Welcome DanielAMV, and thanks for providing feedback.
I was dissapointed first, that the style of the game went toward the Kindgom of Daventry being a more of a metropolis, I liked the "empty" kingdom feel of the first ones, which I thought gave it more of an adventure feel, sort of like what Shadow of the Colossus did, makes you feel like that was a real adventure.
The TSL demo only shows scenes from Isle of the Crown, and one from Isle of the Sacred Mountain. It follows KQ6 style, since those scenes are all from KQ6. There are more "empty" scenes in the game, but they haven't been shown publicly yet.
That brings me to my next point, there really isn't any style to this game, and maybe I'm the only one who thinks so, but I always thought Kings Quest was really built around it's style. Everything blends together so blandly, nothing sets it apart. Take in the demo, when you go into your room, there on the wall is Graham's hat, that's his hat, it's an icon! but it just blends right in to the room (which by the way needs some perspective to it) you have to make that sucker stand out, give that place some personality, the whole castle is really all over the place in it's design.
As for objects blending in, I think that was intentional. If every inventory object you needed to interact with stood out, this game would be too simple and essentially become nothing more than a glorified pixel-hunt.
We prefer the player to be able to explore, and the team has added more descriptive dialogue to scenes which accomplish this.
Next - Too much dialogue. I'm just judging this on the trailer and the intro, but dang, overdramatic much? Come on this isn't LotR, don't try to make it something it isn't.
I agree that there is a lot of dialogue and a lot more drama in TSL than any previous KQ game. Again, I believe this was intentional by design. We weren't trying to develop a run-of-the-mill KQ game. We wanted to make something creative where we could give proper closure to the series. Naturally, this means the game must answer plot holes and questions that were never previously addressed. Also, since our characters have multifaceted personalities, there is obviously going to be more drama, relative to past KQ games.
King Graham. What the heck happened to him? He's a stinking softy! look this guy has been through hell and back, several times, now all it seems he can do is hang his head and sigh. I've always pictured him as a quick witted mischevious guy who can't stand his kingly duties. Kind of like the Diehard guy in a Fantasy world.
Once you see the introduction cutscene you'll have a better understanding as to why Graham is so melancholy. Of course, he does not remain in this emotional state for the entire duration of the game either. He, like other characters, change as events unfold.
It's great that you are doing this and I know that alot of my complaints are about that fundamentals behind your game and can't be changed because of what the game is. I just had to speak my peace because I hold Kings Quest in such high regard, but maybe you can just keep this stuff in mind as you go.. So best of luck to the entire team
I'm glad you expressed your concerns, and I hope that this helps you understand why we made these particular design decisions.
First let me say i'm from the class of KQ 1,2 and 3, and this is coming from that perspective.
I'm addressing this point last because it really doesn't have much bearing on your other points. It's fine to use KQ1-3 as your benchmark, but you should also keep in mind the era that those games were developed and technological limitations surrounding those games. They had limited graphics, dialogue & plot because of technological limitations.
Each
game had to fit in 512KB of RAM & 1.44MB of storage space or less! There was also a budget. They only had enough money to develop a game within a certain timeframe, again placing limitations on the game development. Since we don't have these particular limitations in TSL, we're not restricted by them. There are of course standards and guidelines that we use, but they're no where near as restrictive as they were in 1984-1986.
