Telltale reboots King's Quest

[Owain Taggart]

Well, this is interesting. Just came across the news that Telltale is working on a series reboot of King's Quest. This bit of news slipped under the radar as they announced Fables and The Walking Dead games.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/18/kings-quest-reboot-coming-courtesy-of-telltale/

What's particularly interesting about this is that when Telltale was a rather new startup, when nobody knew what they were capable of, or who they really were as they hadn't made a name for themselves yet, there were rumours that they were developing the next Space Quest, but that never materialized, as Vivendi at the time decided to scrap the project. With Telltale's newfound success, however, and the reboot of the King's Quest series, this could open up the floodgates for more of Sierra's series like Space Quest and Police Quest to come back. Oh man, I'd love to see Sonny Bonds again, particularly after how bad PQ4: Open Season was.

It's also interesting to note that Telltale is made up of old LucasArts employees. Who saw that coming? Ex-LucasArts employees rebooting a Sierra series?

 

[Yoda]

Will they be able to do it justice? They've been doing pansy adventure games where your character lives and you don't have to start over...

Do they have what it takes to come up with 1,000 frustrating ways for you to die as befits a proper Quest game?

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I'm hoping they bring back Freddy Pharkas.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Will they be able to do it justice? They've been doing pansy adventure games where your character lives and you don't have to start over...

Do they have what it takes to come up with 1,000 frustrating ways for you to die as befits a proper Quest game?

Well, believe it or not, some actually prefer the LucasArts way of doing things, which mean no frustrating deaths. The Sierra games were quite notorious for punishing people with gruesome deaths. I believe Telltale can and will do it justice, without the deaths.

 

[The Evil Dead]

The deaths were part of the King's Quest experience, I'd like to see those come back. As long as they leave the frustration out, when you'd die because you didn't notice that one item you had to pick up 3 hours earlier.

 

[Geck]

I'd love to see all of these series come back. Agreed that the deaths need to stay though. The hilarious Space Quest deaths, at least, not the KQ5 deaths that cause you to have to replay 80% of the game. They just need to be integrated well. I always much preferred the Sierra games to the LucasArts games.

 

[Canadave]

Will they be able to do it justice? They've been doing pansy adventure games where your character lives and you don't have to start over...

Do they have what it takes to come up with 1,000 frustrating ways for you to die as befits a proper Quest game?

Well, believe it or not, some actually prefer the LucasArts way of doing things, which mean no frustrating deaths. The Sierra games were quite notorious for punishing people with gruesome deaths. I believe Telltale can and will do it justice, without the deaths.

I'm a fan of the LucasArts approach as well, but it's just not a [blank] Quest game without the deaths. I'm sure there's a way they could be well-integrated into the game without forcing the player to do any backtracking, say via an instant reload or something.

I know that at least as far as Space Quest was concerned, finding new ways to die was half the fun, as the Two Guys from Andromeda would take the opportunity to mock you for your incompetence.

Anyway, thanks for reading this post. As always, you've been a real pant-load.

Restore * Restart * Quit

 

[Owain Taggart]

I suppose they could have a rewind feature. I think the Jurassic Park game they're making works like that, where they've said half the fun is in discovering how many ways you can die. You just have to replay up to a certain point.

 

[Bishop76]

Yeah, the deaths were always a huge part of the experience. I would love to see this happen and I'd love to see them expand out and hit the other "quest" games. I loved them all back in the day - Space Quest, Police Quest, and it'd be great to see a Leisure Suit Larry that was actually funny again and wasn't just a batch of mini games.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yep, definitely. I can only imagine how the worlds would look with today's technology since we haven't seen anything in several generations. I had fond memories of the King's Quest series, and it took me forever to beat King's Quest 2, which was the first one I had. But I think I spent the most time on the Police Quest series.

The look they're giving Jurassic Park is more realistic and less cartoony. That's the kind of look I'd give Police Quest. I'd want to see Sonny Bonds back, continuing on the storyline from the first 3. In fact, he could have a Captain's desk job while his son the the one on patrol, but they'd likely have to create a new recurring villain.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Count me as another who doesn't think it's a Quest game without an assortment of hilarious, gruesome, arbitrary deaths.

I was mostly a Quest for Glory fan, though I also liked the Space Quest games. Can't say I ever really got into the King's Quest games.

I fear the QFG games are too niche to ever get professionally redone/rebooted. Still, they have traditional RPG elements so that might be an element in their favor.

 

[Bishop76]

Oh my God - I forgot about those! Those were fantastic games too - I would have included them in my list if I hadn't had a brain fart - loved how many options you had in those games ESPECIALLY for the time.

 

[firehawk12]

It's probably just me, but Telltale seems to be a company just throwing everything out there just to see what sticks. From CSI to Walking Dead to game franchise reboots, it seems they have everything covered.

But, just playing the BTTF games, I think I'm really tired of the formula at this point. Even if you don't count the individual episodes as their own game, I've played at least 6 Telltale games in the last few years and other than theme, they all play pretty much the same way... with the BTTF games being little more than an interactive movie.

It's funny, because this was how I was starting to feel at the height of Sierra's popularity... Jane Jensen and the Coles notwithstanding.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It's probably going to be reimagined as a first-person shooter.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Count me as another who doesn't think it's a Quest game without an assortment of hilarious, gruesome, arbitrary deaths.

I was mostly a Quest for Glory fan, though I also liked the Space Quest games. Can't say I ever really got into the King's Quest games.

I fear the QFG games are too niche to ever get professionally redone/rebooted. Still, they have traditional RPG elements so that might be an element in their favor.

Have you seen the QFG 2 remake? Never really was a fan of those games, and I tried the remake, but it's still really a confusing game. I think it's one of those games that would really benefit 3D.

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/

It's probably going to be reimagined as a first-person shooter.

No, as that's not what Telltale does. They make adventure games. One of the few companies left doing so. Besides, it's already been tried with Mask of Eternity, which was a 3rd person action-adventure.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Count me as another who doesn't think it's a Quest game without an assortment of hilarious, gruesome, arbitrary deaths.

I was mostly a Quest for Glory fan, though I also liked the Space Quest games. Can't say I ever really got into the King's Quest games.

I fear the QFG games are too niche to ever get professionally redone/rebooted. Still, they have traditional RPG elements so that might be an element in their favor.

Have you seen the QFG 2 remake? Never really was a fan of those games, and I tried the remake, but it's still really a confusing game. I think it's one of those games that would really benefit 3D.

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/

Yeah, I played it a bit. To be honest, I think 2 is my least favorite in the series. 4 is my favorite. Yes, I buck the system.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'm not surprised, actually. Even as a remake, the game suffers the same problems the original had which is confusing navigation, not to mention having to know exactly what to do to move things forward, which make it difficult for someone to dive in and play. It's one of the more frustrating Sierra games.

 

[Bishop76]

^ like Code Name: Iceman...

 

[Owain Taggart]

Haha yeah. I bet that's one game Sierra wishes never happened. It was pretty ambitious, being part sub sim, but that's ultimately what crippled the game as people couldn't get past certain parts because of how difficult it was. About a year ago, I watched someone play it to the end on Youtube. Part of the problems with it were due to the engine's limitations, though it still was really technically impressive what they had done with it. Just wasn't very playable. The concept though is pretty solid. I can imagine an MMO or a single-player game that is sub sim with both water based and land based missions. Done right, it could be a really awesome modern game.

 

[Aldo]

^ like Code Name: Iceman...

I read an in-depth review on that one. Didn't look interesting to me at all. Of course I never really got into any of the sierra adventure games until they made the jump to the point n click interface. It was only then did I go back and take a look at the parser interface games.

Still, a lot of the older sierra games were very unforgiving, I remember in Leisure Suit Larry 2 if you neglected to pick up an item early in the game you would get stuck later on and unable to go any further.