"In the companion it says Hagatha is Mordack's sister and she's a member of the BCS aswell."
No, only the KQ5 chapter says Hagatha is Mordack's and Manannan's sister(a fact later put into the King's Questions trivia program). The trivia is unrelated to info about the Black Cloak Society. The book never says she is part of the Black Cloak Society. It never states Manannan is part of the black cloak either.
The Hagatha fact is mentioned only in KQ5 chapter of the book which was written long before KQ6 was even in production(It was published in the 2nd edition of the companion). At that time the idea for the Black Cloak didn't even exist.
The only refrence to the Black Cloak in the book shows up in the 3rd edition when KQ6 chapters were added to the book, and the only black cloak refrence that exists in the companion is in refrence to the letters between Shadrack and Abdul, the same letters you can hear/find in the game. As well as the refrence to the black cloak in Abdul's office, that can be seen through the peep hole(said to be of dire signifigance).
The black cloaks in Abdul's wardrobe aren't even mentioned in the companion, but rather it just discusses the "silken robes", "unclean hose", and "strong perfumes" that Abdul keeps in the wardrobe.
The letters that mention the black cloak, are somewhat different(a bit longer and more detailed) then how they ended up in the game. However just like in the game there is no refrence to Hagatha, or Manannan. Only Mordack is mentioned in the letters.
Some interesting details that the extended versions of the letters hint at, is that Shadrack's has "peculiar interests", implying that he would have used her body for lecherous purposes, alive or dead, and further clues on what the black cloak's ultimate plans for the kingdom was(ultimate destruction).
Well, if Roberta had more control over moe, maybe it might not have been the disaster it is. I would like to see a remake of moe, with a story to it. Somebody should remake moe as a true adventure game.
As for more actual facts surrounding what screwed up MOE?
Yes, this was the only KQ game that was not fully developed at one location. The idea was to leverage the 3D engine Dynamic was building in Eugene. We were to use their engine and focus mostly on content. The problem was that the engine work ended up WAY behind schedule and that had disastrous results on our content development. To make a long story short, we finally took what they had and finished it ourselves. Unfortunately, by the time we did this the project was way behind schedule, way over budget, and we still didn't have an engine. We scrambled to complete the project and it unfortunately showed. It saddens me to have had the King's Quest series end with a product that suffered so.
So yes, many things were cut - the leprechaun, the Red Capped goblin, I think two complete levels, and then MANY major cutbacks on what is there. As you point out, a good example is the Swamp Witch. In the original script as it was developing, her part was much larger. But as we had to devote time to technical issues, the esthetic issues and the amount of detail and breadth of content continued to get chopped. Remember, this was also right at the time the industry was saying that "Adventure gaming is dead." It was not easy to convince marketing to invest more to develop an adventure game. The end result was that we shipped what we could, and it was a pretty sad showing for such a great series.
-Mark Seibert, March 11, 2006.
