King's Quest is back.

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Does anyone remember Sierra's old King's Quest games from the 80's and 90's? Well, here's some good news for the fans of the old King's Quest franchise and adventure game fans in general. Activision has revived the old Sierra and has contracted a studio to make a brand new King's Quest game and it's due out this year. Apparently in this new game King Graham, now very old, is telling a story of one of his past adventures to his granddaughter Gwendolan, but it's a story not covered in the previous games. Here's the trailer:



Would anyone here be interested in this?

No responses? I'm surprised nobody here likes King's Quest. My other thread about Starcraft 2:Legacy of the Void at least got some responses.

I like King's Quest, but this new game (remake?) doesn't look very interesting.

Sure. I used to play King's Quest. Wasn't it designed by Roberta Williams? I spent many hours playing it. Leisure Suit Larry was a hoot too.

Checked out the trailer - I really like it.

WOW!! ! You have no idea how excited I am for this!! The adventure game genre as a whole sees so little innovation and so few new games, that anything different is a breath of fresh air. Simply from the trailer, it looks like it will adhere to some of the old staples of the genre, but use the massive upgrades in graphics since the 80s (a lot of adventure games are still stuck in the past in that regard).

I may have to replay the series in preparation! Will Roberta Williams be involved?

Nope!

Apparently she provided "lots of valuable information" to Telltale when they were working on a game, but otherwise she is retired.

Well, the creator of this game did say that he met with Roberta Williams personally to get her approval of the game.

Also, I'm not certain if this one's not based off the concept of the one that Telltale was working on. Telltale eventually cancelled their version because they decided that they wouldn't be able to do King's Quest justice with their usual format and production cycle, unfortunately.

Also, considering that King Graham's granddaughter is an actual character in the game, I don't think it's a remake but rather an original game. Although, they did say that even though it's a new game and that they're keeping the original lore and story established in the last 8 King's Quest games, they also said that they wanted to make it so that people didn't have to play the previous games in order to understand the story in order to bring the franchise to a new generation while still pleasing the old-school fans with subtle references to past King's Quest games.

Yeah, it sounds to me like Graham telling the stories is just narration for the actual gameplay, which is a sort of "reimagining" of the original game (or games).

But I guess we'll find out when it's closer to release.

Seems to me, though, that Activision is just striking while the iron is hot...lots of other "fairy tale retellings" going on in Hollywood right now. Looks more like a Dragon's Lair clone than an actual adventure game, to me =(

Well, the game is going to split into 5 episodes, which is why I thought that this may be the game that Telltale was working on before they cancelled it and Activision gave the project to someone else. Also, from what I've read, the only retelling, in the first episode at least, is in the prologue when he tells Gwendolan about how he got the magic mirror from the dragon cave (a part of King's Quest 1) but other than that, most of Graham's stories are about adventures he had in-between the events of the official games. In fact, this first episode is mostly about an adventure he had before King's Quest 1, so it's pretty original. I don't want to mention more to avoid spoilers.

I spent years on King's Quest growing up, but I'm not sure about this. King's Quest was never about the story for me, so I hope these games have either the same playstyle and exploration elements that are more complex or something new and interesting.

I'm not sold on nostalgia alone. If I hadn't played King's Quest, the trailer would look like every generic fantasy game ever made.

Interesting, I have not played these games in ages though.

5 episodes? Oh no...I personally have a thing against episodic games, because they very seldomly seem to deliver. They're usually watered down and superficial to keep things short enough in each episode.

Personally I'm a little skeptical, but it could be good - time will tell. KQ6 was definitely the peak of the series - professional actors and realistic (for the time) graphics, as well as a good story and puzzles made the game memorable. KQ7 was a little disappointing with the cartoon graphics and the "dumbed down" interface (plus it was extremely sluggish on even high-end hardware of the time - a 486/66 with 8MB of RAM and a double speed CD drive, running Windows 3.11). I didn't even touch Mask of Eternity, as it was too much of a departure from the classic format.

It depends on the design though. Telltale managed to do a good job with their episodic format of Tales of Monkey Island, which managed to have puzzles similar to a typical Monkey Island game and it felt like one. Normally, when you have games that try to create an open world, those don't work very well in episodic format.

Last edited by Jono on 15 Mar 2015, 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't count Mask of Eternity as much of a King's quest actually. It's a hack-and-slash action game with maybe a few simple puzzles thrown in-between rather than an adventure game. Yes, King's Quest 6 is the best of the series, though it came after King's Quest 5 which was a bit of a low point in the series in my opinion. King's Quest 3 was actually the first good King's Quest, being the first game in the series to actually have a story that unfolded through gameplay (the first 2 games had stories but you had to read about them in the manual while you were mostly just doing random stuff in the actual game, trying to achieve the goal).

Judging from the previews I've read by people who have had a first look at this game, I'm actually pretty hopeful. It's an adventure game at least, unlike Mask of Eternity, though it is a full 3D one.