Decline New King's Quest game - MASSIVE DECLINE Everything is shit

[Crooked Bee]

So, about that new upcoming King's Quest game... Figured we could use a separate thread for it.

Here's the original announcement made by Activision about the Sierra brand revival, as told by Eurogamer:

Six years after the company closed, a casualty of the merger between parent company Vivendi and Activision, Sierra is back. There's even better news, too - its return sees an all-new Geometry Wars, as well as a fresh installment in the King's Quest series.

Sierra's revival comes after Activision teased the news late last week with a brief video. Founded by Ken and Roberta Williams in 1979, Sierra was a label famous for its graphic adventure games such as Space Quest, King's Quest and Police Quest. The new King's Quest is due in 2015, and revolves around the character of King Graham as he shares tales of his adventures with his granddaughter.

"We're very proud of what we created all those years ago with Sierra Online, and today's news about carrying Sierra forward as an indie-specific brand is very encouraging," said Sierra founder Ken Williams in an official statement. "We look forward to seeing Sierra's independent spirit live on, and are especially excited to see what The Odd Gentlemen will do with King's Quest."

In latest news,

https://twitter.com/TheOddGentlemen/status/526885279970254849

 

[felipepepe]

I want to be excited, but these guys have absolutely nothing in their background to suggest being able to deliver a decent King Quest game...

 

[Jaesun]

Purveyors of fine video gaming: Winterbottom, Flea Symphony & soon King's Quest!

So Activision just randomly selected some "indie" developer then threw the King's Quest licence at them?

Anyways, expecting horribly dumbed down accessible iPhone app garbage. There is no way in hell Activison will let them do ANYTHING remotely like the older KQ games, difficulty wise. Broken Age will probably be Mystlike compared to this.

 

[Crooked Bee]

http://blog.theoddgentlemen.com/post/101694832159/meeting-roberta-and-ken-williams

King’s Quest has been part of my life, and the lives of The Odd Gentlemen team since we could type, move a mouse, and discovered the puzzle solving powers of pie. King’s Quest is part of us, now more than ever. Its history and its legacy are something we respect and are mindful of. Roberta and Ken Williams created King’s Quest 30 years ago, and we are blessed and humbled to carry on the Sierra legacy. It was very important to us to get the original creators’ approval. We wanted to make sure our vision aligned to what the core of the classic games were.

Last week we flew to Seattle to meet Roberta and Ken. I was extremely nervous. Would they like it? Did we have the right balance of gameplay and storytelling? Would the art style emotionally resonate? As soon as the Williams stepped into the room my anxiety subsided. It was one of the most magical experiences of my career. Roberta and Ken are wonderful people, full of joy, and true sages of adventure game knowledge. We showed them our concept art, the story progression, and finally presented the game.

The room was filled with smiles, laughs, and wows. I even got to have a very intimate conversation with Roberta about what Sierra was trying to achieve and where The Odd Gentlemen as a company is headed. As a designer it was amazing to hear advice from Roberta who has always been an inspiration. Through the meeting we discovered how aligned our creative ideals are.

We left the meeting very energized about the game we are making and then received this email:

To Matt and Lindsey, Bill and Scott,

I, too, wish to thank you for a lovely morning yesterday reliving – to some extent – my old life as a Sierra game designer. I admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, and also somewhat nervous because I haven’t been in the computer game industry (notice I call it computer game industry rather that the video game industry; that shows how far back I go!) in too many years to contemplate! But you guys blew me away with your ideas, your creativity and the beauty of the newest King Quest game. But best of all, I could see that you truly are the ones to take King’s Quest into the 21st century and reintroduce it to a whole new generation. You totally have it down!

I can’t wait to see how it develops, I can’t wait to play it myself – and I truly can’t wait to see how it blows away the competition!!

Best to you –

Roberta

We can’t wait to show you what you showed Roberta and Ken Williams. Here are some pictures from the day, and you can always follow @theoddgentlemen on twitter for the latest updates.

-Matt Korba Creative Director, King’s Quest

tl;dr All hype, no substance

 

[taxalot]

Which one is it ?

"I really needed the money and they said a picture and an email would do."

or

"I don't care about gaming anymore. Whatever. This is probably what the kids want to play these days."

This reminds me a lot of this

 

[groke]

http://blog.theoddgentlemen.com/post/101694832159/meeting-roberta-and-ken-williams

King’s Quest has been part of my life, and the lives of The Odd Gentlemen team since we could type, move a mouse, and discovered the puzzle solving powers of pie. King’s Quest is part of us, now more than ever. Its history and its legacy are something we respect and are mindful of. Roberta and Ken Williams created King’s Quest 30 years ago, and we are blessed and humbled to carry on the Sierra legacy. It was very important to us to get the original creators’ approval. We wanted to make sure our vision aligned to what the core of the classic games were.

Last week we flew to Seattle to meet Roberta and Ken. I was extremely nervous. Would they like it? Did we have the right balance of gameplay and storytelling? Would the art style emotionally resonate? As soon as the Williams stepped into the room my anxiety subsided. It was one of the most magical experiences of my career. Roberta and Ken are wonderful people, full of joy, and true sages of adventure game knowledge. We showed them our concept art, the story progression, and finally presented the game.

The room was filled with smiles, laughs, and wows. I even got to have a very intimate conversation with Roberta about what Sierra was trying to achieve and where The Odd Gentlemen as a company is headed. As a designer it was amazing to hear advice from Roberta who has always been an inspiration. Through the meeting we discovered how aligned our creative ideals are.

We left the meeting very energized about the game we are making and then received this email:

To Matt and Lindsey, Bill and Scott,

I, too, wish to thank you for a lovely morning yesterday reliving – to some extent – my old life as a Sierra game designer. I admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, and also somewhat nervous because I haven’t been in the computer game industry (notice I call it computer game industry rather that the video game industry; that shows how far back I go!) in too many years to contemplate! But you guys blew me away with your ideas, your creativity and the beauty of the newest King Quest game. But best of all, I could see that you truly are the ones to take King’s Quest into the 21st century and reintroduce it to a whole new generation. You totally have it down!

I can’t wait to see how it develops, I can’t wait to play it myself – and I truly can’t wait to see how it blows away the competition!!

Best to you –

Roberta

We can’t wait to show you what you showed Roberta and Ken Williams. Here are some pictures from the day, and you can always follow @theoddgentlemen on twitter for the latest updates.

-Matt Korba Creative Director, King’s Quest

tl;dr All hype, no substance

Quality Investigative Reporting at Prestigious Magazine RPGCodex.

 

[Crooked Bee]

agreed.

 

[felipepepe]

I'm betting on a hipster version of King Quest VII, with tablet interface.

 

[MRY]

While there is no reason to expect good things from this, I think it's unfair to assume bad faith or frivolousness on the part of either the developers or Roberta Williams. I imagine the developers really do have great fondness for the series, and a sense of reverence at meeting her. Even though my own KQ feelings are mixed, if someone asked me to make a sequel I'd be floored, and if I had a chance to chat about it with Roberta Williams I'd be humbled. Hence my assumption that the developers are (irrespective of whether they can pull it off) quite earnest when they talk about trying to make a worthy sequel.

As for Roberta Williams, I imagine it's very flattering even after all this time to have developers come to you with humble reverence and ask your blessing for what they're doing. I'm sure the presentation was very good, and the developers' love of the series (and their own project) came through. If someone came to me with a good-looking, nice-sounding pitch for a fan sequel to Primordia, I'm sure I'd be flattered beyond words, and would write something glowing to support the project. I'm sure she's spent a lifetime being flattered, so maybe she's gotten better at resisting it, but I dunno . . . I think it's always nice to hear something nice.

None of this means that the game will be good. Only that I think there's a non-cynical explanation for the blog post.

Also, I laughed at "a very intimate conversation."

 

[Jaesun]

This reminds me a lot of this

Exactly. HAY GUIZE! WE TOOK A PICTURE OF THE ORIGINAL CREATORS WITH US. OMG ITZ GONNA BE AWESOME!

And it was fucking shit.

 

[groke]

That dude's expression is like a comprehensive summary of the archetypal franchise rapist.

"We're making that game you love, pls believe me! It'll be different this time!"

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

While there is no reason to expect good things from this, I think it's unfair to assume bad faith or frivolousness on the part of either the developers or Roberta Williams. I imagine the developers really do have great fondness for the series, and a sense of reverence at meeting her. Even though my own KQ feelings are mixed, if someone asked me to make a sequel I'd be floored, and if I had a chance to chat about it with Roberta Williams I'd be humbled. Hence my assumption that the developers are (irrespective of whether they can pull it off) quite earnest when they talk about trying to make a worthy sequel.

As for Roberta Williams, I imagine it's very flattering even after all this time to have developers come to you with humble reverence and ask your blessing for what they're doing. I'm sure the presentation was very good, and the developers' love of the series (and their own project) came through. If someone came to me with a good-looking, nice-sounding pitch for a fan sequel to Primordia, I'm sure I'd be flattered beyond words, and would write something glowing to support the project. I'm sure she's spent a lifetime being flattered, so maybe she's gotten better at resisting it, but I dunno . . . I think it's always nice to hear something nice.

None of this means that the game will be good. Only that I think there's a non-cynical explanation for the blog post.

Also, I laughed at "a very intimate conversation."

Cannot brofist enough.

 

[MRY]

To me, the key to getting King's Quest right is to situate it squarely in folk tales rather than fantasy or mythology. It's why I've always felt that (contrary to most people's views), KQVI doesn't sit quite right. Its tone is a bit too fantasy, and its content is a bit too mythological. The same is somewhat true of KQIII, but less so. I realize that KQVI and III are very popular, in no small part because they are more epic, heroic, narratively coherent, etc., whereas the others feel more like a chain of zany and tonally inconsistent fairy tales. But that (to me) is part of the games' charm. (This is also why I'm not a big fan of the KQII VGA that AGDI did. The goal of imposing narrative coherence, and the inclusion of a cool fantasy werewolf plot, just struck me as a misguided effort to square a round peg.) There is still plenty of room in folklore to be plumbed. Hopefully these guys go that route.

But then, I'm not sure why they should make a game that meets my idiosyncratic preferences, which are probably not shared with most KQ fans, especially since the likelihood of my playing it is almost zero.

 

[ghostdog]

Bah they should have given it to Crystal Shard. After all A Tale of two Kingdoms and Heroine's Quest are the best love letters anyone could write to Sierra and are actually better than most Sierra games.

 

[Redlands]

Bah they should have given it to Crystal Shard. After all A Tale of two Kingdoms and Heroine's Quest are the best love letters anyone could write to Sierra and are actually better than most Sierra games.

The reason I suspect they probably wouldn't have is because Crystal Shard haven't made a game that's been sold (at least from what I recall). It'd be quite hard to figure out who to pay money to if they already weren't set up as a proper company.

Also probably because they would make good Sierra-style games, when there's a much easier, larger market going the casual Telltale/hidden object/etc route.

 

[Decado]

Look at all the misogyny in this thread!

KQ is an odd beast, insofar as the difficulty level nowadays would be considered punishing, whereas back in the day it was just a part of the game. In fact, it was part of what made those games fun. It is legitimately possible in KQ3 to forget to grab a bowl of porridge, make it back to your shitheel wizard/owner's house, pass the time limit, and then get turned into a fucking frog or whatever. And more than that, it's possible for all of this to happen without the player knowing it is going to happen until it is too late, and bam you've wasted 45 minutes and all of your savegames are fucking worthless. In today's world of microtransactions and F2P and level scaling, the concept of this game is a hard sell.

So what it really boils down to is rather simple: do these developers care about remaining true to the artistic vision, or to making higher profits? Because they can only pick one. I guarantee you that if these guys release some mealy-mouth bullshit blog post about "Finding the sweet spot between difficulty and accessibility" or some other similarly intentioned horseshit, the game will be terrible. Adventure games are supposed to be hard. Fuck with that at your peril.

 

[Jaesun]

So what it really boils down to is rather simple: do these developers care about remaining true to the artistic vision, or to making higher profits?

Activision isn't in business for making artistic games. So you know what the answer is....

 

[Fizzii]

Bah they should have given it to Crystal Shard. After all A Tale of two Kingdoms and Heroine's Quest are the best love letters anyone could write to Sierra and are actually better than most Sierra games.

Thanks, I personally think Radiant is a brilliant game designer and programmer. He's really good to work with anyway.

The reason I suspect they probably wouldn't have is because Crystal Shard haven't made a game that's been sold (at least from what I recall). It'd be quite hard to figure out who to pay money to if they already weren't set up as a proper company.

Also probably because they would make good Sierra-style games, when there's a much easier, larger market going the casual Telltale/hidden object/etc route.

Yep, also we don't really have a big network of industry contacts since we do this in our free time, and not looking to do this on a full time basis. I would think that setting up a company would be relatively straightforward by comparison.

I reckon it should be straightforward to design "easy/casual" games (make the puzzles more obvious), so I think we could make a casual game if we really wanted to. Personally though, I like to see some devilish (albeit, still logical) puzzles, because it's just fun to see players pull their hairs out over them

 

[mindx2]

I reckon it should be straightforward to design "easy/casual" games (make the puzzles more obvious), so I think we could make a casual game if we really wanted to.

Personally though, I like to see some devilish (albeit, still logical) puzzles, because it's just fun to see players pull their hairs out over them

 

[Redlands]

I reckon it should be straightforward to design "easy/casual" games (make the puzzles more obvious), so I think we could make a casual game if we really wanted to.

I wouldn't worry too much about this, they after all made a pretty good casual game in Quest for Yrolg.

 

[LESS T_T]

There's no surprise.

 

[Tehdagah]

No PC?

 

[LESS T_T]

No PC?

It's out on PC and consoles in Fall 2015.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

mask of eternity 2

 

[Boleskine]