There were some other issues but these were the ones that bothered me the most and prevented me from getting very far into the game.
Go a little further. You are almost done.

But seriously, for me I didn't have a problem with the see, talk, touch, walk icons as those are pretty standard for adventure games. It is just that we didn't get to do anything with those icons. The game-playing elements were pretty much non-existent. We just observed a 3d version of a world that we had seen before, and were prevented from doing anything in that world... i.e. using our ol' noggin to interact with the world and solve problems and alter that world. It was pretty much like we were toddlers watching an interactive DVD on the computer. I don't think that that's what many of us look for when we play adventure games, especially King's Quest ones. Granted, I know that this first episode was a bit of an introductory one, re-introducing us to the story and characters, but frankly, King's Quest games (and most games in general) were never Shakespeare and the stories (while mildly important) were never the overriding draw that attracted adventure gamers to adventure games.
I've read that eps two through five are going to be longer and I
do look forward to downloading and playing them. It is just maybe they should have been combined to three maybe? It seemed like almost too short a time between the announcement that an agreement had been reached with Activision and then all of a sudden an "episode" was released that was a tad longer than the demo.
I'm probably too used to playing Sam and Max games where the episodes themselves are fairly substantial and have around three acts in each episode. I've seen Cesar's name in the credits for Sam and Max and wrongly assumed that the 5 episode Sam and Max seasons were going to be a model for The Silver Lining's release.