View Full Version : King's Quest: Adventures of Graham [Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360]
Rating Category:
Everyone 10+
Content Descriptors:
Fantasy Violence
Rating Summary:
This is an adventure game in which players assume the role of a knight (Graham) as he navigates the kingdom of Daventry. As players explore the open world, they solve puzzles, interact with characters, and engage in various tasks. Some scenes allow players to aim a bow and arrow at goblins or a dragon; goblins are depicted throwing spears at the player's character. Puzzle fail-scenarios depict the player's character falling into chasms or a river, being crushed by a boulder, and getting struck on the head with a mace.
Source: https://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=33972
King’s Quest is a collection of five different chapter releases, each focusing on an untold tale in Graham’s past. In each chapter, an aging King Graham reflects on his life of adventure with his granddaughter, Gwendolyn.
King's Quest brings adventure gaming into a new era while staying true to what made the original games beloved; the unforgettable storytelling, wit, puzzles, and of course plenty of ways to die!
Select between the noble pillars of Bravery, Wisdom, and Compassion to see what rippling effects these choices will have on Graham’s journey as well as later chapters.
Puzzles will offer multiple solutions, encouraging players to experiment with their inventory and environment.
Befriend the most unexpected and peculiar of companions throughout Daventry!
Future chapters can be downloaded from in-game upon individual release throughout 2015 and 2016.
Source: http://store.steampowered.com/app/345390/
Downloads-only for now, but hopefully this'll get a physical release at some point. As usual these days, the best bet for getting physical copies of PC games is... importing them from Europe!
Edmond Dantes
08-12-2015, 05:00 AM
I had heard this was coming. To be honest I have mixed feelings.
See part of the thing with all Sierra's adventure games was that Sierra as a whole had this special "family" feeling about it, especially because the games would cross-reference each other (like the one button you can press in Space Quest that causes you to crash into Daventry) and how the games in general all felt similar despite having their own stories, themes and worlds.
To put it in a comic book context, it would be like if Spider-Man, Iron-Man and Fantastic Four all wound up being owned by different companies. They may continue being good (or not-good) comics but they wouldn't be the same as they used to be.
I also want to know how much involvement Roberta Williams has with these new chapters. I'd hate to think of a KQ without her.
Tanooki
08-12-2015, 09:17 AM
Isn't that the truth about Europe, sucks doesn't it? I often have found over the years some of these games we don't get showing up as overstock new titles at Half Price Books of all places. I've seen things like various Sega titles such as Crazy Taxi with the PEGI rating on the front in a DVD sized box and stuff from various other makers too. Maybe I'll get lucky and see this in a year or less? I never was large into this as games like this tended to go over my head with their weird convoluted logic(or lack of) to trigger events, yet KQ5 I enjoyed a lot on PC CD and the NES and did finish (PC) the game once or twice. I'd be curious to see how this turns out but if it has a physical release without STEAM crippling it being attached, I see no reason to rush towards that as a choice.
Gameguy
08-12-2015, 10:48 PM
The graphics style is kind of ugly. Not sure if I can get used to it.
wizardofwor1975
08-13-2015, 10:49 AM
I also want to know how much involvement Roberta Williams has with these new chapters. I'd hate to think of a KQ without her.
I agree with Ed. Without Roberta it just wouldn't feel like KQ to me. Does anyone know if she had any input at all? In any event, I'll try to keep an open mind.
Gentlegamer
08-13-2015, 04:31 PM
I watched the Giant Bomb quicklook:
1. When you find an item it uses the jingle from the old KQ games
2. Christopher Lloyd voices old King Graham (narrator)
3. Shawn Wallace voices a character
I'm in, but will probably wait until all episodes are out and get the bundle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwX7nARrr4
Daria
08-14-2015, 09:36 AM
I watched the Giant Bomb quicklook:
1. When you find an item it uses the jingle from the old KQ games
2. Christopher Lloyd voices old King Graham (narrator)
3. Shawn Wallace voices a character
I'm in, but will probably wait until all episodes are out and get the bundle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhwX7nARrr4
That is one long "quick look" but thanks for posting that. AT first I had zero interest in a reboot but... that actually looks good.
Gentlegamer
08-14-2015, 04:59 PM
That is one long "quick look" but thanks for posting that. AT first I had zero interest in a reboot but... that actually looks good.
Giant Bomb Quick Looks are previews where they play the first bit of a game, and range from 30 min to an hour or so.
I was skeptical too until I saw the quick look. As Brad says in the video, I was pleasantly surprised that it's an actual adventure game.
I've played this for about two hours now.
Young Graham's voice is completely different from KQ5 and KQ6, Young Graham's personality is all wrong, Young Graham's and Old Graham's voices don't match, they got Hollywood actors and "British Hollywood" actors to play the characters, the game is too easy, it features too much voice-over, it is very linear, you can't skip lines of dialog, you can't skip cut-scenes, you can't manually save, the new characters don't really fit the world of KQ, there is too much in the way of modern talking and attitude in the dialog, there haven't been any fairy tale nor nursery rhyme characters nor story appearances yet and I don't think there will be, and the game tries to put a joke into most lines of dialog.
Now don't get me wrong, the original King's Quest games featured a lot of hidden jokes, but you usually had to go out of your way to find them like looking at some obscure background object or using an inventory item in a nonsensical way. Here most of the normal text contains jokes and lots of them. It's like the developers were trying to make a "Princess Bride" version of "Monkey Island" (Or is that the other way around?) instead of a -real- King's Quest.
You play by moving your character with the WASD or arrow keys. Enter/spacebar interacts, Tab brings up the inventory. Inventory items are tossed away once you don't need them anymore even if this seems illogical. (The game even makes jokes about this.) And the graphical style is really unappealing. It exists somewhere in-between Borderlands and the modern look of TellTale's games.
I've had this game crash A LOT. I keep getting a "Ran out of video memory" error message. It seems that the game keeps allocating blocks of video RAM for its threads without un-allocating them. And once too much memory is held by old threads instead of being freed when the game is done with it, BLAMMO!, it crashes. And unfortunately, clearing the VRAM requires that you reboot the computer. *sigh*
Do not read this next sentence if you want to avoid spoilers: it seems that not only is this game a way to catch up new players on the (re-imagined) world of King's Quest, but it seems it is also (going by the story so far) setting things up to kill off King Graham at the end of the story in these "Adventures of Graham" so that his granddaughter, Gwendolyn, can succeed him. It's like, "Aagh! Don't bring him back just to off him!" Graham is the heart and the very keystone of the KQ series, and without him, everything just tumbles down.
Honestly, I would have probably liked this game more if it wasn't a "King's Quest" in name. If it were named instead, let's say, "The Magical Adventures of Llewellyn," and had no connection to the KQ series, then it would have stood on its own with its own identity instead of feeling like a wannabe and a pretender to the throne.
Don't get me wrong, it is a nice, funny game. But it really is more for modern gamers and casuals than long-time fans of adventure games and Sierra Online's classic games in particular.
Is it a proper King's Quest? No.
Was Roberta Williams, Ken Williams, and/or Jane Jensen creatively involved in the project? No.
Was Roberta Williams, Ken Williams, and/or Jane Jensen consulted on the project? No.
Was "The Odd Gentlemen," the developer of this game, the original developer on this new King's Quest? No, Telltale was.
Is it a funny game? Yes.
Is it a good adventure game? Yes.
Is it a good game? Yes.
But it still isn't a true and proper King's Quest. It is King's Quest more in name than in spirit.
Gentlegamer
08-30-2015, 07:19 PM
But at least it's better than Mask of Eternity, right?
Gentlegamer, I don't know about that. By which I mean, I own Mask of Eternity, but I haven't played it. I bought it back in the spring of 2011, but I didn't get a chance to play it before I moved that summer and it is still stored away.
Gentlegamer
08-31-2015, 05:16 PM
Play Mask of Eternity, which was made by Roberta Williams, and then you'll feel like nuKQ is a worthy successor to the original KQ lineage, I bet.
Jorpho
08-31-2015, 11:32 PM
Honestly, I would have probably liked this game more if it wasn't a "King's Quest" in name. If it were named instead, let's say, "The Magical Adventures of Llewellyn," and had no connection to the KQ series, then it would have stood on its own with its own identity instead of feeling like a wannabe and a pretender to the throne.On that note, how did you feel about The Silver Lining?
http://store.postudios.com/products/the-silver-lining
I tried so much to like that fan game, The Silver Lining, I really did, but I just could not. But from the bad, buggy engine, the lack of a physics sub-engine which would have really helped them with animating, to the weird faces and stilted animation, to the episodic chapter releases taking too long to happen, to the writing that felt too much like an imitation of the real thing and definitely too "fan girl-y," I just couldn't enjoy it.
Seriously, in the game if you try to "look" at the "branch" swinging in the wind near the docks, it goes on this fan-girl-esque gushing about bonsai and how great and wonderful Japan is. I mean, really? I "love" Japan, but text like that doesn't belong in a King's Quest game. That's too immersion breaking. It's not like a King's Quest game is supposed to be like Monkey Island where it is a period adventure set in the far-flung past where you stumble across payphones and vending machines.
...Although now that I type that, a comedic period game set in a far-flung medieval swords-fairy-tales-and-sorcery past where you stumble across anachronistic things such as payphones and vending machines WOULD be a pretty good premise for an adventure game!
Jorpho
09-01-2015, 09:38 AM
I would have thought Kyrandia, Simon the Sorcerer, and maybe Discworld would have that covered.
Gameguy
09-01-2015, 03:15 PM
Sadly most modern adventure games suck. I mostly just stick to older ones now as most modern ones just disappointed me. For the older games that are somewhat mediocre, at least you can feel more forgiving because of technical limitations. Earlier ones that just came on floppy disks are often under 5MB in size, I can usually forgive slightly clunky interfaces or awkward dialog. Modern stuff I really can't. With 20-30 years to study earlier games, and modern computer hardware advancement, and almost limitless storage capacity, they better be near perfect. Instead most just feel like they're just copying earlier games, and usually not well.
Tanooki
09-01-2015, 08:39 PM
Damn right to that Gameguy. The last and biggest let down for me of this genre was the new Sam & Max games. When they let that first one go free to try out I really ended up hating it fairly fast. The humor was there enough, but the change in how the 'do this to get that' type style of play just was confusing and sucked to the point I felt like I needed a FAQ to bother. At least with the old PC DOS/Windows title from Lucasarts even if it was a struggle, it was a more logical one you could hash out in the area. I've honestly not liked any of these games since the 90s as the way they're made in the last decade have not amused me at all. The higher end of coat of paint should have come with smartly designed encapsulated challenges for the area like the old games did and the style was just lost.
I finished Chapter 1, A Knight to Remember, a few nights ago. This game really grew on me. It gets pretty good. I didn't like many of the changes to the original series which this brought in terms of story alterations, who wasn't in the development team, the graphics style, and some of the overall delivery. However the game itself is really quite funny and charming, /especially/ if you like puns. And it has unexpected emotional depth and resonance, including an event which I really didn't expect.
I'm eagerly anticipating the release of the next Chapter in this episodic series.
A PROTIP, though: The steak dangling from the line of yarn can be acquired, but you have to untie it from the tree while standing INSIDE the yarn perimeter surrounding it. If you try from the outside, the "interact" icon will never show/activate. However trying to untie it from the inside works. Yet you would imagine that as the playable character is able to physically reach the item either way and there is no repercussion to untying the object, that they should have just made it where you could have acquired it from either side. Alas.
Ooh, it was announced at a recent conference that Chapter 2 is due later this year. Only a few months to go! Hilariously, the next one is named, "Rubble without a Cause."
And look, a lovely little trailer for the next chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoJchJSJSc
Well, finally! It looks like the next book/chapter/episode/part/entry, #2, also known as "Rubble without a Cause," is due for Wednesday, December 16th. According to the article, this next entry's tale takes place many years after the bulk of events from entry #1.
Source: http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/1/9827700/kings-quest-chapter-2-release-date-rubble-without-a-cause-trailer
I know what I'll be playing in mid-December! Let's just hope we don't have to wait until April to play #3!
Finished playing through Chapter 2 a few days ago. It's pretty good! I didn't like it as much as Chapter 1. It doesn't have as much freedom, but that's reasonable considering the scenario in Ch. 2.
Thought I'd also share this with you all:
STEAM SALE - KQ Ch 1 is on sale for .99 cents. Season Pass and Complete Collection 25% off. http://store.steampowered.com/app/345390/