Graham's personality in the new KQ

[Rock Knight]

I wanted to have a discussion on this...

I find Graham's personality to be among the biggest sins of the new KQ game.

In the original games, by design, Graham is a stoic character. What does that mean?

"Borrowing from the Cynics, the foundation of Stoic ethics is that good lies in the state of the soul itself; in wisdom and self-control. Stoic ethics stressed the rule: "Follow where reason leads." One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of "passion" was "anguish" or "suffering", that is, "passively" reacting to external events, which is somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos, which is normally translated as passion, propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g., turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings that result from correct judgment in the same way as passions result from incorrect judgment.
The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia (Greek: ἀπάθεια) or peace of mind (literally, "without passion"),[21] where peace of mind was understood in the ancient sense—being objective or having "clear judgment" and the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life's highs and lows.

For the Stoics, reason meant not only using logic, but also understanding the processes of nature—the logos, or universal reason, inherent in all things. Living according to reason and virtue, they held, is to live in harmony with the divine order of the universe, in recognition of the common reason and essential value of all people.
The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic philosophy is a classification derived from the teachings of Plato:

Wisdom
Courage
Justice
Temperance."

Graham, in the original games, exhibits all of these qualities and virtues. He is fair and unmoved to great emotion even in the face of grave loss. He is just, well-tempered, humble (wanting only to be called "Graham" by Cedric, as an example); obviously courageous and wise in his own way. Yet he's not an emotionless robot; the narrator describes Graham as "heavy of heart" in KQ5. Yet, he does not let this show externally. One can admire such a character, and as Graham is a stoic character, he also acts as a great avatar for the player as one can skin whatever they want onto him as they play.

The new KQ took that character and turned him on his head, making him full of passion, full of energy, and highly reactive to events. With Achaka's demise, he wants to give up; he is bubbly, goofy and more akin to Guybrush Threepwood. He is thus removed from the player as being THEM, or an avatar of the player, and more as a separate figure - A character in a story, whether than a vessel through which the player is actually experiencing the story. More to the point, the new KQ deconstructs Graham's stoicism; he is in every conceivable way not the same character as in the original games - All they merely share is a name.

That is the biggest sin of the new KQ. Turning a rather, in some ways, unique, likable hero into a medieval Guybrush Threepwood cheapens the series, and cheapens the character, and removes the immersive experience of the player being the character.

[I_am_so_nifty]

I have thoughts here. There's no doubt that Graham's character is changed significantly from the original series to the Odd Gentlemen take. A huge part of it is a wide range of emotions given to Graham. But I think it stems from different philosophies in the purpose and potential of a game, none of which are negative.

Early games across multiple series from multiple companies, I think, started out going for player-as-protagonist approaches. Despite lacking the branching storyline aspects of a choose-your-own-adventure that modern games like the new KQ go for, they did have the element that the "chooser" shouldn't be swayed by external forces. This was also probably on some level technical--why program huge amounts of dialogue when simple actions and an occasionally quirky narration do the trick? Even when they began to evolve, some series stuck with this purely "silent" hero--Link and Pokémon player characters come to mind.

But the original King's Quest didn't stick to this. As the stories it told became more complex the controlled character became more fleshed out. Music, enhanced graphics, and more liberal narration in the KQ3 intro compel us to emphathize with Gwydion. KQ4 is, I think, the game in which we first get any, or certainly any extensive, dialogue from the protagonist, and in cutscenes with again enhanced graphic detail. But it is true that as character developed, the character they gave Graham was kind of consciously stoic. I guess? The dialogue of KQ5 is nearly as detailed or advanced as in KQ6, which hardly features him. But yes, insofar as we get a coherent characterization of Graham it is as a confident, stable, just ruler and adventurer.

But I think it's interesting the the following three games focus on other characters--sources I see tend to just think he became too old, but you can explain that away with some magic fruit. As technology evolved, I think the creators wanted to tell more complex stories, which they gained with more complex characters; poetic, dashing, lovestruck young prince come to rescue his true love; rebellious princess with her head in the clouds; doting mother, these are not extremely complex necessarily, but perhaps a level above "stoic hero", at least for my tastes. No comment on Connor though, to be fair. There are complex kinds of stories to tell through such characters--Mad Max comes to mind immediately, where the typical hero has less issues of his own and brings out the complexity of a rotating cast of side characters. But "hero saves kingdom", "hero gets the girl", "hero gets his family" were perhaps as far as they could take this Graham. (You could take such a character into some kind of epic with war and conquest, maybe, but that's not quite King's Quest style.)

With a gap of nearly twenty years and huge technological advancements, the philosophies of storytelling between the two series are very different. I need to read some more interviews with the creators on their intents with the series, but to me the new series is fundamentally a meta commentary about storytelling. The series could have had an old school, omniscient third-person narration, but instead as is fundamental to the story had Old Graham narrate. But even then he does not narrate for every object or scene you interact with, sometimes just death puns and cutscenes.

For one, I think they wanted a way to transfer the sense of whimsy with the narration into the story itself. I also think their decisions with Graham stem from the fact that they choose to begin his story at such a young age, and drawing all of the original canon inspiration from the early games with truly no character for him lent well to creating an almost entirely new persona from the ground up. And I also think that they wanted to make him a relatable figure to Gwendolyn--I think she is actually the player insert rather than Graham here; despite the fact that we play as Graham, I understand his motivations and choices as the kinds of lessons that Graham wants to teach Gwendolyn. I think of him as an unreliable narrator for sure. Young Graham seems like a character in a story because he is. They tone it down a little in later episodes as he ages--I don't recall how many had been released when you posted this--but this Graham does fundamentally, to me, seem more like the kind of person who would throw a bridle on a snake or a pie at a yeti just to see what happens. A stoic hero in a fundamentally silly adventure game is a bit dissonant--which is something they could have chosen to play with, for sure, but they didn't.

I also think there are vague statements about gender going on. The first original KQ game to explore a character in depth was with Rosella. I wouldn't call a stoic male hero unique, but he's a bit more nuanced than that and I don't think it's wrong to think so. But exploring a wide range of emotions in a male hero, and the outward expression thereof, is a statement I think. I'm not sure that this Graham is a deconstruction of stoic Graham. Deconstruction implies to me that he still is stoic but we explore why that is and what that really means some more. Rather than deconstruction I think this might be an outright rejection.

Which, you know, you can dislike. You can not relate to new Young Graham or Old Graham or Gwendolyn. But I think for some people a more emotional Graham is more relatable and tells a different kind of story. Personally, "full of passion, full of energy, and highly reactive to events... he wants to give up... he is bubbly, goofy" are all traits I relate to at times. It is a different kind of relating to the character, for sure, more sympathy/empathy of yourself to the character rather than mapping anyone onto a relatively blank slate, but both valid routes to take to me.

[Numbers]

This is true. In most early video games, you weren't told what your character's name was (the AGI version of Space Quest 1 let you choose a name for Roger Wilco, for instance). In the first Metroid, you were given the name Samus, but you had no idea what your character looked like under the armor or even what gender Samus was until you saw the ending cutscene.

My thing is that I'm a strong believer in the "actions speak louder than words" department. Hence, my admiration of the protagonists in the first four games, and my dissatisfaction with them when they actually started talking in the remaining games. To be honest, I wasn't really invested in the protagonists so much as I was the story itself, and while Graham was unrealistically stoic, he was still more tolerable than the love-stricken Alexander, the valley girl Rosella, the fussy and worrisome Valanice, and the Ye Olde Butchered English-speaking Connor. KQ6 was just lucky that it had an intricately-written plot that made you want to figure out what was going on. KQ7 was much simpler--some villain wants to destroy the world, and you have to stop them--and MoE was even more bare-bones, by virtue of having even less of a plot.

I can see why TOG wanted to give the characters more personality, since it was so obviously missing in the original run. It's just that Graham's behavior, especially in the first chapter, is so at odds with Josh Mandel's performance that he feels weird to some people, myself included. I'm in the middle of rewatching the first chapter, and will be continuing on to watch the entire season, and I'm going to be taking notes on the characterization exhibited throughout the chapters.

[I_am_so_nifty]

That's definitely fair, Numbers. Like I said, not a portrayal that's for everyone. I guess I'm not as personally invested in Josh Mendel's portrayal maybe, and the new one is so obviously divorced from it that I don't even pretend to treat it as an attempt to emulate it. But, they could have done that, for sure. TSL is doing that, I suppose. I'm about as equally invested in his character as Sierra Graham, and probably the plot of TSL is more driving to me than its characters. I'm still not sure how I feel about the plot of TOG overall. It's much more about how the stories are told than what they are about, and I'm still not convinced they all actually happened?

Equally interesting conversations could probably be had on Rosella and Alexander's characters, when you get to them. Rosella we don't see as much of but we do does feel a bit off to me, and Alexander is different but in a way that's interesting. I think TOG's Rosella is weirdest to me because they don't explore and commit to her as much, while she had probably the most outrageous personality in the originals in 7. Some departure from or depth into the complexity of that would be interesting, but I don't really get that from what they show of her. I've read there could be more seasons exploring other characters, though, so perhaps we haven't seen the last of her. Just a heads up to take notes on them too, I guess.

But at least we can all agree anything is better than Connor.

[Numbers]

Are you kidding? Connor was a comedy masterpiece. He was so boring, his dialogue so lifeless, his athletics so over-the-top, his "poetic" lines so incomprehensible, that you couldn't help but chuckle at the fact that somebody somewhere thought it was a good idea to make him the lead character in an entry in a video game franchise so bad that it killed said franchise for over 15 years.

Well, at least Connor never burst into song.

Connor (to the tune of the chorus to "Girl in the Tower"): 'Tis beyond MYYYYY reach, aLAAAACK, the HEEEEAADs do not die!

[snabbott]

Connor (to the tune of the chorus to "Girl in the Tower"): 'Tis beyond MYYYYY reach, aLAAAACK, the HEEEEAADs do not die!

Somebody make this happen!

[GrahamRocks!]

I never actually considered that Gwendolyn could be our self insert... but that actually makes a ton of sense!

Think about it- what's the very first thing we hear her say? "Whoa whoa whoa wait, Grandpa. I don't remember this part of the story. Beds, hanging from stalactites?!" And in chapter three's introduction, "Grandpa, Mom used to tell me this story before bed. Doesn't everyone in Daventry know this one already? You climbed that tower, rescued Princess Valanice, fell in love, and lived happily ever after." Those are both thoughts that the player is most likely thinking, particularly if they're familiar with their King's Quest lore and are playing this reboot blind, right? Most especially when others, too, have gone down the path of remaking and rebooting this world before, with their own twists and turns on the story of the old games.

[I_am_so_nifty]

Connor (to the tune of the chorus to "Girl in the Tower"): 'Tis beyond MYYYYY reach, aLAAAACK, the HEEEEAADs do not die!

I'm also partial to, "Lo! A place to use my map!", but we can certainly work some more lines in there. Part of the backing track can be made of his burps when you make him drink too much water.

And yeah, one of these days I need to get around to replaying TOG with different choices or just looking up all the effects they can have on Gwendolyn to see how different you can really make her. Not that she doesn't have enough baseline character on her own, and I feel like for the big choices later in the game it won't make a difference, but interesting self-insert possibilities.

[Rock Knight]

Are you kidding? Connor was a comedy masterpiece. He was so boring, his dialogue so lifeless, his athletics so over-the-top, his "poetic" lines so incomprehensible, that you couldn't help but chuckle at the fact that somebody somewhere thought it was a good idea to make him the lead character in an entry in a video game franchise so bad that it killed said franchise for over 15 years.

Well, at least Connor never burst into song.

Connor (to the tune of the chorus to "Girl in the Tower"): 'Tis beyond MYYYYY reach, aLAAAACK, the HEEEEAADs do not die!

That's not really what happened though.

KQ8 came out in 1998. It sold more than Grim Fandango; around 900k in sales, which for 1998 and for an adventure game wasn't so bad. It was the best selling game of the franchise despite the split in opinions. That same year, Sierra was sold for a second time, and much of the profitability of the company had been wiped out in the scandal that led to it being sold again.

The next year, Al Lowe, Jane Jensen, and Scott Murphy were all fired along with all the employees at Oakhurst. Roberta retired. The adventure game department of Sierra was shut down and Sierra announced that GK3 would be their last adventure game.

Sierra kept getting downsized and downsized by Cendant and then Vivendi. They had so few in-house employees that they had to contract out to third party developers. a new KQ was in development in 2000-2001; and it was axed during that year's round of layoffs and game cancellations. Same with the new SQ that was in development around the same time.

And then in 2004, Sierra itself was closed.

So, no, KQ8 was not to blame for the franchise being dormant. Not when you take into consideration all the actual real life factors at hand.

[kyranthia]

I do admit, the young Graham of Chapter 1 was fine for being a bit of a goof.  It did get a bit jarring in later Chapters because I felt like Graham should have been a bit more mature as he aged.  Old Graham to me was fine throughout.

[GrahamRocks!]

But... he DID mature as he aged. Chapter two had him cut his rant short, chapter three had him actually keep it mental and the girls didn't know, and while chapter four did have him rant, he was actually called out on it by Alexander (who serves not only as a foil to Graham but his dialogue is peppered here and there as a mouthpiece for old adventure game fans and arguably the naysayers of the series, and ironically enough, that's a very Neese way of thinking who also thinks like an old adventure gamer and it's Vee who thinks with a more modern gamer sense of mind, which is ironic because Alexander has more in common with Vee sometimes than Neese).

Besides that, Grahampa is probably using this as a way to have Gwendolyn laugh and be entertained and was probably exaggerated anyways, and shows off how humble he is that he can basically make fun of himself. "Yes, I was more than a bit naive and foolish, but at least I admit it, and I can look back on it and laugh at myself."

And even still, did you notice something? Both his first rant and his last one kinda tell us something kinda sad about Graham. The first time we see it is when Manny became his friend and Graham's bombarding him with questions, questions that one could argue that a teenager shouldn't really be asking, which says to me that he doesn't have any friends at home (whereever that is) and the reason he's so ecstatic is because he finally found someone who doesn't think he's weird. And as for the last one he does, he starts out talking about the Labyrinth (which, given how many people have said that a drawback to this chapter was that the puzzles were too easy, myself being an exception because I'm an idiot, was probably at least partially ranting about it because, "Hey! Finally, an actual challenge!"), but by the time it ends, he's focused pretty much entirely on Alexander and wanting to find SOME sort of connection between them in pure desperation, particularly when comparing her to Rosella who seems to have taken a different path than her mom and dad if the fact that she's a melee fighter and seems to be slightly less puzzle savvy (or at least thinks more like I do), and that, before the change was made to the addendum 48677, she could never be his heir or carry on his legacy, whereas Alexander could. And he NEVER does these rants (from what we've seen anyway) in court in front of the Royal Guard, only with either friends or family present, who don't judge him for it and are probably used to it by now.

...Unless you were talking about something else about Graham's personality, that is, in which case I got nothing.

[kyranthia]

He did, but he'd still go all spazzy at times like a major fanboy.  It just seemed a bit jarring when he did that in later Chapters. 

I'm not saying he didn't mature at all because he did do so.    And I guess part of that was to keep some humor in the game especially when things did get a bit sad as Graham lost people close to him.

[GrahamRocks!]

He went fanboy ONCE per chapter after the first one. That's an improvement.

[Numbers]

I've recently finished watching the remaining chapters, and I don't actually recall him ever going fanboy in Chapter 5, unless there's something I missed in the walkthrough I watched. It wasn't exactly the most appropriate time for fanboying anyway.

[GrahamRocks!]

Well, okay, yeah, except chapter five.

[Rock Knight]

I do admit, the young Graham of Chapter 1 was fine for being a bit of a goof.  It did get a bit jarring in later Chapters because I felt like Graham should have been a bit more mature as he aged.  Old Graham to me was fine throughout.

This is how I tend to feel. If the "goofiness" for lack of a better word had been contained solely to Chapter I, I wouldn't mind it.

As to I_am_so_nifty's epic and awesome post - I get what you're saying to a degree. The thing is, I just feel they could've taken an approach similar to TSL's. TSL retains the core attributes of the Mandel Graham, while giving him depth that is consistent with his already existing traits. He still retains that stoic personality, but he isn't totally emotionless, and is bothered and tormented by things throughout TSL - but it never seems out of character; it never seems like something Mandel's Graham might not have done. I suppose I just wish TOG had gone a similar route. I can understand why the made the chooses they did - and it's their right to - I just am more of a purist. But...I will say that your post was awesome and made for an utterly enjoyable read!