Sierra King's Quest 8: Mask of Eternity in retrospect

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I don't think even a magic handjob machine could have saved that flying turd, even from early development.


Bt

Did Lamb hack your account? lmao

 

[Blackthorne]

Did Lamb hack your account? lmao

Hahaha, right? I posted that last night after I took some cold medicine, and I think it shows!

Regardless, I don't think KQ8 was ever headed in a good direction.

Bt

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I think it was if you go back to the earliest concepts. She (Roberta) had a pretty epic, innovative idea with KQ8. I mean, yes you had Mario 64 and whatnot, but the idea of a sandbox 3D world was not something that was on anyone's radar at the time. The Mask of Eternity story itself was pretty epic compared to the much more shallow plots of the earlier games. Roberta didn't want there to be as much action as there ended up being; her vision was that the action would be limited to 7 bosses.

And at the end of the day, is it really worse than the NuKQ game? Worse than 7? Worse than (the original) KQ2?

 

[Lambonius]

KQ8 has such a non-existent crap story though, with absolutely no payoff at the end. It's got no heart at all.

 

[Sceptic]

the idea of a sandbox 3D world was not something that was on anyone's radar at the time.

Betrayal at Krondor, Might and Magic VI, Daggerfall...

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

the idea of a sandbox 3D world was not something that was on anyone's radar at the time.

Betrayal at Krondor, Might and Magic VI, Daggerfall...

Might & Magic VI came out in 1998, and Betrayal and Daggerfall were still much more limited in scope graphically and in terms of gameplay than what Roberta had in mind as early as 1994-1995 when she began developing KQ8. A lot of what happened to KQ8 wasn't her fault. Sierra was bought out midway through development. She had a team put over her head by the new head honchos who began to ignore her ideas and implement their own. They were religious nutjobs who objected to the 'Satanic' elements of the game and the violence. You also had people above them in Cendant pushing for even more action and more action. She lost a lot of her creative control around this time and was utterly depressed and wanted her name taken off the project for a period until Cendant caved and gave her some token changes back to what she'd originally wanted. There were problems with the engine and communication between Roberta's team and the team developing the game's engine, and they had to scramble and build their own engine which resulted in a TON of stuff being cut to save money and time. The project lost its art director and lead programmer midway through as well, which forced even more changes on the game.

The first person perspective will primarily be when you're "walking." There will still be third-person views for various "story point" areas and for various puzzle areas -- where a third-person perspective would work better than a first-person one. There is actually MORE we can do for the game, and make it MORE interactive by having the game be both first-person and third-person. Having a totally third-person game has cut back on interactivity because of all of the animation which has to be done for every single "thing" which can be done. By mixing both first and third-person, we'll be able to really "up" the interactivity level. Also -- being able to really 'explore" the world of King's Quest will take on new meaning because you'll be able to "walk" wherever YOU want to -- there will be no restrictions. Therefore -- we'll put all kinds of different things to find and/or do in many more locations than we normally would. Also -- a lot of people say that a first-person perspective, especially when "walking around" is much more personally immersive. This is NOT being done for technology sake -- it's being done because more and more people actually prefer a first-person approach...at least during the "walk" mode. It will feel good...trust me on that. I wouldn't do anything that wasn't great -- and wouldn't feel like King's Quest.

- Roberta, late 1995

Also -- at this point we THINK it's going to be first-person during the "walking and exploring" part of the game, but that hasn't been completely determined as yet. It may yet turn out to be totally third-person. Obviously, we want to do what would be the most fun and compelling. We're doing some experimenting right now...I "think" we're tending to swing the way of being able to be either first-person or third-person in most of the game, but be ONLY third-person in parts of the game where it makes sense -- or be ONLY first-person in other parts of the game where it makes sense. Therefore, it would utilize the best of both worlds, and feel very open and exploratory to the player

- Roberta, late 95

The first art director said:

I was the art director on Mask when it started. Mask had a big influence on why I and others left Sierra. It was obvious Sierra had, unfortunately, lost touch with the direction of the game industry in the mid 90's...The disappointing decisioin to force Mask into a 3d engine before 3d was ready for that kind of experience couldn't deliver the visuals needed... in the mid 90's the game audience started demanding a deeper or more fast paced experience and the slow story experience was a smaller audience that was difficult for game companies to justify production for...I know it was a forced project trying to use a technology that wasn't ready to deliver that kind of experience.

- John Shroades

Her ideas at the start were pretty ambitious for a kiddie-family friendly series:

"With past King's Quest games I focused around the Royal Family," Roberta Explains. "But I've done just about as much as I could with the Royal Family. I knew I needed to bring in a new character, and I wanted the character to be less Disney-ish and more cerebral. The spiritual father of Mask is J.R.R. Tolkien not Walt Disney," she concluded firmly. Connor is very much a new character. He is an inhabitant of Daventry, a kingdom he doesn't rule but whose fate lies in his hands. A terrible curse has turned all of the people living in Daventry, including the Royal Family themselves, into stone. Connor must find the answers behind the curse, including why it's been imposed, who imposed it, and, possibly most importantly, why he alone has been spared the terrible fate of his comrades. Connor is a warrior and it's his combination of strength, cunning, intuition, and intellect that makes him best-suited to save the kingdom.

- 1997

It would seem the King's Quest series has grown up a bit with the creation of Mask. Evidence of this continually surfaces throughout the game but is especially apparent with the central antagonist and Archarchon, Lucreto. His storyline parallels that of Lucifer, the fallen angel whose attempt to overtake Heaven ends him up in Hell.

- 1997

GameSpot seemed really hugely favorable of it in '96:

The backstory: Twenty years before the time of the game, a magic mask analogous to the Holy Grail exploded into seven pieces which - surprise - were scattered hither and yon on the cosmic winds. In this newest King's Quest installment, we meet Conner, the son of a poor fisherman, born at the instant of the momentous explosion and marked, figuratively and literally, by a piece of the enchanted shrapnel. In the present-day of Conner's 20th year, a horrible chaotic spell sweeps across the land, turning all mortals to stone except the auspicious Conner. His only hope to restore the pebbled populace of Daventry is to locate the seven fragments of the mask.

Will it bear such hallmarks as the Kingdom of Daventry?... Connor begins his adventure in the Kingdom of Daventry, but he doesn't stay there long. Seven new lands await!... The world of King's Quest: The Mask of Eternity reaches from the sunless Underworld of the living dead through the alchemical plains of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, into the ether of the Celestial Realm--and even to a dark mysterious island temple...

"The idea I sorta had in the back of my mind in developing this game, its not really heavy, or fleshed out strongly, it was the idea of exploring spirituality a little bit, I don't want to get heavy with this, but the idea of religions maybe, or lightness and darkness, chaos and order, and why people believe the way they do, and I sort of went back to primitive religions, and looking really at all religions, seeing what was some commonalities among them. ...and one of the things I found was the idea of a sun god as either the main god or even the sacred God we all believe in today has even had a lot of sun symbology with him...and so I looked back at, like Mesopotamia had their big god, who was a sun god, and he was shown by his symbol was a golden disk with wings. If you look at our mask that we have here, he is golden, and gold has been symbolic of the sun, because it's an incorruptible material, it always shines, it never tarnishes. You can see he sort of has that sun look, the rays are coming out from him. The wings above his eyes came from the old Mesopotamian god, the winged disk...and also the beard comes from the idea of the lion and Leo, and lions have also been associated with God, and sun gods, and the sun in ancient religions, and is also a very powerful male symbol...and so I took those ideas and worked with a very good artist, working for Sierra, by the name of John Shroades, and he, I gave him all those ideas, and I gave him different masks he could look at, and the different symbology of various masks, ancient masks, and he came up with this, and I just think it's a very strong symbol."
"ya, and the mask is, I mean really...even the idea of the Mask of Eternity, is a term that means essentially...again it is a reference to sort of a god, or old religions of a god. It is sort of like everybody has their own version of what your god could be or what it could look like or stand for. The image or the mask is each person's version or vision of what it could be. Because you could never really see the face of God."

As far as the combat:

The reason why combat was added, and first of all, I don't think people should take it negatively because combat is definitely can be part of a story, lot of people think combat, that is just an action game, just action. But if you think about some of the great movies that have been out there, some of the great books where combat has been part of it, if you think in terms of adding it to the story, and if it fits very well with the story, then I think it's very appropriate. My idea was I wanted to do a story that was more in like the tradition of the epic games, where you had your true hero that would go out, and think about some of the old legendary figures of King Arthur or Sir Lancelot or Jason and the Golden Fleece. I mean they were all super heroes that would go out and they would fight the monsters and they were working for good. ...and really also if you sorta think about the quest, the quest for faith, or even your inner self. It could be said fighting the monsters, is the same as fighting your own inner demons. But when you think in terms of putting it into the story, fighting chaos, and your trying to set order right, and your fighting evil, I think its very appropriate. How would Star Wars be without Luke Skywalker out there fighting the bad guys.

- Roberta, 98.

 

[Sceptic]

Might & Magic VI came out in 1998

and a few months before KQ8.

The whole defense of KQ8 as something revolutionary is cute. KQ8 was entirely reactive. 3D was A Thing, so they made it in 3D. Action-adventures were A Thing, so they made it an action-adventure. Everything the game did had already been done, and KQ8 was jumping on the bandwagon of whatever was a proven formula. It was as cargo cult as you can get.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Might & Magic VI came out in 1998

and a few months before KQ8.

The whole defense of KQ8 as something revolutionary is cute. KQ8 was entirely reactive. 3D was A Thing, so they made it in 3D. Action-adventures were A Thing, so they made it an action-adventure. Everything the game did had already been done, and KQ8 was jumping on the bandwagon of whatever was a proven formula. It was as cargo cult as you can get.

KQ8 was pretty much finished by the end of 1997. A lot of legal wrangling behind the scenes held back its release.
KQ8 was a mixture of everything out there at the time, which is what makes it unique. It was reactionary, but it combined awesome parts of a bunch of different genres. And yes, for Roberta to be having these ideas as early as 1994, and to have a pretty realized concept of this gigantic world, it was revolutionary. So much so, that as the art director said, a lot of the stuff she wanted was impossible because the technology wasn't at that level yet.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Also, graphically speaking, KQ8 was way beyond Might & Magic VI and Daggerfall. Both of those used 2D sprites for characters and lower polygon levels; graphically, they were more at home with stuff like Eye of the Beholder, which had come out years earlier.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Also Daggerfall and Might & Magic were just straight forward RPGs. KQ8 had a mix of Adventure, Action/Adventure, and RPG. Which for 1998 was very ambitious (especially since a lot of these elements were in place as early as 1996, if not earlier).

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

These were the game's graphics in its first version as of 1996:

Pretty advanced beyond those of Daggerfall and other 3D games.

 

[Dexter]

I remember playing and I think finishing it - and relatively liking it, but beyond that my memory is hazy, things about collecting all parts of the mask, getting keys, trying to get through grates, walking carefully because there were traps, I think parts of the map only got visible once you visited said areas, something about a swamp monster to get inside a castle in the middle of the swamp, shooting stuff with bow & arrow etc.

It hasn't really much to do with King's Quest as I remember it, or "Adventures". It was more of an ARPG light and one of the first ones I played in "actual 3D" (it was like a year before Ultima IX I believe, which I played the Demo of on my newly acquired GeForce 256 3D Accelerator, but never finished caused it lagged like shit and constantly crashed) e.g. not Elder Scrolls, Might & Magic or Albion.

 

[Sceptic]

KQ8 was a mixture of everything out there at the time, which is what makes it unique.

No, it was a mixture of everything that was seen as commercially successful, with no regard for anything other than how to make more money. There's nothing unique about this, every single industry in the world has operated like this from since before computers existed.

It's cute that you keep repeating this thing about "concept of a giant world" despite KQ8 not really having one, since each level is physically and thematically completely unrelated to the other, and since I've already listed games that go as far back as the 80s that had already done this.

I also notice how much you keep comparing "Roberta's vision" which didn't make it into the game to what the other released games actually look like. As opposed to, say JVC's vision of M&M6 which couldn't make it into the game because the technology didn't exist. Here's a clue: I don't give a shit what Roberta's unrealized vision for KQ8 was because that's not the game I played. On a similar note you keep comparing KQ8's 1996 prototype, from more than 2 years before the game was released, to Daggerfall, which was already released. How about we compare KQ8 the finished game to games that were prototypes back in 1998 and were released 2 or 3 years later? I'm not sure the KQ8 graphics would hold up that well... Actually why even do that? let's compare the KQ8 graphics to Unreal, which was released earlier in 1998 (and which was also being worked on in 1996). Mmm, the amazing technical genius kinda pales doesn't it.

I'm not gonna bother going through your arguments one by one, especially with how quickly you are to shift the goalposts, but there's one last I'll poke at, the whole sprites vs 3D models (I'd love to let the Eye of the Beholder comment slide, but I'll laugh at you anyway). MM6 might've gone the sprites route, but it let the game do things KQ8 wouldn't dream of (like hordes of enemies approaching you without any significant slowdown - a 1998 PC would've chocked on this many 3D models), and the MM6 engine's strength was in terrain generation, and what it did there was amazing.

I like KQ8, but your fanboyism is utterly ridiculous.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

]No, it was a mixture of everything that was seen as commercially successful, with no regard for anything other than how to make more money. There's nothing unique about this, every single industry in the world has operated like this from since before computers existed.

I think there was regard for wanting to move the adventure genre forward. Of course in a multi-million dollar corporation money is always a goal. Money was the goal for every single one of the games. I'm not suggesting it was some charitable affair. I do think Sierra/Roberta felt they were trying to push the envelope a bit.

It's cute that you keep repeating this thing about "concept of a giant world" despite KQ8 not really having one, since each level is physically and thematically completely unrelated to the other, and since I've already listed games that go as far back as the 80s that had already done this.

Yes, but they did so at the expense of the graphics. Cutting edge graphics had always been one of the main driving points for the KQ series. They wanted to have their cake and eat it; but due to palette issues with the 3D engine, they had to physically separate the worlds. Still, the concept which made it into the game - the idea of each world representing one of the medieval elements - is pretty cool to me.

I also notice how much you keep comparing "Roberta's vision" which didn't make it into the game to what the other released games actually look like. As opposed to, say JVC's vision of M&M6 which couldn't make it into the game because the technology didn't exist. Here's a clue: I don't give a shit what Roberta's unrealized vision for KQ8 was because that's not the game I played. On a similar note you keep comparing KQ8's 1996 prototype, from more than 2 years before the game was released, to Daggerfall, which was already released. How about we compare KQ8 the finished game to games that were prototypes back in 1998 and were released 2 or 3 years later? I'm not sure the KQ8 graphics would hold up that well... Actually why even do that? let's compare the KQ8 graphics to Unreal, which was released earlier in 1998 (and which was also being worked on in 1996). Mmm, the amazing technical genius kinda pales doesn't it.

They're about on par IMO, Unreal and KQ8 graphically that is.

I'm not gonna bother going through your arguments one by one, especially with how quickly you are to shift the goalposts, but there's one last I'll poke at, the whole sprites vs 3D models (I'd love to let the Eye of the Beholder comment slide, but I'll laugh at you anyway). MM6 might've gone the sprites route, but it let the game do things KQ8 wouldn't dream of (like hordes of enemies approaching you without any significant slowdown - a 1998 PC would've chocked on this many 3D models), and the MM6 engine's strength was in terrain generation, and what it did there was amazing.

I like KQ8, but your fanboyism is utterly ridiculous.

Yes, going full 3D so early actually held KQ8 back. There's a reason why so much stuff had to be cut. Then again if they'd released a game in 1998 that had the graphics of '96 but a huge open world as planned, it would've been even more pilloried. It was kind of a lose-lose proposition from the beginning (mainly due to the closed minds of a lot of adventure gamers).

 

[Aeschylus]

]No, it was a mixture of everything that was seen as commercially successful, with no regard for anything other than how to make more money. There's nothing unique about this, every single industry in the world has operated like this from since before computers existed.

I think there was regard for wanting to move the adventure genre forward. Of course in a multi-million dollar corporation money is always a goal. Money was the goal for every single one of the games. I'm not suggesting it was some charitable affair. I do think Sierra/Roberta felt they were trying to push the envelope a bit.

Nah, even Sierra's marketing magazine (Interaction) essentially admitted that Roberta Williams was just following the trends of 3d and action games in a preview they had of the game. I still remember the (accurate) sinking feeling I had as I read that all these years later.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I distinctly remember this really bizarre article in PC Gamer written by Roberta Williams' teenage son talking about the upcoming King's Quest 8, how his mom went to Japan and played Mario 64, and how it was influenced by that. I only remember it because he said he had never played Phantasmagoria because he's too young, despite the fact that he must have been like 16 at the time (or maybe even 17, as it must have been 1996, before Mario 64 was released in the USA, but after it was release din Japan). The whole thing had a weird advertisement vibe to it. I have no idea why PC Gamer thought it would be a good idea to have her son write an article.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I distinctly remember this really bizarre article in PC Gamer written by Roberta Williams' teenage son talking about the upcoming King's Quest 8, how his mom went to Japan and played Mario 64, and how it was influenced by that. I only remember it because he said he had never played Phantasmagoria because he's too young, despite the fact that he must have been like 16 at the time (or maybe even 17, as it must have been 1996, before Mario 64 was released in the USA, but after it was release din Japan). The whole thing had a weird advertisement vibe to it. I have no idea why PC Gamer thought it would be a good idea to have her son write an article.

The article you refer to was copy and pasted from InterAction Magazine, the Spring 1997 issue. Her son had a column in that magazine.

"The traditional adventure game is dead." At least, that's what my dad says. He thinks it's time change adventure games at least as much as the gamers have changed themselves have changed over the years. It's time to make them "less pretentious, more open-ended, faster paced, and just more fun to play than they have been." After all, he's reasoned, "what's the use of creating these super-serious, overly literary and downright studious games when the major audience that will play them played a Nintendo or Sega last year? These folks are used to playing games where the correct answer to any problem might be jumping over something, hitting it with a hammer, or maybe even shooting it with a bazooka. Why hassle through all the literary pretense when most of today's gamers just want to blow something up?"

Well, he's got a point. When you take a look at the best-seller lists, it's hard to miss names like Quake, Diablo, Duke Nukem, and Cybergladiators. These action-oriented games have replaced more sophisticated games on the shelves, and it doesn't look like that pattern is going to change anytime soon. (Even RAMA isn't selling as well as these arcade games--and you gotta find that hard to believe if you know how good that adventure is.) It's easy to tell that adventure games are going to have to evolve, or they'll die completely. There's only so much room on the shelves at the software store, and it goes to the games that sell the tonnage.

My mom is aware of all this, of course, although she still prefers to think that adventure gamers appreciate the more intelligent puzzles, the more literary storytelling, and the more "mature" challenges of the adventure genre. But you don't have to hit her with a board to get her attention. She's a smart lady, and she wants to see adventure games survive into the next century, even if it does mean she needs to build them a little differently.

So for the last half year or so, Mom's been playing games like crazy. She was one of the first people I know who ever played Mario 64, and she's also played Duke, Tomb Raider, and all the other 3D action games. (Isn't life tough? Guess who gets to grab all those games when she's done with them?) Anyway, after mega-hours of playing and playing and playing, she finally sat down with a "team" of developers a few months ago and started work on what will probably be the most radical King's Quest adventure game since the series began. She calls it The Mask of Eternity.

I have to admit, I'm very impressed with Mom's design. The early gameplay stuff I've tooled around with is very "Mario64"-ish with shades of Tomb Raider, Quake, and even a little Diablo thrown in. Mom says the sim people are Dynamix are actually building the engine that makes the game run, so there may be some Red Baron and EarthSiege in there, too. Mom's spending a solid bundle of bucks on this one, and she's got a ton of people working on it, so it wouldn't surprise me. It still has all the plot and literary depth of her old adventure games, and she even has a whole new cast of characters and even a new hero who will take on the dangers of Daventry. The backstory concerns a group of priestly beings who guard a powerful object in a faraway land, and how one day, one of them gets greedy and decides to steal the object. It blows up in his face. The pieces of the object go everywhere, and the blast from the explosion turns every living creature in Daventry into stone. Well, not everyone - it wouldn't be a very interesting game if everyone were stone-prone, would it?

The star of Mask, a peasant named Connor, is one of the few who survives the blast because a piece of the object basically lands on him and shields him from the evil magic. From there, it gets crazy, all kind of nasty monsters. Mom hates when I give away the plot to her games, but I can tell you it gets a whole lot more complex than "go waste an alien."

It's a little early to tell yet, and a lot of what I've seen of Mask of Eternity comes from the files I find on Mom's hard drive and the stacks of written notes she leaves all over the kitchen table, but it looks pretty cool and it's actually a Mom game I really look forward to playing. (The last game of hers I played was Phantas - but I only played it because she absolutely forbade it.) It's really coming along very well now that everyone agrees on what the game will look like, so Mom expects to have this one in stores around September. (When she shuts the door, all the programmers laugh and tell me it will be November earliest, so we'll see.)

I know I'm her son and all, but I still think it's gonna be good. You should watch for it."

 

[felipepepe]

Back in the day, I was mind-blown when I had to chop down a tree to block a river and stop the water wheel. That was like TEH FUTURE OF PUZZLES, WITH PHYSICS AND SHIT BRO!

Unfortunately, that's like the only decent "puzzle" in the game - it's pure downfall from there.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

]No, it was a mixture of everything that was seen as commercially successful, with no regard for anything other than how to make more money. There's nothing unique about this, every single industry in the world has operated like this from since before computers existed.

I think there was regard for wanting to move the adventure genre forward. Of course in a multi-million dollar corporation money is always a goal. Money was the goal for every single one of the games. I'm not suggesting it was some charitable affair. I do think Sierra/Roberta felt they were trying to push the envelope a bit.

Nah, even Sierra's marketing magazine (Interaction) essentially admitted that Roberta Williams was just following the trends of 3d and action games in a preview they had of the game. I still remember the (accurate) sinking feeling I had as I read that all these years later.

Yes, it was pretty open that she had studied Mario 64, Warcraft, Anvil of Dawn, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem and Diablo as well as other contemporary adventure games and was looking to fuse all of those elements together to create something new. I know some people who were not "bought and paid for", who actually hadn't liked KQ7 for example, thought what they were seeing was (at least in 1996) "revolutionary". GameSpot, at the time, praised what they were shown in May 1996.

Here was another preview/impressions from Sept 96:

"
History: Since the summer of 1984, over 12 years, which marked the release of Kings Quest: Quest for the Crown, there have been seven King’s Quest games based on the royal family of Daventry and all created an nurtured by Roberta Williams. Roberta, the creator of the King’s Quest series and Sierra Online, has decided to "unload" King Graham, his family and the cute plot driven characters and game play which has characterized the long standing series. (see reviews below for King’s Quest V, VI, and VII - Ed.)

Plot: A new character emerges from the chaos of divesting ourselves of the minions of the Graham family. Connor, the destitute fisherman’s son, who is scarred at birth by a fragment of a magical fragment of an explosion of a Holy mask of ancient religious significance and power. The Mask of Eternity is said to be touched by God and given to man as a sign of his covenant.

Connor has just lived 20 boring years as a fisherman’s son only to discover that he is somehow special. So special in fact that when a spell turns every one in the land into stone, he is spared. Connor must find all the seven fragments of the mask to free his family, friends, even people he don’t like, and most probably his country, the world, and even the universe from extinction. Without conflict there is no story and most of the old stories are made up of the same old conflicts.

Game play: Everyone turned to stone is a divisive scheme allows Sierra to simplify the game by eliminating all the other characters and communication with those characters which King’s Questers have come to know and love. You see there is no one in this land moving around but Connor in this immense three dimensional (3D) landscape.

As the game player and alter ego of Connor who is represented in third person view, or optionally first person view, you are free to pursue a plot that is completely denuded of the normal King’s Quest plot elements. The plot is expected to be free form and flowing a kind of "go anywhere do anything" in an immense world. Mask of Eternity is a new, fresh, clean canvas on which Roberta is painting her revolutionary new concept in computer graphic adventure games.

Graphics: All the graphics in the game are based on polygonal graphics, with light-sourced, texture-mapped, shadow enabled, three-dimensional, high-resolution features to portray a huge world filled with buildings, trees, lakes, and of course all the non-mortal beings who have been spared by the evil spell"

That was written by Al Giovetti, a game reviewer at the time who had done reviews of all 7 KQ games (as well as tons of non-Sierra games).

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Back in the day, I was mind-blown when I had to chop down a tree to block a river and stop the water wheel. That was like TEH FUTURE OF PUZZLES, WITH PHYSICS AND SHIT BRO!

Unfortunately, that's like the only decent "puzzle" in the game - it's pure downfall from there.

There a lot of physical puzzles in the game. The game is like 50% puzzles/50% action.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I distinctly remember this really bizarre article in PC Gamer written by Roberta Williams' teenage son talking about the upcoming King's Quest 8, how his mom went to Japan and played Mario 64, and how it was influenced by that. I only remember it because he said he had never played Phantasmagoria because he's too young, despite the fact that he must have been like 16 at the time (or maybe even 17, as it must have been 1996, before Mario 64 was released in the USA, but after it was release din Japan). The whole thing had a weird advertisement vibe to it. I have no idea why PC Gamer thought it would be a good idea to have her son write an article.

The article you refer to was copy and pasted from InterAction Magazine, the Spring 1997 issue. Her son had a column in that magazine.

"The traditional adventure game is dead." At least, that's what my dad says. He thinks it's time change adventure games at least as much as the gamers have changed themselves have changed over the years. It's time to make them "less pretentious, more open-ended, faster paced, and just more fun to play than they have been." After all, he's reasoned, "what's the use of creating these super-serious, overly literary and downright studious games when the major audience that will play them played a Nintendo or Sega last year? These folks are used to playing games where the correct answer to any problem might be jumping over something, hitting it with a hammer, or maybe even shooting it with a bazooka. Why hassle through all the literary pretense when most of today's gamers just want to blow something up?"

Well, he's got a point. When you take a look at the best-seller lists, it's hard to miss names like Quake, Diablo, Duke Nukem, and Cybergladiators. These action-oriented games have replaced more sophisticated games on the shelves, and it doesn't look like that pattern is going to change anytime soon. (Even RAMA isn't selling as well as these arcade games--and you gotta find that hard to believe if you know how good that adventure is.) It's easy to tell that adventure games are going to have to evolve, or they'll die completely. There's only so much room on the shelves at the software store, and it goes to the games that sell the tonnage.

My mom is aware of all this, of course, although she still prefers to think that adventure gamers appreciate the more intelligent puzzles, the more literary storytelling, and the more "mature" challenges of the adventure genre. But you don't have to hit her with a board to get her attention. She's a smart lady, and she wants to see adventure games survive into the next century, even if it does mean she needs to build them a little differently.

So for the last half year or so, Mom's been playing games like crazy. She was one of the first people I know who ever played Mario 64, and she's also played Duke, Tomb Raider, and all the other 3D action games. (Isn't life tough? Guess who gets to grab all those games when she's done with them?) Anyway, after mega-hours of playing and playing and playing, she finally sat down with a "team" of developers a few months ago and started work on what will probably be the most radical King's Quest adventure game since the series began. She calls it The Mask of Eternity.

I have to admit, I'm very impressed with Mom's design. The early gameplay stuff I've tooled around with is very "Mario64"-ish with shades of Tomb Raider, Quake, and even a little Diablo thrown in. Mom says the sim people are Dynamix are actually building the engine that makes the game run, so there may be some Red Baron and EarthSiege in there, too. Mom's spending a solid bundle of bucks on this one, and she's got a ton of people working on it, so it wouldn't surprise me. It still has all the plot and literary depth of her old adventure games, and she even has a whole new cast of characters and even a new hero who will take on the dangers of Daventry. The backstory concerns a group of priestly beings who guard a powerful object in a faraway land, and how one day, one of them gets greedy and decides to steal the object. It blows up in his face. The pieces of the object go everywhere, and the blast from the explosion turns every living creature in Daventry into stone. Well, not everyone - it wouldn't be a very interesting game if everyone were stone-prone, would it?

The star of Mask, a peasant named Connor, is one of the few who survives the blast because a piece of the object basically lands on him and shields him from the evil magic. From there, it gets crazy, all kind of nasty monsters. Mom hates when I give away the plot to her games, but I can tell you it gets a whole lot more complex than "go waste an alien."

It's a little early to tell yet, and a lot of what I've seen of Mask of Eternity comes from the files I find on Mom's hard drive and the stacks of written notes she leaves all over the kitchen table, but it looks pretty cool and it's actually a Mom game I really look forward to playing. (The last game of hers I played was Phantas - but I only played it because she absolutely forbade it.) It's really coming along very well now that everyone agrees on what the game will look like, so Mom expects to have this one in stores around September. (When she shuts the door, all the programmers laugh and tell me it will be November earliest, so we'll see.)

I know I'm her son and all, but I still think it's gonna be good. You should watch for it."

Huh. That's interesting, not because of its content, but more because it's interesting to see how much of a random article I remember 20 years later (apparently he did play Phantasmagoria, despite it being forbidden).

I'm 100% certain I read it in PC Gamer, though, as I had a subscription to it and I wasn't even aware that Interaction magazine existed until today. Maybe they republished it from Sierra's company magazine?

 

[felipepepe]

There a lot of physical puzzles in the game. The game is like 50% puzzles/50% action.

Yeah, but most are shitty. Can you take seriously an adventure game where one of the 3 end-game trials to prove yourself worthy is this:

Yeah, it's "physics-based"... so what?

 

[MRY]

Well, he's got a point. When you take a look at the best-seller lists, it's hard to miss names like Quake, Diablo, Duke Nukem, and Cybergladiators.

The article is cringeworthy for many reasons, but this is totally the best part. I had never even heard of "Cybergladiators." It has a tiny stub article on Wikipedia, and does not appear to have been successful at all. It appears that he included it because it was published by Sierra, and he was trying to sneakily promote it, but to me it has the feel of that scene in 40-Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carrell describes breasts as feeling like bags of sand.

The second best part is that this whole thing is set forth as a weird Freudian fight between his parents with him trying to mediate, including the plea that "you don't have to hit [my mom] with a board to get her attention." Ken Williams apparently was of the old breed.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

[QUOTE="Juan_Carlo, post: 4265997, member: 15413"

The second best part is that this whole thing is set forth as a weird Freudian fight between his parents with him trying to mediate, including the plea that "you don't have to hit [my mom] with a board to get her attention." Ken Williams apparently was of the old breed.[/QUOTE]

Lol.

 

[Boleskine]