BttF. Two years later the success of TWD has done far more for the company than they would have expected of KQ.
Quite frankly, Telltale doesn't need to do KQ anymore. Whether they want to would be a different scenario.
I could be way off base. Just guessing and thinking out loud.
It was put on the back burner for both TWD and Fables. We don't know if Fables will be put on the back burner for TWD season 2 or not! ...or if they wait and spread TWD out as a much farther into the future.
However, we do know they are expanding their company so they can make more games, at the same time.. They want to make more games, not just one to two games a year. They want to make a wider selection each year.
Earlier this year, they mentioned they would like to get into major franchises like Star Wars, Halo, or Half-life. No they haven't gotten licenses for those, they are just 'ideas'.
They mention they would like to move ties back to Lucasarts and Lucasfilms properties if possible. They'll have to deal with Disney to do that!
What a bad attitude. You are not king of the forum.
I'm not? Well, when did this change. I was voted Emporer of the Internet in 1997 by Netscape, Inc. That's almost 16 years of my internet fiefdom, son.
Baggins did a helpful thing in getting information all in one place for people who might be interested to know the history of the project, such that it has been shared with us. To say, "just let people Google on their own" shows you don't care much about helping keep KQ fans in-the-know. Information summaries save people time. Not everyone follows these forums on a daily basis (or wants to sift through some people's' self-indulgent, jokey comments while searching for worthwhile info) or wants to jump around to different sites trying to piece together what has been happening with TTG's KQ.
So, let me say a big thank you to Baggins for his/her time and effort!!
Baggins does that kind of stuff all the time; as he said, he likes to research and catalog stuff. But he doesn't have to do it for you lazy, half-assed homeboys who can't be arsed to find out more about your beloved King's Quest than half heartedly walking onto a forum, like a petulant child, and demand your information. I bet you don't know what a library even is or how to use the Dewey Decimal System!
If you pulled the stick out, you'd realize that it's not laziness to prefer not to have to spend time (that could be spent doing other things) sifting through forum posts littered with arguments about whether MoE is KQ8 while looking for news updates which could potentially even be off-topic for the associated thread(s); digging through various game news websites trying to find relevant mentions of Telltale's King's Quest; and paging through each and every Telltale Blog post trying to find something.
It's a credit to Baggins for compiling the info, not laziness that not everyone else in the world wants to have to do it.
Bt, I apologize for my comment. I got kind of carried away. Still, I definitely disagree with you about the value of summarizing and organizing information in order to help other adventure game fans and people interested in KQ. Ever use Wikipedia? Is that a site for people who are too lazy to do their own exhaustive research of primary sources. Chyron has it exactly right here, as far as I'm concerned. Baggins did a great job on that summary. I am happy that someone with his KQ knowledge, his attention to detail and his ability to clearly and succinctly summarize lots of info is part of the KQ fan community and is willing to contribute with posts like that. Reading it I learned some things I didn't know before.
To be fair, the stuff is pretty darn scattered apart... It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, or looking for sheets of paper that blew to the four corners of the earth... If you don't have a general clue where to look for them to begin with it can be a bit daunting!
I had to essentially sift through 15-20 (and there was alot more than that) pages of 'google results' each (for 2-4 different search phrases), and most of these ended up being references to The Silver Lining (because that garnered most of the KQ news in recent years), the occasional article about AGDI, maybe one or two for Infamous Adventures, repeated & redundant information linking to other articles with better information (but I had already had links to), and stuff associated with the old games... So I had look past the 'snow', and find relevent references to "telltale' only.
In the process I came across news while not so much relevent to Telltale, but that I had never had come across before. But even those slowed me down from finding actual 'relevent' or even indirectly-relevent information. So no it was not easy, and I don't expect the average person to have the patience or the 'luck' to find what I found.
I can't say that I found 'everything' related either. No way I was going to check every 'result'. I have my real life research and papers to do, and those must be a priority! But I do have to say, the KQ research, was a nice break from the academic research I'm doing right now.
Heh, guys - it's cool. I was just purposefully acting like a crochety-old-man. Hence the "OsCal" for my brittle bones joke. I'm just an old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn.
Bt - there is no humor in this blackened land of dashed dreams and cynicism. Hold your tongue lest you make someone laugh and face the fact that there is nothing of substance in this entire forum beyond expectations, bitterness, naivety, and youthful dreams of nostalgia.
Your humor is not welcome among the deluded souls who wander these barrens.
But the news in Lytton, talks about the kingdom of Daventry as if it coexists someplace else!
"My name is Laura," said the young woman. "And I took your football as evidence in the bonking of one Larry Laffer. But a policeman took it away from me."
"Thank you," said Rosella. She wasn't sure what a policeman was, but she decided to set out to find one.
She came across a man in blue. "Have you seen my football, blue knight?" Rosella asked.
"I'm not a knight, I'm Sonny, a policeman. I took your football for an official investigation. But when we found out Larry Laffer was involved, we decided not to prosecute the bonker. Some guy in a white coat took your football."-From "Rosella's First Quest"
Which means Lytton and Daventry must coexist in some kind of Time Warp!
Or actors, as Larry discovers the actress portraying Rosella later on.
Edward and a Unicorn from Daventry was kept in some formaldhyde vats in the Layendecker museum! Graham apparently ended up in Hell to be tormented by skeletons for eternity.
Under certain circumstance, Whittlin Willie will switch to tell the ballad of King Graham. On a newspaper clipping in the General Store, we learn that King Graham of Daventry was no longer responsible for any debts incurred by his wife Valanice, his son Alexander, or his daughter Rosella.
Roger Wilco discovered from grafitti in a bathroom that Graham is apparently a crossdresser (perhaps forshadowing Alexander?).
Graham, Larry, Rosella, Sonny, Roger Wilco, and others all got together to play cards once (Hoyle I)!
Only two parts that might be 'connected'. Ign's mention of KQ at the beginning, and they mention later on that Telltale said it is working on a handful of projects including the Fables "tie-in". Nothing specific about what these other projects happen to be.
"Beyond The Walking Dead, Telltale also has plenty of projects in active development, including Fables, which was announced nearly two years ago."
Which it seems they are probably still farther down the pipeline.
Walking Dead has had a huge impact on the company as far as how we look at things and how we do what we do.
I think that says a lot.
Also:
David Cage has kind of gone on our path, which is asking ‘where do we take adventure games from here? How do we evolve it and make it more of a storytelling medium and less of a puzzle-based medium?’
I don't call that evolution. Why is story so much better than puzzles? They are both equally important to me. This is the basis of my decline of interest from Telltale and why I never liked BTTF.
I'm tired of people thinking gameplay and story have to be mutually exclusive. It seems most games either have high emphasis on gameplay and low on story (e.g.: Mario, Doom) or the other way around (Planescape: Torment, Heavy Rain). Ideally, every game would be great when it comes to both story and gameplay, which isn't an impossible task. Deus Ex is a perfect example of this. It's got a creative, fleshed-out setting and a captivating plot, but even without that it's a great mixture of FPS/RPG/stealth gameplay. Or to use an adventure game example, there's The Longest Journey. Great setting, great plot, great characters...and what do you know, great puzzles (except that awful rubber duck one at the beginning ).
If Telltale wants more focus on storytelling, that's great. I'd encourage that, especially since every last one of Telltale's games have been well-written, and that talent should shine all it can. But that doesn't mean getting rid of puzzles. Story and gameplay are not enemies, they're meant to complement each other.
I'm tired of people thinking gameplay and story have to be mutually exclusive. It seems most games either have high emphasis on gameplay and low on story (e.g.: Mario, Doom) or the other way around (Planescape: Torment, Heavy Rain). Ideally, every game would be great when it comes to both story and gameplay, which isn't an impossible task. Deus Ex is a perfect example of this. It's got a creative, fleshed-out setting and a captivating plot, but even without that it's a great mixture of FPS/RPG/stealth gameplay. Or to use an adventure game example, there's The Longest Journey. Great setting, great plot, great characters...and what do you know, great puzzles (except that awful rubber duck one at the beginning ).
If Telltale wants more focus on storytelling, that's great. I'd encourage that, especially since every last one of Telltale's games have been well-written, and that talent should shine all it can. But that doesn't mean getting rid of puzzles. Story and gameplay are not enemies, they're meant to complement each other.
I won't disagree, the 'on-rails' approach to story telling can really take you out of the 'game', its more akin to that old ride at epcott center, where people in your cart could all vote on the 'ending' of the ride, and then get the ending. Or if no choice was made, given a random ending.
It's also very much a revert back to the old "make a choice/choose your own adventure' books which were often said to be the inspiration for early Adventure games and sub-genre 'interactive novellas'(which are super popular in Japan). They have their place in the history of 'adventure gaming' but shouldn't be the only form of 'adventure gaming'.
Even Roberta Williams in one interview (circa Phantasmagoria just before she started working on KQ8, IIRC) nodded to wanting to moving games in that direction of story telling more organic environmental interactivity. That is as she explained old style adventure-game puzzles were a something she saw as a limitation in the technology, because of limited resources you couldn't do things you might choose to do in a real-life situation. She was hoping to make things more interactive, more of a virtual reality.
Of course even the way Roberta described it could end up more like an action game (a game like Thief series, or Deus Ex may fit into storytelling more environmental interactivity), than what Telltale has done, which in many ways stifled 'interactivity'. Although it does rely more on environmental interactivity and on the spot choices.
Quote:
David Cage has kind of gone on our path, which is asking ‘where do we take adventure games from here? How do we evolve it and make it more of a storytelling medium and less of a puzzle-based medium?’
I am so sick and tired of people from Telltale talking about how they are supposedly "evolving" the adventure game genre. What they are doing is nothing new and is NOT even making true adventure games. And who the hell do they think they are with the suggestion that they alone are going to change a genre?
As I posted before, they are basically making games that rely more on QTE's (Quick Time Events) than on letting the player have more control and freedom to explore the virtual world. What they are doing is closer to interactive movies. This is NOT NEW. Telltale needs to quit acting like they are some great pioneers and innovators, since what they are doing is basically Dragon's Lair with dialogue trees, more story and an easier interface.
Clip from the QTE-filled, interactive movie and apparent inspiration for Telltale's new game design direction:
Telltale's apparent philosophy is to reject much of what actually makes adventure games adventure games. It is time to stop calling Telltale an adventure game developer. We should call Telltale what they are: an interactive movie factory whose management has explicitly rejected the idea of challenging puzzles and of giving the player the freedom to explore.
Plus, I doubt the license from Activision hasn't expired by now.
I think Replay Games is going to end up doing a new King's Quest.
They got Leisure Suit Larry, and I think they will be working with Mark Crowe on a new game in the near future. Based on a recent Josh Mandel comment on Kickstarter, some have speculated that Mark Crowe is doing the Larry Reloaded box cover art and logo, and that Crowe (and Scott Murphy?) will probably have more involvement with Replay in the future.
I would welcome a KQ from Replay, since at least they love the original series and understand adventure gaming.
Comments
As someone who has been following the news on this, there are no friggin hidden gems in there. It is exactly how I stated it was.
Game was announced.
TT team member talks about researching it a bit (over 2 years ago now?)
.... nothing
I can't think of anything substantial that has ever been said about the game other than those 2 things, the one or to other times it came up it was just a 'mention'.
So people can ask what happened to the Telltale KQ project all they want, a timeline isn't going to answer their question any better then saying there has been no information on it in a long time.
Just under 2 years ago. It will be exactly 2 years from the first announcement next month, on the 17th.
Which begs the question, does Telltale have a february press event every year? Or was that a special event?
Not sure when we got the last comment, somewhere between 1 to 1 1/2 years ago.
Edit:
After checking the more reliable notes, the last few comments that I can find was made in interview at Adventure Gamers.com on March 14, 2011.
http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/18536
Another news was given aroound June 7-9, 2011, around the time of E3 event. Which places that comment about 1 1/2 years ago. That was when the game (and several other Telltale series including Walking Dead & Fables) was said to be pushed back for a 2012 release (which has come and gone).
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/06/09/e3-2011-first-kings-quest-details
http://www.destructoid.com/e3-roberta-williams-advised-telltale-on-king-s-quest-203396.phtml
The last reliable known reference that I was able to find, was the Siliconera interview in May 10, 2012. Which was about eight months ago.
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/05/16/how-telltale-wants-to-evolve-the-adventure-game-genre/
So ya, none of the news is "over 2 years" old yet, but initial announcement will be reaching 2 years next month.
http://games.gamepressure.com/developers.asp?ID=2092
http://games.gamepressure.com/game_info.asp?ID=16348
Timeline
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43746
Bt
Better to put up a "timeline", than have MTN and EXO argueing over putting up a timeline for the next 20 pages!
Bt
Plus you forget with my background in history, I actually enjoy that kind of thing! Especially research!
Edit:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43746
Well, based on what I've discovered. We know that Telltale never intended to release King's Quest until after Walking Dead, and Fable. Both Fable and Walking Dead got delayed (with fable delayed almost 2 years). The last announcement for KQ was 8 months ago, May 2012. We know even then that plans for the game would have to wait until after Fable's release. We know though at that point they were starting to build the team for KQ. Perhaps staff were able to move off some of the smaller game series (such as Law and Order, and others to start moving onto KQ). A little over a month later, Walkign Dead season 2 was announced, but we haven't heard anything about King's Quest since. Even fable has had limited information.
If Telltale's option has expired or removed, we can infer that it had to have occured after May 2012, but not before. As they were just starting to put the team together at that point.
What a bad attitude. You are not king of the forum. Baggins did a helpful thing in getting information all in one place for people who might be interested to know the history of the project, such that it has been shared with us. To say, "just let people Google on their own" shows you don't care much about helping keep KQ fans in-the-know. Information summaries save people time. Not everyone follows these forums on a daily basis (or wants to sift through some people's' self-indulgent, jokey comments while searching for worthwhile info) or wants to jump around to different sites trying to piece together what has been happening with TTG's KQ.
So, let me say a big thank you to Baggins for his/her time and effort!!
So, my general feeling is that KQ was put on the back burner in favor of TWD. But, fast forward through TWD's resounding success, the increased Telltale fanbase, and higher anticipation for Fables as a result of the previous two items, combined with hype for TWD Season 2, and you simply may have a decision that boils down to priorities.
I think TWD's success might have surprised even Telltale. Two years ago KQ was something Telltale would have wanted to appeal to more adventure game fans and build up their repertoire. At that time they were coming off ToMI, Sam & Max, and just releasing BttF. Two years later the success of TWD has done far more for the company than they would have expected of KQ.
Quite frankly, Telltale doesn't need to do KQ anymore. Whether they want to would be a different scenario.
I could be way off base. Just guessing and thinking out loud.
However, we do know they are expanding their company so they can make more games, at the same time.. They want to make more games, not just one to two games a year. They want to make a wider selection each year.
Earlier this year, they mentioned they would like to get into major franchises like Star Wars, Halo, or Half-life. No they haven't gotten licenses for those, they are just 'ideas'.
They mention they would like to move ties back to Lucasarts and Lucasfilms properties if possible. They'll have to deal with Disney to do that!
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/04/the-walking-dead-developer-wants-to-work-on-star-wars-or-half-life-next/
http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/44425/telltale-would-like-to-take-a-stab-at-star-wars-half-life-or-halo
http://spong.com/article/28684/Telltale-Keen-on-Taking-on-Star-Wars-Half-Life-Halo-Franchises
I'm not? Well, when did this change. I was voted Emporer of the Internet in 1997 by Netscape, Inc. That's almost 16 years of my internet fiefdom, son.
Baggins does that kind of stuff all the time; as he said, he likes to research and catalog stuff. But he doesn't have to do it for you lazy, half-assed homeboys who can't be arsed to find out more about your beloved King's Quest than half heartedly walking onto a forum, like a petulant child, and demand your information. I bet you don't know what a library even is or how to use the Dewey Decimal System!
You make me want to vomit.
Now, I have to go - it's time for my OsCal.
Bt
It's a credit to Baggins for compiling the info, not laziness that not everyone else in the world wants to have to do it.
I had to essentially sift through 15-20 (and there was alot more than that) pages of 'google results' each (for 2-4 different search phrases), and most of these ended up being references to The Silver Lining (because that garnered most of the KQ news in recent years), the occasional article about AGDI, maybe one or two for Infamous Adventures, repeated & redundant information linking to other articles with better information (but I had already had links to), and stuff associated with the old games... So I had look past the 'snow', and find relevent references to "telltale' only.
In the process I came across news while not so much relevent to Telltale, but that I had never had come across before. But even those slowed me down from finding actual 'relevent' or even indirectly-relevent information. So no it was not easy, and I don't expect the average person to have the patience or the 'luck' to find what I found.
I can't say that I found 'everything' related either. No way I was going to check every 'result'. I have my real life research and papers to do, and those must be a priority! But I do have to say, the KQ research, was a nice break from the academic research I'm doing right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2fMlg5WTMM
Watch out for Scary Mary...
Bt
Your humor is not welcome among the deluded souls who wander these barrens.
You all know what happened to Daventry, right? 1,000 years passed and it became Lytton, California.
Bt
Which means Lytton and Daventry must coexist in some kind of Time Warp!
Wake up Graham!
Whoah... I know kung fu.
Edward and a Unicorn from Daventry was kept in some formaldhyde vats in the Layendecker museum! Graham apparently ended up in Hell to be tormented by skeletons for eternity.
Under certain circumstance, Whittlin Willie will switch to tell the ballad of King Graham. On a newspaper clipping in the General Store, we learn that King Graham of Daventry was no longer responsible for any debts incurred by his wife Valanice, his son Alexander, or his daughter Rosella.
Roger Wilco discovered from grafitti in a bathroom that Graham is apparently a crossdresser (perhaps forshadowing Alexander?).
Graham, Larry, Rosella, Sonny, Roger Wilco, and others all got together to play cards once (Hoyle I)!
Yep, something must have happened to the chest of Gold! Gold hyperinflation?
No mention of King's Quest, other than by IGN in the first paragraph.
"Beyond The Walking Dead, Telltale also has plenty of projects in active development, including Fables, which was announced nearly two years ago."
Which it seems they are probably still farther down the pipeline.
I think that says a lot.
Also:
I don't call that evolution. Why is story so much better than puzzles? They are both equally important to me. This is the basis of my decline of interest from Telltale and why I never liked BTTF.
I'm tired of people thinking gameplay and story have to be mutually exclusive. It seems most games either have high emphasis on gameplay and low on story (e.g.: Mario, Doom) or the other way around (Planescape: Torment, Heavy Rain). Ideally, every game would be great when it comes to both story and gameplay, which isn't an impossible task. Deus Ex is a perfect example of this. It's got a creative, fleshed-out setting and a captivating plot, but even without that it's a great mixture of FPS/RPG/stealth gameplay. Or to use an adventure game example, there's The Longest Journey. Great setting, great plot, great characters...and what do you know, great puzzles (except that awful rubber duck one at the beginning
If Telltale wants more focus on storytelling, that's great. I'd encourage that, especially since every last one of Telltale's games have been well-written, and that talent should shine all it can. But that doesn't mean getting rid of puzzles. Story and gameplay are not enemies, they're meant to complement each other.
Yes! Very well put. I couldn't agree more.
It's also very much a revert back to the old "make a choice/choose your own adventure' books which were often said to be the inspiration for early Adventure games and sub-genre 'interactive novellas'(which are super popular in Japan). They have their place in the history of 'adventure gaming' but shouldn't be the only form of 'adventure gaming'.
Even Roberta Williams in one interview (circa Phantasmagoria just before she started working on KQ8, IIRC) nodded to wanting to moving games in that direction of story telling more organic environmental interactivity. That is as she explained old style adventure-game puzzles were a something she saw as a limitation in the technology, because of limited resources you couldn't do things you might choose to do in a real-life situation. She was hoping to make things more interactive, more of a virtual reality.
Of course even the way Roberta described it could end up more like an action game (a game like Thief series, or Deus Ex may fit into storytelling more environmental interactivity), than what Telltale has done, which in many ways stifled 'interactivity'. Although it does rely more on environmental interactivity and on the spot choices.
They're not doing it. If they were, they'd have done it by now. The IPs they have now are far more interesting and lucrative for them.
Bt
Plus, I doubt the license from Activision hasn't expired by now.
I am so sick and tired of people from Telltale talking about how they are supposedly "evolving" the adventure game genre. What they are doing is nothing new and is NOT even making true adventure games. And who the hell do they think they are with the suggestion that they alone are going to change a genre?
As I posted before, they are basically making games that rely more on QTE's (Quick Time Events) than on letting the player have more control and freedom to explore the virtual world. What they are doing is closer to interactive movies. This is NOT NEW. Telltale needs to quit acting like they are some great pioneers and innovators, since what they are doing is basically Dragon's Lair with dialogue trees, more story and an easier interface.
Clip from the QTE-filled, interactive movie and apparent inspiration for Telltale's new game design direction:
http://youtu.be/P3XNQja0H7I
Telltale's apparent philosophy is to reject much of what actually makes adventure games adventure games. It is time to stop calling Telltale an adventure game developer. We should call Telltale what they are: an interactive movie factory whose management has explicitly rejected the idea of challenging puzzles and of giving the player the freedom to explore.
Actually only two years ago on the 17th of this month. Do you have a problem with simple math?
It will be three years next february (2014).
I think Replay Games is going to end up doing a new King's Quest.
They got Leisure Suit Larry, and I think they will be working with Mark Crowe on a new game in the near future. Based on a recent Josh Mandel comment on Kickstarter, some have speculated that Mark Crowe is doing the Larry Reloaded box cover art and logo, and that Crowe (and Scott Murphy?) will probably have more involvement with Replay in the future.
I would welcome a KQ from Replay, since at least they love the original series and understand adventure gaming.