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The new King's Quest: Canon or no?

Started by Rock Knight, November 21, 2014, 03:51:50 PM

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GrahamRocks!

Yes, but that was several years ago.

We were having him still be part of TBCS, but as part of the Triumvirate of leaders mentioned in episode 4, one being Shaddy, one Morg, and one we didn't know. That was plan A, plan B was what you said.

Numbers

Like I said, we don't know all the details yet. It's probable that they'll go more in-depth on who the triumvirate were in episode 5, but it'll be a while until then.

In the closing cinematic for episode 4,

[spoiler]There were three shadow wizards that attacked Graham in the wormhole, IIRC, but they all looked exactly like Shadrack. That could mean anything. Maybe Shadrack is like Ultron and he can make copies of himself.

Suddenly, I have a desire to hear the voice actor for Shadrack saying, "There are no strings on me."

I'm still annoyed that the trailer for episode 4 spoiled the most memorable part of that scene (huge Shadrack head swallowing Graham).
[/spoiler]
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Rock Knight


Rock Knight

"We're telling stories in between the original games," Korba tells Digital Trends. "So we completely reimagined it, it's a new King's Quest, everything's re-thought and it looks similar but different. But we're keeping the details that were set by Roberta and Ken and sort of elaborating on those."

Numbers

Exactly. It's a reboot. A new canon. There's no way that KQ2015 is going to mesh perfectly with the original KQ1. The trailer alone should've made that obvious. Remember the time in KQ1 where Graham went river rafting? And then shot the dragon guarding the mirror with an arrow? No? I thought not.

Think of it as an alternate universe, where some of the details are similar, but not all of them.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Rock Knight

Quote from: Numbers on March 06, 2015, 04:52:37 PM
Exactly. It's a reboot. A new canon. There's no way that KQ2015 is going to mesh perfectly with the original KQ1. The trailer alone should've made that obvious. Remember the time in KQ1 where Graham went river rafting? And then shot the dragon guarding the mirror with an arrow? No? I thought not.

Think of it as an alternate universe, where some of the details are similar, but not all of them.

Not everything in the original series really meshed perfectly either, though. I'd think of it as the same canon. More just...Since Graham is telling the stories of his youthful days to his niece as an old man, he's bound to "exaggerate" a little here and there....As Grandfathers often do when talking about their grand pasts.

When it comes to a series like KQ where are multiple ways of solving problems, there's no real canon. Graham may or may not have killed the Dragon in the original KQ1 by throwing the dagger at it...Or he might have thrown a bucket of water at it. He might've killed the Lion guarding Valanice...Or gave it some ham. He might've killed Dracula...Or not. Maybe Alexander married Cassima, but didn't save her parents. Or maybe he saved her parents, but didn't uncover the extent of Alhazred's treachery. The only game in the series which has a linear story is KQ5 in that you only solve things one way. Also, since the games never referenced themselves outside of broad strokes (IE, Graham married Valanice, Manny kidnapped Alexander), as long as you stick to those established facts...There's room for some embellishment from an old man telling stories of his youth to his granddaughter, while keeping it in the same canon.

"King's Quest has me excited for the future of adventure games. Until I sat down for a demo of The Odd Gentlemen's modern take on the 30-year-old series, I didn't know I was unexcited for the future of adventure games. But as I watched designer Matt Korba walk a gangly King Graham through a hand-painted forest, red cape billowing around him, and got a look at some simple puzzles and King's Quest-style death scenes, I realized why I'm suddenly excited for this game and what it seems to be shooting for. It's an 80s or 90s adventure game in spirit, with charm and puzzles and funny dialogue, but updated to tell its story with the gaming technology of 2015.

There are a couple different takes on the adventure genre right now. There's Double Fine's Broken Age, a classic point-and-click with tons of great, silly dialogue and inventory puzzles. It's a game that could've been made 20 years ago, except the art is beautiful, it's full of voice acting, and the interface is very simplified. Part one of Broken Age was too easy, which felt a bit like a modern concession, considering how challenging older adventure game puzzles could be. The second approach is Telltale's The Walking Dead. Telltale has minimized puzzles and inventory down to the point of near-nonexistence to focus on story. Crucially, Telltale has also built its modern adventure games in 3D, with more cinematic camera angles suited to dramatic storytelling. Telltale's games focus on what was always a strength of the adventure genre—story and dialogue—by completely stripping out the 'gameplay' many players loved.
From my half hour demo of King's Quest, I think it looks and moves like The Walking Dead, but plays much like a point-and-click adventure. It's obviously in 3D, and Graham can be moved around with a mouse or a controller. Context-sensitive interactions like "look" and "pick up" are mapped to face buttons and show up as big icons on-screen (Korba says they drew inspiration from King's Quest V for these). Graham automatically leaps gaps and climbs outcrops. The game's recent trailer, showing Graham traipsing around the 3D environments, made King's Quest look like a platformer. That's the skin. The bones are pure classic adventure.

The demo I watched saw Graham exploring a dragon's cavern in search of a magic mirror that should be familiar to King's Quest fans. The level serves as a tutorial for the game, so it's light on puzzles, and they're easily solved at a glance. As Graham explores, the voice of his granddaughter Gwendolyn will pipe up with questions or comments. King's Quest's narrative framework is that old King Graham is telling his granddaughter stories of his past adventures, and his grandfatherly voice often breaks in with commentary to add context or foreshadowing.
We skipped to another area, the forest of Daventry, where Graham has to do some more light puzzle solving to make his way to a parade for prospective knights. Again, none of the puzzles are particularly challenging—shaking a tree to drop a beehive on some unsuspecting guards, finding a rope to bind together a raft—but the structure and tone of King's Quest feel right. They feel like King's Quest.

The writing evokes the goofiness of Sierra's classic games. The brief bits I saw weren't always laugh-out-loud funny, but a couple made me chuckle, and the wonderfully expressive animation adds an element of slapstick I didn't expect. Lanky Graham is shoved around like a lovably dopey loser. A merchant he meets in the forest bounces around like a Looney Tunes character, wildly waving his hands and talking a mile a minute. Korba says they're shooting for a 1980s fantasy vibe with Jim Henson as an inspiration. The characters believe in themselves. There's no cynicism or sarcasm in how they're represented. From what I saw, King's Quest nails that tone.

According to Korba, after the sequence in Daventry, King's Quest's first chapter will open up to allow the freedom to explore. He stressed how important the original game was in inspiring this structure. If the demo left me with any concerns, it's that the puzzles might be too easy, a concession to contemporary players who quickly grow impatient. (Also my biggest disappointment with Broken Age). Korba said that the ability to explore and progress through the game in a few different ways—not just solving puzzles—will allow them to make some of those puzzles more challenging. Mercifully, they're avoiding the hair-pulling obtuseness of a certain infamous cat hair moustache puzzle.

Even with placeholder voice work, the whimsy of King's Quest's writing and animation feels like the freshest evolution of the spirit of adventure games I've seen for some time. The game's planned episodic structure, with each 'chapter' telling a story from some point in Graham's life, will allow The Odd Gentlemen to play loose with time and location and let their creativity flourish. I'm hopeful they'll capitalize on that. I've only seen a small slice of an unfinished game, and there are a lot of puzzles to build and jokes to nail for King's Quest to live up to my expectations.
Today's point-and-click adventures are reliant on nostalgia, like welcoming the return of old friends. But King's Quest seems like it has a shot at being something more, and that makes me excited to see where the genre goes next, rather than the path it's already walked."

Numbers

What I consider canonical in the KQverse is the walkthrough that gets the maximum point value. Going by this idea, canonically Graham kills the witch while sparing the dragon and giant in 1, and kills Dracula in 2. Alexander being unable to save Cassima's parents is definitely non-canonical in my eyes. It's not addressed in the next two games, but I have no reason to believe that the creators themselves would think that the parents being left in the underworld is what canonically happened. It is, of course, possible to leave Edgar to die in 7 as well, though that's obviously not what was supposed to happen. I go by the TSL timeline, wherein Cassima's parents and Edgar are alive.

Quote from: Rock Knight on March 06, 2015, 07:09:04 PM
shaking a tree to drop a beehive on some unsuspecting guards

That sounds really dickish...yet at the same time so in-character.

"And so, Gwendolyn, after dropping a beehive on some guards, I went on to donkey punch a witch into her own cauldron, murder Dracula in his sleep, and then trap a different witch inside a genie bottle for 500 years."
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

I understood it was an alternate universe before.

There's PROBABLY a different solution to take care of those guards.

Wait... you can NOT kill Dracula?! I could have sworn he was required! Huh.

Rock Knight

Quote from: Numbers on March 06, 2015, 07:48:00 PM
What I consider canonical in the KQverse is the walkthrough that gets the maximum point value. Going by this idea, canonically Graham kills the witch while sparing the dragon and giant in 1, and kills Dracula in 2. Alexander being unable to save Cassima's parents is definitely non-canonical in my eyes. It's not addressed in the next two games, but I have no reason to believe that the creators themselves would think that the parents being left in the underworld is what canonically happened. It is, of course, possible to leave Edgar to die in 7 as well, though that's obviously not what was supposed to happen. I go by the TSL timeline, wherein Cassima's parents and Edgar are alive.

Quote from: Rock Knight on March 06, 2015, 07:09:04 PM
shaking a tree to drop a beehive on some unsuspecting guards

That sounds really dickish...yet at the same time so in-character.

"And so, Gwendolyn, after dropping a beehive on some guards, I went on to donkey punch a witch into her own cauldron, murder Dracula in his sleep, and then trap a different witch inside a genie bottle for 500 years."

But in TSL's timeline, Manannan is Valanice's father, and Graham is the reincarnation of basically a God...You really But that in line with the original canon? I'd say that stretches things much more than the new game does.

But that's my point. There was no real effort to maintain consistency in the series outside of broad strokes. Obviously Graham always marries Valanice and begets two kids and was a Knight who became King. But since they do not reference each other, the little details are subject to change.

Like I said, little things like--Did Graham kill the dragon or throw a bucket of water at it? Either way changes "history" if you will. Did he kill the lion or feed it? We don't know.

You could argue for maximum point value being only what is canon...But you're still allowed to finish every game except for V in different ways with different endings.

And the beauty part of it is that the games don't reference each other, so...either way is a legitimate way.

What I am getting at is, why does it have to be set in an alternate universe? Can it not simply be that Graham is an old man and he is exaggerating little bits or pieces of the stories of heroic adventures to not only educate his granddaughter, but entertain her as well? Why would that displace it from the canon and make it in essence "Not KQ"?


Rock Knight

"This isn't a reboot, and its not necessarily a sequel. It's a reimagining. Everything that exists in the past games is still canon." These stories exist between those stories. Over the course of the game players will experience Graham's previously unknown adventures. "We're definitely not retelling the old games...we're nodding to them and respecting them, but this isn't King's Quest 1 HD. The new scenarios deal with some of the blank spots in the King's Quest timeline. How did Graham become a knight in King Edward's Court? How did his young love with Valanice develop?

Numbers

Quote from: Rock Knight on March 07, 2015, 12:51:48 AM[spoiler]
But in TSL's timeline, Manannan is Valanice's father, and Graham is the reincarnation of basically a God...You really But that in line with the original canon? I'd say that stretches things much more than the new game does.[/spoiler]

Spoilers, for Christ's sake. Not everyone has played episodes 3 and 4 yet.

And come on, you know what I meant. Besides the new things TSL threw into the mix, what happened in my eyes is, Graham kills the witch, spares the dragon and giant, and entertains the leprechauns in 1, kills Dracula and spares the lion while avoiding Hagatha entirely in 2, Alexander turns Manannan into a cat and kills the three-headed dragon in 3, Rosella saves both Tamir and Graham's life while also sealing up Pandora's Box in 4, Graham saves Cedric's life and kills Mordack in 5, Alexander saves both the Land of the Green Isles and Cassima's parents in 6, Rosella defeats Malicia and saves Edgar's life in 7, and Connor rescues the little girl from the Dimension of Death and also gets the KQ equivalent of Satan sucked into a black hole in MoE. That's what really happened, and I'm sticking to it. TSL can do whatever it wants with the plot from that point forward.

We have no reason to believe that KQ2015 is going to be anything but a reboot. They can deny it's a reboot, the same way POStudios denied that TSL would go against the KQ Companion, but in the end, actions speak louder than words.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Rock Knight

Quote from: Numbers on March 07, 2015, 10:34:38 AM
Quote from: Rock Knight on March 07, 2015, 12:51:48 AM[spoiler]
But in TSL's timeline, Manannan is Valanice's father, and Graham is the reincarnation of basically a God...You really But that in line with the original canon? I'd say that stretches things much more than the new game does.[/spoiler]

Spoilers, for Christ's sake. Not everyone has played episodes 3 and 4 yet.

And come on, you know what I meant. Besides the new things TSL threw into the mix, what happened in my eyes is, Graham kills the witch, spares the dragon and giant, and entertains the leprechauns in 1, kills Dracula and spares the lion while avoiding Hagatha entirely in 2, Alexander turns Manannan into a cat and kills the three-headed dragon in 3, Rosella saves both Tamir and Graham's life while also sealing up Pandora's Box in 4, Graham saves Cedric's life and kills Mordack in 5, Alexander saves both the Land of the Green Isles and Cassima's parents in 6, Rosella defeats Malicia and saves Edgar's life in 7, and Connor rescues the little girl from the Dimension of Death and also gets the KQ equivalent of Satan sucked into a black hole in MoE. That's what really happened, and I'm sticking to it. TSL can do whatever it wants with the plot from that point forward.

We have no reason to believe that KQ2015 is going to be anything but a reboot. They can deny it's a reboot, the same way POStudios denied that TSL would go against the KQ Companion, but in the end, actions speak louder than words.

I don't see how, from anything we've read or heard, the new game violates any of those landmark moments. You still get the Magic Mirror from the Dragon (with the option of either killing it or sparing it, as in KQ1); You still meet Valanice and have twins. Alexander still marries Cassima and has Gwendolyn.

The guys making it have said that they're keeping the same canon and their idea is to tell stories that happened in between the original games. The stuff we've seen from the trailer(s) is from a part of the game that takes place prior to KQ1--Prior to Graham evening being a Knight. It's basically a prequel, and a sequel, in one game.

Rock Knight

"The new King's Quest will be a story told in flashback by series stalwart King Graham, now an old man, to his granddaughter Gwendolyn. Creative director and The Odd Gentlemen president Matt Korba, who insists that King's Quest was his favourite series growing up, likens it to The Princess Bride or Big Fish. While this reboot will primarily be a brand new adventure, it will occasionally touch on elements from previous games. For example, the demo we see concerns Graham snatching a magic mirror from a dragon, a story that transpired in the first King's Quest.

"It wasn't exactly how I remembered it, " old man Graham says. "But it wasn't all that different either."

This narrative tool is cleverly employed throughout. When the player attempts to make gangly, teenage Graham crawl into bed, the narrator will snap "This was no time to take a nap!" Try it too many times and he'll admit that maybe he took a brief snooze before facing the dragon.

He even reacts to player death - and there will be a lot of that - in humorous ways. "And that's what would have happened had I pulled the left switch," he says after his younger self pulled the wrong lever and got smushed by in a booby trap. "So you must know I pulled the other one" he adds upon the player re-entering the story.

Another time Gwendolyn calls BS on his tale of heroically charging into a dragon's mouth, i.e. dying. "I was just checking to see if you were still awake," he chimes in. It's not the first time we've seen this narrative device employed in an adventure game - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Stanley Parable come to mind - but it's a great fit for this fresh take on a vintage series.

While the demo section is very linear - and meant to serve as a tutorial for the main adventure - the full game will open up a lot with several areas to go to at your own pace. Intriguingly, the order in which you solve the puzzles will influence the story.

"We took everything that makes episodic content manageable and threw it out the window," Korba jokes. "Why don't we change the character model every chapter? Why don't we change the setting every chapter?"

Unlike a lot of older adventure games, your choices in the new King's Quest will be primarily based on your actions rather than words. "We're really trying to do all of our choice through gameplay and not branching dialogue," Korba says. "We do have branching dialogue in the game, but we use it more for humour. Most of your choices are made by how you solve the puzzles and how you approach the problem-solving aspect."

While it will have a lot of flexibility in the story, Korba maintains that its plot won't go too far off the rails. "It can't ever be a story of murder or dictatorship or horrible things, because that's not in King Graham's character," he explains. "Gwendolyn will never turn her nose up and be like 'ew, I don't like that part of the story. Every action that you do she's excited about."

2
You'll have direct control over Graham while prompts will be context sensitive. There's no cursor fluttering about the screen.
But what King's Quest lacks in scope it makes up for in detail. Korba is especially proud of how The Odd Gentlemen play with chronology as the story will skip around in time and flesh out seemingly innocuous details in interesting ways. For example, the cave that occupies the dragon contains an arrow in a stalactite and bed frames hanging from the ceiling. These bizarre backdrops will all make sense in time as the full game will have players revisit this same setting five years earlier.

Korba is quick to point out that he doesn't want the game to over-explain anything. Handholding will be slim to nil while many story elements will be open to interpretation. "We're really about allowing the player to skin whatever emotions they want on that dragon. So if you want to think that that's a vicious, cruel creature, that's fine. If you want to think he's misunderstood, that's okay too," he says. Later, you'll get to decide whether to free the dragon, fight back, or distract it long enough to snatch the mirror it's guarding.

"That colours the story. Either way Graham's telling his granddaughter the story about how he defeated the dragon, but it's either a story about how he bravely and heroically fought back against this hideous monster or it's a story about how he made a friend in an unexpected place. But it's never a story about how he cold-bloodedly murdered him or anything like that."

Indeed Korba would like this new King's Quest to be for everyone, young and old alike. "We wanted to create these family-friendly experiences that I think are lacking in gaming. We're all getting older and - I don't have kids yet, but I would like to - and I want to have games that I can share with them, just like I got to play these games with my dad and my uncle," he says. "And we don't want to make entertainment that's 'for kids'. We want entertainment that everyone can enjoy equally. And that, to me at least, is what Sierra used to do."

Numbers

Rock Knight, will you quit double-posting? You still haven't spoiler-tagged that post about TSL's timeline, either.

Also, how do you really feel about this new game? At first you said it should be cancelled ASAP, and now you're staunchly defending its place in the KQ canon without knowing anything about it other than what the developers want you to hear. Make up your mind.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

Yeah.  :yes:

I mean, I'm excited for it, but I'm consistent.

Rock Knight

Quote from: Numbers on March 23, 2015, 10:28:09 AM
Rock Knight, will you quit double-posting? You still haven't spoiler-tagged that post about TSL's timeline, either.

Also, how do you really feel about this new game? At first you said it should be cancelled ASAP, and now you're staunchly defending its place in the KQ canon without knowing anything about it other than what the developers want you to hear. Make up your mind.

My point that it should be cancelled ASAP was sarcasm; basically parodying the knee-jerk reactions about the game as soon as it was announced.

So, they're lying about the content of their game? Graham's stories won't be set between games? They're going to rape existing canon?

It's not just the developers who are saying these comments about it keeping with the canon of the originals; the game reviewers who have played the demo have said so as well.

There just seems to be the thinking of some that there's something elaborate and sinister going on with Sierra and TOG with this game. Ala Lamb's comments about the game's good press being not genuine and nothing but the result of a "well paid hype machine." As if every single reviewer who reviewed it in any positive was bought off.

Numbers

All I'm saying is that TOG's KQ universe isn't going to mesh perfectly with Sierra's. Inevitably, there's going to be a continuity snarl somewhere, no matter how big or small. It doesn't have to go against all the major events that transpired in the Sierra 'verse, but don't expect it to be 100% faithful either. KQ already has so many different timelines, whether official or fanmade, that it's just best to take TOG's new set of games as a different canon and not try to fit a square in a circle-shaped hole.

Regarding Lamb's comments, he speaks from bad personal experience with today's adventure gaming companies, so it's not like his arguments hold no water. And after seeing that one video with those two completely unenthusiastic reporters who clearly didn't want to be there, I know where he's coming from. He may be wrong, but don't be surprised if he's right.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

stika

We need to take into consideration the new King's Quest game is as much of a reboot as it is a re-imagining, so certain things will undoubtedly change. Still, Roberta seemed to liked where the direction they're going with so I'm happy with that. :)

Numbers

Quote from: stika on March 24, 2015, 09:24:34 AM
We need to take into consideration the new King's Quest game is as much of a reboot as it is a re-imagining, so certain things will undoubtedly change.

This. It'll hurt your head a lot less if you just separate TOG's stuff from Sierra's. There's really no point in acting like they're the same people telling the same story when they obviously aren't.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Rock Knight

Quote from: Numbers on March 24, 2015, 08:47:09 AM
All I'm saying is that TOG's KQ universe isn't going to mesh perfectly with Sierra's. Inevitably, there's going to be a continuity snarl somewhere, no matter how big or small. It doesn't have to go against all the major events that transpired in the Sierra 'verse, but don't expect it to be 100% faithful either. KQ already has so many different timelines, whether official or fanmade, that it's just best to take TOG's new set of games as a different canon and not try to fit a square in a circle-shaped hole.

Regarding Lamb's comments, he speaks from bad personal experience with today's adventure gaming companies, so it's not like his arguments hold no water. And after seeing that one video with those two completely unenthusiastic reporters who clearly didn't want to be there, I know where he's coming from. He may be wrong, but don't be surprised if he's right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3iSXDBm9sY

What about that gameplay preview? That's from Gamespot, a much better known publication than with the two ignorant guys, and these two guys seem to be quite into it.

Or the AdventureGamers preview (a site which is pretty purist) that pretty much loved the game?

I've not seen a single neutral or negative review of the demo that was sent out; All have been positive to overwhelmingly positive. The only people with any criticisms seem to be at this point a very small group of very loud 1992 purists, who feel the game should be exactly like KQ5-6 in every way even though that's utterly unrealistic and would only set the game up for gigantic failure.

Do you consider KQ7 to be of a different canon than the rest of the series? Roberta didn't write it and the characterization of Rosella is utterly different from previous games and Edgar's backstory is totally rewritten? Or what about KQ8 with the way EVERYTHING is changed, even that Daventry has none of the landmarks or layout seen in KQ1-3 and there's now three realms of the Undead? I'd say this game is going to change much less than those two games did.