Constructing some criticism

[BigCow]

Positive:

1. The integration of the credits sequence while walking around at the beginning was well done. However, since the player wasn't constrained to visit the right rooms in order, I saw what was apparently the last bit of the credit sequence at the wrong time
2. The black cloak as a setup for the villain was a nice touch.
3. Seeing all those classic environments rendered in 3D was very cool, the reflections on the floor were particularly nice, as well as the lighting and animation in 3D

Neutral:

1. No puzzles of any significance showed up in the demo. You used an inventory item you began the game with for an obvious purpose, and you performed a repeat of the opening puzzle in King's Quest VI where you proved your identity.
2. Conversation tree interface seems interesting, although nested topics such as the quest for glory games had might be a better way to organize things.
3. Voice acting felt a little rushed at parts, particularly with dialogue overlapping with other dialogue, but for adventure games the writing tends to be more important than the execution.

Negative:

1. The oracle sequence felt really unnecessary. It lacked the animations from King's Quest VI illustrating aspects of the game. The oracle re-used a similar line from KQVI about being unable to see the identity of a person shrouded in a black cloak, and provided you with no useful information or help beyond pointing you to someone else, if that's all there is to the sequence it kind of feels like a pointless cameo.
2. Accessing the inventory or the menus didn't pause the game as expected, if you started walking in one direction then clicked a menu
it kept moving, a little disorienting.
3. My biggest concern is that the re-use of the old environments will limit the scope of the puzzles by having them be repeats of the old ones, or just an excuse to reference older parts of the world without expanding on them or adding to their depth.

In short, I'm sold on the graphics, I'll be sold on the interface once a few things are polished up, and I'm hoping the game design will be worthy of the other titles in the series. I can understand for a demo you're not in a position to open up the whole world of the game, but I'm hoping we'll be in a position to get a feel for how the puzzles in the world are to be laid out.
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Adventure Game Interfaces: http://newheiser.googlepages.com/adventuregameinterfaces

[Yonkey]

Thanks for the feedback, BigCow!

Here are my responses:

Positive:

1. The credits are based on location, not time so there's no set order that you must view them in.
2. If you like that, wait till you see the introduction sequence.
3. It's funny because when Rich kept nagging us to add them in, I felt they were low priority and unnecessary.  However, now that they don't lag the framerate, I think they're really cool.

Neutral:

1. This demo represents 4.5% of Shadows' storyline, so you can't expect many puzzles in something so short.
2. The interface needs a bit of tweaking for usability, but in general it works quite well for our purpose.
3. The overlapping dialogue is an audio bug with Torque.  This issue has already been reported.

Negative:

1. That's just the way oracles are.  Even the one from the Matrix was a bit useless since she never told Neo everything, despite knowing his entire future.
2. I believe the Programming team mentioned something about adding that feature, but first they need to figure out why we can't get characters to immediately stop moving when we tell them to stop.
3. Don't worry about that.  Chapter 1 is quite limited in terms of scene exploration, but Chapter 2 allows for a lot more, as well as never before seen places.  Chapter 3 is entirely new and not based on anything from the Green Isles.