Hey guys,
Thanks a lot for the feedback.
I gotta say regarding narrations that it's a debated topic. A lot of people seem to like, and certainly King's Quest is not stranger to long narrations.
The problem I had with narrations in this game was probably the reason why they went away in KQ7. A lot of people who played the demo asked for more interaction with the environment. The truth of the matter is that to look at the tree in the crossroad and have a description that says "The tree is being tormented in the merciless weather". Well, duh, you can see that, so why have a narrator that says exactly that?
Narrations are obviously a thing of the past. They were needed in the old games because with the lower resolutions sometimes you couldn't really tell what you were looking at. So, I dared to play it a bit different and use them as a way to go into the mind of Graham, and use them as a supporting tool to bring about the stories of who is this family, where have they come from, and what makes them so special.
So, for those that do not like the lengthy narrations, there's actually a way to turn the narration voice off, if you just want to skip through the dialog quickly to see if it holds any valuable information. I think that's a fair option to the player who doesn't need or care to be brought up to speed or doesn't like to delve into the minds of the characters.
We are also talking about implementing the right mouse button as a way to skip past the full narration, which is something we wanted to implement for this game and never got around to do it.
So, to be completely honest, I'm not sure where I stand with the long narrations. Probably in our next games, if we decide to keep them a bunch, they'll be more personal and allow you to get into what the character is feeling without having them going for so long (I even make fun of them in one episode in an easter egg!). But for these games, they are already recorded and in, so hopefully, there are more people that like them overall.
As for the sassy narrator, yes, that was a very deliberate decision. We used to have the classic King's Quest narrator, and that just didn't do it. The dialogue was written for someone like Amy, and once she took on the role and took her own spin on it, I was writing narrations especially for her and the character she had created. Most people here point those jokes out as their favorite moments from the game, and even some reviews point them out as great comic relief, so that's one thing that you'll definitely continue to see in the following episodes.
As for the dark tone, don't worry. If you saw the Ep2 preview, you've seen the overall tone of Ep2, which I'll dare to say is the most lighthearted one of the bunch, although there will be moments in each one of them. We couldn't have forgotten about the light heart side of King's Quest, as much as the plot takes on the darker side. Someone here made the perfect comparison: Kingdom Hearts. I think that's one good way to put it in the amount of goofyness and darkness coming together you'll see in the following episodes.
Finally, the music. OMG the music is one of my favorite things of this game. I worked closely with Austin as he crafted each one of the themes.. The soundtrack for this game is about 3 hours long right now and continues to grow! I live for the music in a game (it can totally change my perspective of whether I like or dislike a game), so finding someone like Austin who understood exactly what I want in terms of music has been an absolute blessing. We've gone back and forth on the themes, but he always finds a way to craft the perfect theme for the moment. Some of my fav moments from ep1 are obviously the intro, Graham's theme (which you hear right after you change into his adventure attire), the Archdruid hut music, and the ranger/ending themes.
By the way, there's no KQ4 music in here. That's one thing we decided to go completely original (except for one nod to the KQ music you find later on) What are you referring to exactly?
Thanks again!
Cez