Transcript
Hey hey folks, Dave here. Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing King’s Quest for those who have played it. If you are worried about spoilers, please pause the video, and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.
The King’s Quest games have an enduring legacy. I personally discovered Sierra through the Police Quest and Space Quest games (Police Quest was my first adventure game), but I met Graham and the kingdom of Daventry through King’s Quest 5, and then fell in love with the series through Alexander’s adventures through the Green Isles in King’s Quest 6. It doesn’t take too much searching online to find people who spent their childhoods with these games, a lot of them playing through them with family members. Help was needed. Death came easily, and many of the games had states where you could not continue if you missed doing something earlier, and would have to start over. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the legacy of King’s Quest is mostly positive, and that’s why I think everyone was weary when Activision announced the new game series.
It’s also an episodic series. Episodic gaming is a strange beast. A long time ago I made a decision to only approach such games when all the episodes have been released. It’s because these games largely feel like a full game broken into parts at key story moments, and having to wait months for the next installment just makes the player forget about the characters and what was happening in the game world. King’s Quest is a little different. The framing device is that King Graham is now an enfeebled old man telling stories of his youth to his granddaughter. Each episode is a separate story from his past, often being placed between the original games. The beginning of chapter one has you stealing the magic mirror from the dragon that players might remember doing in KQ1, but then flashes back to explain how Graham become a Daventry knight in the first place. Chapter 3 has you searching for your future wife, and chapter 4 covers both the birth of Alexander and Rosella, and a family vacation they take to bond together after Alexander finally returns after all those lost years. The way it weaves Manannan and Mordack into all 5 episodes is really clever too, showing that the malice these wizards have against Graham and his family is deep rooted and not just evil characters being evil for an evil reason.
The earlier chapters actually have a bit of replay value due to the qualities of a successful king being the paths you can take in many of the game’s decisions. You can take action, show compassion, or use your intellect. These paths are externalised in the town folk, and throughout the game the path you choose to go down will endear you more towards either the Hobblepots, Wente and Bramble, or Amaya. I started off thinking intellect was the way to go. It is an adventure game after all. Then as I continued, the compassion path held greater sway over me, and I never missed a chance to visit Wente and Bramble in the later chapters. I think Wente’s love of puns and hugs won me over more than anything. The notion of choice plays a greater role in chapter 2 when it’s possible to let multiple characters die. I was slow on the uptake on how to save everyone so let Triumph and the Hobblepots die in the goblin dungeons. I felt terrible. Then at the end of the chapter Graham admits that since this happened a long time ago, his memory might be a bit foggy on how things went down, so to not take the story too seriously. One the one hand, I was relieved that I would see these characters again. On the other, I did feel a bit betrayed that the sad feelings I had regarding my lack of action were uncalled for, as this aspect of chapter 2 did not matter for the rest of the game.
But the important question regarding this King’s Quest is how it stays true to the legacy of the original series, and if it does, how does it continue that legacy? I think the answer to this question is threefold: family, puns, and puzzles. I will now talk about all three in turn. One of the joys of the original series was that there were games where the player was not controlling Graham. Throughout the 8 games you got to control Valanice, Rosella, and Alexander. It’s the same reason I loved the Xanth books so much as a teenager. Time passes from book to book, so you got to follow the children of characters you spent time with go on their own adventures, and then have children of their own. That series also revels in its love of puns. In this game, you control King Graham in all 5 chapters (at different points of his life), but in a passing of the torch, there are times when you play as Gwendolyn (the epilogue being her first adventure). Even though you only play as Graham, his family is always nearby, not only when the game cuts back to the present, but chapters 3 and 4 are focused on falling in love and raising a family. There’s a sequence in the early moments of chapter 4 that I imagine was pulled straight from the experiences of any members of the development team who have children of their own. A lot of the game feels like personal experiences were woven into the story. There are sections of chapter 5 where Graham’s dementia is interfering with his story. I watched my own father succumb and finally pass over years due to motor neuron disease, and those moments of the last chapter hit rather hard because of it.
And while the ending of chapter 5 is quite sad in terms of family and legacy (of Graham as a family member, and a beloved videogame icon), let’s lighten the mood a little with the next item on the list, puns. Puns have always been a part of King’s Quest. I still remember when you get killed by the witch who lives in the gingerbread house in KQ1, the death screen says she turned you into a Graham cracker. King’s Quest continues the tradition of the death screens being an opportunity for a groaner or two, but I was not expecting the long strains of punnery that were written into the dialogue. I found myself cracking up everytime one of these occurred, my favourite ending with a well deserved slow clap. Here, I’ll play it for you now. See? Marvelous. While the puns are a constant source of joy, I also found a lot of humour in the line reading and character interactions. There was one line reading in chapter 1 that had me barking out laughter. Again, I’ll play it for you. I think it also helps that the way they’ve written young Graham is like a more excitable Guybrush Threepwood. He doesn’t necessarily lose his exuberance as he gets older, but obviously he’s not as energetic in his excitement as he once was.
Finally there are the puzzles. When I first started playing, I worried it would be a linear affair with minimal adventure game puzzles like the recent Telltale games, or Life is Strange. It turns out King’s Quest is designed like an actual adventure game. There are chapters and sections of the game which are linear, but there are also sections where you have a large area of interconnecting screens with more than one puzzle to solve at a time. Often these puzzles have multiple solutions or are linked together in some way. In chapter one for instance, the order you tackle the trials is somewhat influenced by whose shop you first spend your coin at. While I was happy that we’re dealing with traditional adventure game design, there are some pitfalls of the genre here.
There’s not enough signposting to nudge the player toward a solution, and while it hasn’t caught on, I think every adventure game should have a hint button that the player can use when stuck. I’ve wanted this feature in every adventure game since the remake of The Secret of Monkey Island included it. Having the player character muse out loud to themselves the right direction towards a solution is internally consistent and takes the load off the frustration the player might be feeling. I guess this is a symptom of not having proper signposting. I think perhaps good adventure game puzzle design is a lot like modern level design. The trick is to nudge the player in the right direction through your design without them necessarily knowing you’re doing so. It’s definitely a tricky balance. If the puzzle is too easy, there’s no satisfaction from solving it, and if it’s too difficult a player might check a walkthrough. In both cases, the player is robbed of that good feeling “ah-ha” moment. There is the idea that such a feeling is more relegated to puzzle games where the puzzles are the most important aspect, while in adventure games, the puzzles can be an impediment to the story… but I think the best adventure games thread the elements of puzzle and story rather seamlessly. I’d say the best example of this in King’s Quest is chapter 3. It helps that each puzzle is contained in either one, or only a couple of screens, but there’s a pace and enjoyment to the story and the puzzle solving that is symbiotic in chapter 3 where I feel that the rest of the game favours one side over the other.
In the end, the legacy that Graham wants to leave behind is the legacy that the King’s Quest games want to leave behind. The whole game is about the passing of the torch from the older generation to a younger generation, just as the game itself has been inspired by these classic Sierra adventures to make something that while faithful to them, is modern, and leaves its own mark. I’m of the mind that it definitely succeeds in this ambition. I really enjoyed my time with this new Daventry, I loved all the nods to the original series, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in either wanting a sequel starring Gwendolyn, or for this treatment to be given to other classic Sierra games. A retelling of Space Quest or Gabriel Knight perhaps?
Thanks for watching.
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