Just finished this last night. Last I had checked in Activision had shut down TSL so I'm so happy you guys got this thing off the ground.
Thoughts on what I've seen -- I mix the good with the bad in reviews: this is how I used to do it reviewing shortstories in my writing groups...
-The humor here is great, especially in Ep.II... but I think it deserves a mention to notice where most of it is coming from: Hassan, the Hole in the Wall, Graham's reactions... that is, the characters. Or rather, originating in-game.
This is my way of saying that yes, the complaints on the narrarator are substantiated, as no doubt has been heard. However I think it's not that narrator sequences go on too LONG, but that too many of them go on for too long. Some of the longer sequences would probably have worked great as they were, but there were too many pedestrian descriptions which went 2, or 3 lines. Even 4.
I'm wondering -- are you guys maybe working from a estimation on how much you should put in based on description lengths of past King's Quest games? Based on how your engine is working, I'm wondering if that's the best way to go: the original games tended to differ in two respects:
1 - In most cases the descriptions were not audio
2 - The descriptions when written were given to you more 'in-bulk'. That is, you could see to a greater degree how much text was forthcoming. There was probably fewer multi-box descriptions on account of that.
I think this is key based on your interface. I think what's going on is people are seeing what's written on the screen and the narrator is talking, but there's less on the screen then would have been in the original game. And much of what's written is self-contained. Therefore the player will often think a description is done... only to reveal there are two or three more lines to go instead.
So part of that makes it feel longer. Yes, it is partly that the descriptions could be trimmed: but ALSO it's that if you're reading along with the narration (and many do because otherwise they might miss something a lot easier), it can feel longer. The same way going somewhere feels longer when you don't know where you're going: since you don't know when the narration will end, it feels like a longer time when you get there.
- The conversations: I understand the reason for having these conversations, but the most in-depth ones didn't advance the plot. The Oberon and Titania one from the 1st episode is probably the key here: after going through it and looking back, I felt that I had not advanced the plot, nor come to view it in a different light.
The Edgar conversation did have something to it, so this was an improvement. I still think it was too long, but it became important when talking about Edgar seeing the scars on Alexander's back.
The Shamir conversation was much more key, but I did sort of find the plot crashing in suddenly and that Shamir had too many answers at-hand. We were being told too much of the story, and not shown. Mind you, it's not like this compares badly to the original KQ games: you guys are actually trying something those games never did, which is to actually worldbuild. I enjoy Roberta's series, but I'm not sure I would term what she did world-building: she laid down great places for her story to take place, but TSL is to King's Quest as is Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica to Star Trek TNG, where the former two are more closely tied together with one thing affecting the other, and the other more episodic: it's not a Tabula Rasa every TNG episode or every King's Quest game, but there's very little looking back or questioning by the character of what has gone on before unless it immediately affected what was going on.
A friend once put it to me this way. "In Star Trek they will find a great alien artifact with incredible properties that they will hand over to the Federation and you'll never hear about it again. In Babylon 5, they will actually remember that they have that thing, and use it later".
I was once lucky enough to have my writing looked at by Sherwood Smith, a skilled writer in her won right. As she told me, and as Stephen King correctly lays out in "On Writing" (and BTW, I'm not even a particular fan of Stephen King's work -- I get as bored as anyone with yet ANOTHER tale set in a small and sleepy town in Maine -- but this is bang-on educational stuff), always tell what you can in less words. Cesar, if you or Katie are reading, I would definitely recommend this book to you both. To anyone writing pretty much anything. He lays out his points very well on language, grammar, structure, and essentially developing your writer's toolbox, as he calls it.
- The puzzles are actually fine for how hard they are... I think what people are looking for is new and creative ways to implement them. I actually do not mind at ALL that the coin bag was used often. It was not used all the time, and frankly a bag of gold is a handy thing to have. Yeah, if it felt like every puzzle came back to that bag, I can understand frustration, but I think the ratio worked out well. I actually was quite tired of the opposite: every puzzle was solved with exactly one item which you then lost. I think it's fitting for inventory items to stay with you and be used more than once.
That said though, I think part of the fun will be putting players in innovative situations. EP II felt like a step in the right direction. let's see how it goes.
Most of the rest was fine or at times, really great. Water bottles and necklaces... eeh, it's an adventure game: I don't think much of anyone really notices. You definately SHOULD try to have as good explanations as you can for everything, but that's making a good game great using the ol' "Checkov's Gun" logic, not making a good game bad. As long as what you find lying around is something that would conceivably be there.
Good luck guys. Heh, I think I need an Phoenix Online studios of my own to make games out of MY stories...
