The World of King's Quest

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

I've had an opinion brewing back in forth in my mind for several years now. I feel that King's Quest should be something much larger than it is and ever was--That a King's Quest game shouldn't be a series limited to the Royal Family of Daventry, or even to Daventry itself. It shouldn't be a series limited to the Adventure Genre, either.

What do I mean by this? Well, I look at worlds like those of Dungeons & Dragons (The Forgotten Realms in particular), or the massive world of JRR Tolkien and I see realms full of almost unlimited potential for stories, intriguing characters and exciting adventures. No single kind of story dominates the worlds of Tolkien or the world of D&D--Middle Earth is a place where ANYTHING can happen; So is the world of Faerun in Dungeons & Dragons' Forgotten Realms setting.

There are so many stories spanning so many epochs, genres, varying in tone from dark and dreary, to light and happy; From creepy dungeon crawls, to grand epic adventures.

Consider the vast variety of material in The Silmarillion alone, to the sweet, simple Hobbit, to the deep, methaphorical Lord of the Rings. Consider the many realms in Middle Earth, the hundreds of stories, the multitude of characters and legends.

Or consider the Forgotten Realms. You have a planet called Toril, a continent called Faerun and several other large continents; Within those continents, dozens and dozens of countries; Within those countries, the detail contained in the source guides depicts hundreds of cities, towns, hamlets and the like, thus giving room for endless amounts of stories.

Why shouldn't KQ be this way? Why should King's Quest be limited to just four characters in a very specific timeline?

I think the KQ Universe should take on a life of it's own, in the same way that the Forgotten Realms, or Middle Earth did. We should get to more about the lands of the world of Daventry and be able to experience adventures through the eyes of royals of the other lands.

KQ, IMO, should not just be bound to the adventure genre. It can be an adventure game, sure, but it shouldn't be trapped in that one box. There's so much potential in the world Roberta created that there should be room for everything. Why should KQ play by a very narrow and specific set of rules?

This was Roberta's own framework for what made a King's Quest game:

"The components that make a King's Quest are (in my mind, anyway and since I am the creator of the series, I guess that holds some weight):

1) A land, or lands, of high fantasy;
2) Fantasy creatures from myth, legends, and/or fairytales both good and bad
3 Situations to be found in those same types of stories
4) A "quest" type story; a calamity in the land with one "hero" to "save the kingdom"
5) A story of the "good" hero against the "evil" bad guy
6) A story that everyone can relate to, i.e., a "reason" for having the hero go out and risk his or her life for "saving the kingdom"
7) Interesting worlds to explore
High interactivity
9) Interesting characters
10) Great animation
11) Great visuals and music.
 
Within that general framework, I feel that I can have some "leeway" to accomplish those tasks."

As you can see, Roberta's own framework was not that tightly bound--rather loose really, allowing for a whole variety of Quests.

I don't see why, for example, we can't have a KQ prequel showcasing the adventures of John the Wanderer, or maybe a side-story about King Edward's adventures, or the adventures of some King from another land, or a story about King Graham's adventures when he was just Sir Graham.

I think the KQ universe should be all encompassing, like the universes of Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms. If someone wants to design a KQ6 style KQ, go ahead; If someone wants to design a light hearted, Disney-esque KQ ala KQ7; the door is open; If someone wants to make Mask of Eternity II; Excellent.

KQ shouldn't just be limited to a very strict set of rules. It limits the series and curbs it's potential.

[snabbott]

I don't see it happening, but that would be pretty cool!

[Baggins]

John the Wanderer? You mean the guy who became Derek Karlavaegen, the 'wanderer'?

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

John the Wanderer? You mean the guy who became Derek Karlavaegen, the 'wanderer'?

Isn't John the Wanderer the main character of Wizard and the Princess? I might be mistaken; if so, I meant the character who is the protagonist of Wizard and the Princess.

I consider Wizard and the Princess a prequel to KQ and the kind of idea I'm talking about: Games set in the world of King's Quest that aren't exactly "King's Quest" proper. But that would get the brand name.

[KatieHal]

It has the potential for not just being about the Royal Family, but here's the thing: regardless of whether that was part of Roberta's stated formula for the series, it clearly WAS part of the formula. 7 out 8 games star members of the Royal Family. So it would require some dedicated transition to make it NOT about them. After all, TV shows don't suddenly change their entire cast after seven seasons, for example.

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

It has the potential for not just being about the Royal Family, but here's the thing: regardless of whether that was part of Roberta's stated formula for the series, it clearly WAS part of the formula. 7 out 8 games star members of the Royal Family. So it would require some dedicated transition to make it NOT about them. After all, TV shows don't suddenly change their entire cast after seven seasons, for example.

True but it does look like she was looking to expand the series beyond Graham, Valanice, Alex and Rosella. And I don't see why it shouldn't be expanded beyond them. Consider Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, for example. An iconic cast for 20something years, replaced by a just as iconic cast whose stories were set after the original stories, but whose plots sometimes interwove with the originals.

Or, the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion. The Hobbit is a light, fun, easy to read, classic fairy-taleish adventure; The Lord of the Rings is a deep, metaphorical, allegorical masterpiece, with only several ties to the Hobbit (the Ring, Bilbo and Gandalf); Virtually a whole new cast replaced the cast if you will of The Hobbit. And the Silmarillion has no real story ties to either outside of the fact that it tells of how certain characters came to be, but is set thousands of years before either and exists in the same world, while having stories of hundreds of characters either not at all mentioned in the LotR, or only given passing mention in there as legends.

[KatieHal]

Between The Hobbit and LotR, yes, but they are extensions of the same story--Bilbo is still there, and in more than just a passing way (unike, for example, King Graham's cameo in MoE), and his actions in Hobbit directly influence and lead to the events of LotR. They aren't completely disparate stories. The Silmarillion is indeed far more separated and let's be honest, that's part of why it's less well-known (also the fact that it reads like an encyclopedia).

IMO, to successfully transition KQ to a different cast, you need some kind of strong ties to the Royal Family to at least begin that. A reason that MoE is so strongly disliked by so many is that it handled this transition poorly.

[Baggins]

Isn't John the Wanderer the main character of Wizard and the Princess? I might be mistaken; if so, I meant the character who is the protagonist of Wizard and the Princess.

I consider Wizard and the Princess a prequel to KQ and the kind of idea I'm talking about: Games set in the world of King's Quest that aren't exactly "King's Quest" proper. But that would get the brand name.

You are mistaken. The character of Wizard and the Princess didn't have a name. It was either 'you', or known as the 'happy wanderer'. The KQC made him out to be a wandering barbarian.

7 out 8 games star members of the Royal Family. So it would require some dedicated transition to make it NOT about them. After all, TV shows don't suddenly change their entire cast after seven seasons, for example.

Even KQ8 was in part about saving King Graham (a major sequence had Connor journey to the castle to check on Graham and his family), this leads to Connor discovering the royal family has been turned to stone, and him checking the magic mirror (a nod back to most of the early KQ games, KQ1, KQ2, KQ3, KQ4, & KQ6)! So it wasn't completely torn away from the Royal Family. It is also about a lowly peasant gaining nobility and knighthood through acts of virtue.

Graham's role in KQ8 is more than a cameo... It is actually one of the crucial catalysts for pushing Connor's journey to save the world, and defeat Lucreto.

Graham's role was supposed to be even larger. As hinted by the Oracle of the Tree, Connor was supposed to return to Graham, and be acknowledged for his duties. There were plans to originally have an extended ending where Connor would have come before Graham, and been officially knighted into the kingdom's defense forces apparently (thus bringing Connor full circle to the role Graham held in KQ1).

What ending there is, returns to King Graham at least seeing the saviour of the Kingdom through the Magic Mirror (bringing the story full circle back to the introduction video, where Graham saw the start of the destruction).

It's often suggested that Graham like Connor was not of nobel birth, but actually came to that position by deed (or the deeds of his father and grandfather)!

[snabbott]

IMO, to successfully transition KQ to a different cast, you need some kind of strong ties to the Royal Family to at least begin that. A reason that MoE is so strongly disliked by so many is that it handled this transition poorly.

I agree that for something like this to be considered an extension of King's Quest, there would need to be involvement of the primary KQ characters. Even with TV series spin-offs, characters from the original are often there at the beginning. At the very least, they would need to be referenced significantly.

[Baggins]

Even with TV series spin-offs, characters from the original are often there at the beginning. At the very least, they would need to be referenced significantly.

Snabbot, actually in Star Trek: Next Generation... for example.

Characters from the original series usually only appeared as a cameo!

For example in The Next Generation, McCoy appears in the first episode. He only says one line really. His appearance is largely tangential to the plot. He shows up, says a few lines, and you never see him again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-5DMBXz8s

The scene could be left out, and not affect the story at all. It's largely pointless, insignificant, and if you blink, you  will miss it. Note that its main intent is to setup the "Enterprise" as a character (Similar to how Daventry is a non-physical character in the KQ games). But its not a scene required to see the ship as a character/location, etc as a character.

There were later episodes that brought back Spock, Spock's parents, or Mr. Scott... But they used the characters more centrally to the episode's plot. But these plots were self-contained, and not largely important to the show as a whole.

Using Hollywood as a way to explain how 'spinoffs' are done is probably not the best idea! There are quite a few spinoff shows out there, that few people know are spinoffs, since they largely are spinoff of some minor character created in a previous show!

What was it St. Elsewhere lead to alot of spinoffs from minor characters or situations? This also overlaps the idea of 'crossover'...

But in anycase, here is a list of many of the 'television spin-offs'. You might find that many have very little to do with the show they spun-off of!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_spin-offs

However, back to the point of Star Trek: Next Generation. In comparison the use of King Graham is much larger role than the use of McCoy.

Graham and the magic mirror begins the story, he is the first to witness the destruction of the Mask of Eternity. That destruction turns him to stone. This is a big part of the story, and saving him is a huge reason for Connor's purpose of saving the kingdom and his King. He discovers his King's fate, and decides he is the only one capable of freeing him. He first learns about his foe through the magic mirror. The game ends where it started, Graham is one of the first to be rescued, and he is one of the first to see his own saviour

Daventry & Daventry Castle itself is a major character in the KQ games, much like the Enterprise is a major character in three series of Star Trek. A setting can be a character in story telling. This did not change in KQ8, though it shows new areas not seen in previous KQ material, but only mentioned (towns of daventry hav been mentioned since KQ1 and KQ2, but never appeared before KQ8).

After all, TV shows don't suddenly change their entire cast after seven seasons, for example.

Sliders anyone (ok lasted less than seven seasons)? As I understand it, it was still highly rated, but they killed it to replace it with another series.

Stargate SG-1 (ok lasted 10 seasons, after it changed its princible cast). Btw it was still going strong, but SciFi killed it because they wanted to try out more originals series to replace it. Sci-Fi does this alot with their highly rated series), killing them when they are going strong (by strong I mean the highest rated show on the network).

Old TV show Combat (ok lasted more than 7 seasons)? Never really had a princible cast. Anyone was capable of being killed... The cast changed quite often. Once two guys became central to the series plot, and you knew they'd survive every week, the show started going downhill, and the show cancelled...

Dr. Who... replaced the principle starring role multiple times. Often this came with a total cast change as well (each new Dr. meant new companions pretty much)... It's gone on for almost 60 years! With a minor space between the 80's and 90's with no show.

Assorted soap operas, that change their principle cast over their 20-30 year existence...

What about movies or shows where actors are replaced by a different actor for the same character? Like Dumbledore in Harry Potter? ...or James Bond?

[Bludshot]

Considering how poorly we all handled not playing a royal family member in MOE.  I don't think this will catch on.

[Sir Perceval of Daventry]

Considering how poorly we all handled not playing a royal family member in MOE.  I don't think this will catch on.

Yay for close mindedness!
KQ = VERY STRICT RULES AND NOTHING ELSE. 1992 FOR LIFE.

[Baggins]

Ya, apparently Roberta got many letters from people that quit playing KQ3 or chose not to play it for that reason.

[Bludshot]

I'm not necessarily against the idea.  I'm just pointing out how the series is often perceived.

You're talking about some of the oldest characters in videogames.  As such their quests tended to be pretty narrow in scope.  I have a hard time thinking of KQ lands interacting with each other on a level compared to the Forgotten Realms i.e. political, racial, and sexual themes.  

I'm not sure what a KQ universe could offer that is unique to all the other fantasy worlds out there.  Don't get me wrong, most of the lands in the series are great but in the sense that they are great to explore as a lone adventurer.

[KatieHal]

Considering how poorly we all handled not playing a royal family member in MOE.  I don't think this will catch on.

Yay for close mindedness!
KQ = VERY STRICT RULES AND NOTHING ELSE. 1992 FOR LIFE.

Again, the non-royal family member transition was poorly done. And plenty of people who did play MoE still disliked it. You asked for opinions and thoughts on the idea, and people are giving those. Doesn't mean they will align with your own, or that they are close-minded for not agreeing.

And I might add you yourself have expressed opinions very strongly against (or in other words, closed) to ideas of the games changing in ways you don't happen to like (the tonal shift from KQ5 to KQ6, for example).

[Blackthorne]

I don't think taking King's Quest in that direction is a good move.  King's Quest is about Graham's Family.   

I don't think you could call the game King's Quest.  Maybe, though, you could have other games set in the world of Daventry.  But turning it into a D&D style property?  I don't know.  I think that's a little fanboyish obsessive.  Some things are better left as they are, and we move on to new things.


Bt

[Cez]

Right on.

I tend to believe that there are those world that are expansive and are about their mythology, and those that are based and rooted on its characters. King's Quest has always belonged to the second batch.

You have stuff like Final Fantasy, which was built around a certain lore, and that lore is what carried on through generations of more and more games. Which is why every game has a different cast of characters, and the connections are made through this lore, but that was established from day 0.

But King's Quest worlds are meaningless without the characters that travel through them, making it a characters based saga. To start with, King's Quest never had a very rich lore. It was a mix-match of fairy tales dropped in whatever land Roberta fell like, but Roberta was never interested in developing those worlds as much as she was interested in developing the characters and the situations.

The Connor hand off would have worked better if he had been presented in a previous story, or given a minor role first. If there was a game with Edgar as a protagonist, for example, it would have been less of a shock, I guess. But, the fact that the genre changed on you, fairy tales were an afterthought, and to top that, a new protagonist that wasn't even developed enough is what made MoE lack so much in the eyes of fans.

So, in that way, King's Quest epicenter IS the Royal Family. Any expansion of the world, should part from the Royal family in the most careful way possible. 

[Baggins]

Fairy tale in MOE were not an afterthought, Roberta just focused on overtly religious and mythological concepts.

The story of Lucifer and and the fallen angels, Paradise Lost, God, etc.

Actually, i'd say starting with kQ6 the games started using more progressively obscure sources of myth. Take nightmare for example. KQ7 has no fairy tale references and mainly mythology. KQ8 is primarily mythology and biblical legends.

KQ2 might have adapted from Dracula, KQ8 took Tolkien as it's inspiration.

kq8 is probably the single most KQ game filled with intentional meaning, almost every thing in the game has double meanings and symbolism. Almost everything is tied together in the world and connected. It is probably the single deepest game in the series as far as story.

Perhaps the turn off is the fact that myth was not an afterthought in the game, and Roberts went out of her way to connect everything together instead of a series of random stories tossed into the world. Maybe that makes it too serious and much too crafted for what people were used to.

[Cez]

KQ7 may not be a fairy tale per se,  but what was mainly based on could be considered a modern fairy tale. The story reeks of Alice in Wonderland, right up to Rosella's attire. Roberta went full on Disney, which kept the connection to fairy tales at large.

MoE was an extreme drastic change on all angles. It did away with the gameplay, it did away with the lightness and overall magic and charm of King's Quest, and it did away with the Royal Family at large.

Also, MoE was never really marketed as a spin off. They didn't put the "8" in the title, but it still was sold as King's Quest title. People had certain expectations from it and it largely shows they were not met. Otherwise fans wouldn't feel so put off by it in general. The criticism fans make on King's Quest 7 for example has to do with very different reasons than those made on 8, but 7 is still widely accepted as a true King's Quest, just not a very good one by the majority, from what I gather. Whereas MoE is considered to be not a true King's Quest by large.

[Baggins]

KQ8 was never intended to be a spinoff. Roberta was designing much how we got from day one. 3D and combat were early ideas for the direction o the game, and much part of the myths she was inspired by for the story. It was never going to be exactly like any previous K game and she was warning about that ad early as 1995.

Actually they nearly marketed KQ7 without the number as well. Personally I find it to be the weakest KQ game. The least KQ like game, KQ8 was closet to KQ6 than KQ7 was to any previous game. If taletale goes that direction I would be very upset. I find it overhyped and overrated... The fact it tried to go for Disney lite is one the main problems I have with it, since it doesn't match the style of any previous game. Plus it had no connection back to KQ6 and I don't feel it made connections to KQ4 in a proper or meaningful manner. The connections are made mainly in 5 minute exposition at the end. Rather than it being useful discovery in the middle of the story. Plus there is no Daventry (or rather it's barely utilized or mentioned during the story) and no Graham and no magic mirror...

Btw KQ8 is filled with whimsical characters and magical elements.