Zork, like all the other Infocom Games were highly descriptive and detailed. The PLOT was always the highest priority on their games. Very similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure Books.
King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II were both drawn on Sierra’s original graphic text adventures, which I’m sure were highly influenced by Scott Woods’ ADVENTURE. KQ 1 and KQ2 were both treasure hunt games.
Space Quest I was written in between KQ 2 and KQ3, and that was the time when Plot became a much more important detail in Sierra’s games.
In my opinion Infocom’s games were more in-depth and detailed, and true to the term Interactive Fiction. But this style appealed to a limited audience and therefore the market did not lost very long, and the company went out of business.
King’s Quest III and King’s Quest IV, combined good plot elements (less borrowed from traditional fairy tales) and still were challenging to gamers. That’s why they’re my favorite of the series. Imagine if the Icon system had been in place for KQ4 and how much easier reaching the Whale’s uvula would be. That would have removed the entire challenge to the puzzle if you could simply click the feather on the uvula.
I still believe Sierra made the right decision to go with the Icon system in the nineties, because times were changing. Just like B/W TV gave way to color.
Unfortunately nothing that was done from that point on in the KQ series made everybody happy. Some people complained that KQ5 was too linear and not challenging enough. So, KQ6 was written with two possible endings (reminds me of the Dynamix adventure games, Rise Of The Dragon and Heart Of China gave those options). KQ7 was written and designed to be easier and more family friendly, but that still bothered some people, so KQ8 was designed as a Action/RPG hybrid….And that of course brought the biggest outcry from fans, so it seemed nothing Roberta pleased everyone, but I doubt she cared about making everybody happy.
I prefer the traditonal orginal Sierra games, but I still play the Icon based ones. Space Quest V is my favorite Space Quest game, but of course there is the abysmal Space Quest 6. Personally, I hated the move to a single cursor….
although I liked Dynamix’s Adventure games and it was pretty much one cursor if I recall…I’ll have to go take them out of storage and play them