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A while back I finished playing AGD interactive’s version of King’s Quest 2: Romancing the throne. They added a lot of content from the original, including =SPOILER ALERT= scenes where an elder Graham mkes Connor the King of Daventry and an evil servant of Graham placing a curse which resulted in “None of his childrin inheriting the throne.” =END SPOILER ALERT=
I thought these scenes were a poignant addition to AGD’s account of the events in “Romancing the Throne,” but I can’t help but wonder whether or not it was accurate. I thought that Rosella was to inherit the throne in spite of being wed to Edgar, who is heir to the throne of Oberon and Titania. What really happened to Daventry at the end of the King’s Quest games?
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A while back I finished playing AGD interactive’s version of King’s Quest 2: Romancing the throne. They added a lot of content not in the original, including =SPOILER ALERT= scenes where an elder Graham mkes Connor the King of Daventry and an evil servant of Graham placing a curse which resulted in “None of his children inheriting the throne.” =END SPOILER ALERT=
I thought these scenes were a poignant addition to AGD’s account of the events in “Romancing the Throne,” but I can’t help but wonder whether or not it was accurate. I thought that Rosella was to inherit the throne in spite of being wed to Edgar, who is heir to the throne of Oberon and Titania. What really happened to Daventry at the end of the King’s Quest games?
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Keep in mind that AGD’s games are not canon, i.e. they have no connection to the official KQ games aside from being exercises in riding someone else’s coattails to success. Roberta Williams, nor any other member of the official KQ creative team, had anything to do with these releases. So you can safely ignore their additions to the KQ mythos.
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Yeah, the reason AGD or any fan group does what they do is because they love these games as much as we do. The only difference being that they know how to write game code and we don’t.
What I’d really like to know is what people think about what really happened at the end of KQ7. Did Rosella become queen of Daventry, or did she become the future queen of the faries?
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Nonsense. AGD (now Himalaya) has made many statements to the contrary. They’re in it for the money, folks, just like any other software developer and just like Sierra used to be. AGD needed some way of learning the technology, and decided to concentrate their efforts on building games on top of already existant mythologies, thus saving themselves a lot of time and effort. (And in the process making some statements that really should have gone unstated.)
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Still, that’s a long way till ‘make money on someone else’s work’… while practicing or studying you have all the right to practice on something that was there before you… the results of their study were not for money
and anyway, their works indicate that they are going to sell their technical knowledge, not scenario writing…
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I agree. Johann is just a hater, man. If they didn’t understand the charm and beauty of the original games, AGD wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing now. They’d be off using their programming skills to try to imitate Halo or some other top-shelf titlw.
But people, this post isn’t about that at all. I want to talk about what you think happened at the end of the King’s Quest saga and how it compares to AGD’s version of it.
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I wish KQ2VGA and KQ7 were fresher in my mind. I really need to play KQ7 again. Alex stays in the land of the Green Isles at the end of KQ6. I don’t remember what happened to Rosella in KQ7 at the end – what were the specific details?
As for KQ2VGA, isn’t that curse thing what the Father intends – but obviously wouldn’t the goal of the player in any future KQ games from AGDI, if the Father storyline is continued, be to counter-act that curse / prevent it from coming true?
When KQIX comes along, I’m sure they’ll have their own ideas about the future of Daventry and the whole KQ world.
“…at the end of the King’s Quest games” – well, we are at the end of the King’s Quest games. As far as Roberta is concerned, I guess KQ7 is the end. I don’t know if she still considers Mask canon after it didn’t really turn out how she envisioned. I need to play that game again too – I don’t remember what happened at the end of Mask – whether or not anything happened with Connor. People generally seemed to dislike Connor – in one scene from KQ2VGA, *SPOILER*, the player is given a choice to knight Connor or not to knight him (I think – or was it to actually crown him King? Again I forget). This doesn’t mean that according to AGDI Connor becomes King. It only means that it is a future possibility. Well, Sir Graham became King according to his heroic deeds. He wasn’t blood-related to the Royal Family. I would find it very fitting that if anyone ever interprets the end of the KQ story, the space of the KQ story measured according to the life and reign of King Graham, that the crown should be passed again to another brave knight.
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not only that but, as evidenced by the fan reaction to KQ3, why bother playing a game called King’s Quest if the character you’re playing doesn’t become royalty at the end? I think that’s why KQ2VGA made their ending that way. It’s also possible that’s what happened to Connor at the end of KQ8, but seeing as I’ve never played it…mheh…muh…mmh…
The main ending of KQ7 is like this **SPOILER ALERT** Rosella uses the strange Troll device to zap the fake Troll King, turning him to Edgar from KQ4. Edgar protects Rosella from Malicia, and then gets killed. Rosella zaps Malicia turning her into a baby. Rosella gives Edgar the life from the black cat. (If you fail to do this, you get a lesser ending where Edgar dies and everyone’s sad.) Some long exposition is given by all the characters. Finally, Edgar takes Rosella on a tour of his kingdom in a swan boat (Faries, Go figure.) Edgar asks for Rosella’s hand a second time, and she accepts. Then they fade out.**END SPOILER ALERT**
Aside from that scene, we don’t know what happened to Rosella. She was supposed to inherit the throne at the end of KQ4, but we don’t know if she became the queen or she stayed with Edgar and became his queen. (I certainly hope it’s the former, since Edgar is by no means a proper leader.) I think the KQ2VGA people thought Rosella became the queen of the faries, actually fulfilling the prophecy that none of Graham’s children would inherit the throne.
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“… (by Brandon Klassen) I wish KQ2VGA and KQ7 were fresher in my mind. I really need to play KQ7 again. Alex stays in the land of the Green Isles at the end of KQ6. I don’t remember what happened to Rosella in KQ7 at the end – what were the specific details?“…at the end of the King’s Quest games” – well, we are at the end of the King’s Quest games. As far as Roberta is concerned, I guess KQ7 is the end. I don’t know if she still considers Mask canon after it didn’t really turn out how she envisioned. I need to play that game again too – I don’t remember what happened at the end of Mask
…”Rosella ended up staying with Edgar in the Kingdom of Clouds. Don’t remember seeing any wedding scene though. But I only played it through once, and that was more than 10 years ago. Couldn’t do it again. I just didn’t think that KQ7 was that good. It was too Disney, the savegame system was exquisitely horrible, and the boogeyman world was designed to see if indeed my fist could penetrate the glass of my monitor (IIRC the boogeyman would pop up at random intervals and it was a death sentence when he did; there was no defense except perhaps being close enough to the screen edge. Ooga Booga Land should have been called “Restore Land” instead.)
The end of Mask of Eternity is fresh in my memory as I played it through for the first time less than a year ago. After you smack down the guy who caused the whole mess of everyone in Daventry turning to stone, the last scene shows that all the apostles have been restored and the mask re-assembled. Connor draws a sword, and that’s pretty much the end of the game, and the end of Sierra’s KQ. Not really a fitting end to such a series, but I guess spectacular flameouts like that are to be expected when the company gets sold off and the core devteam either leaves or gets fired. If you want another case study, look what happened to Ultima.
I’m really curious to see what’s going to happen with KQIX. From the screen shots it looks like they’re tying the worlds from KQ6, 7, and 8 together. From Caesar’s writings that I’ve skimmed over here and there it looks like a LOT is going into the story. Quite a novelty these days….
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<<< Not really a fitting end to such a series, but I guess spectacular flameouts like that are to be expected when the company gets sold off and the core devteam either leaves or gets fired. If you want another case study, look what happened to Ultima. >>
What happened to the Ultima series? Was the final game a disappointment? I remember playing Ultima in the early 90’s… I remember # 7 — “The Black Gate” — had a fabulous ending with that monster yelling “d*mn you, Avatar!” etc. Did Richard Garriot (aka Lord British) stop designing?
Anyhow, is the KQ9 game expected to close out the series, or leave open the possibility for more KQ games?
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But how can something close out the series when it isn’t even part of the series?
But anyway . . . yeah, it’s totally ridiculous what EA did to Origin. Here you had one of the premiere (and certainly the technological leader) game developers going in the early 90’s. EA then acquired them (because frankly, EA’s in-house games usually sucked) with money obviously borrowed from Satan, and screwed Origin into oblivion. Just draw up a list of all time great PC games, then count the number of appearances by Origin games, you’ll be surprised. After all, who can forget Bioforge, Ultima 4, Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, Martian Dreams, Crusader and its not-quite-a-sequel, Wing Commander 1 and 2, Privateer 1 and 2, System Shock? And the list goes on. Man, what a sad tale.
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“…But how can something close out the series when it isn’t even part of the series?…”🙂 I don’t think that KQIX will close any doors to future interpretations of the KQ world, if that’s what was meant. Obviously it will say “this is where the characters are going and what’s happening next,” or there would be little point to it. I think it’s pretty interesting that – what is it again? – you get to play Alex, Rosella, and Graham? Graham hasn’t had a go at it since King’s Quest V, but regardless of his age I think having him play a prominent role in the game will in a sense close out the series – unless you want to play Quest for Pension or Quest for the Missing False Teeth.
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“… (by Johann de Waal) But how can something close out the series when it isn’t even part of the series?
…”Yeah, that’s true. Probably wasn’t the best way for me to phrase the question.
However, I just feel like, since it isn’t often that we see fan projects of this large scale and since, from what I’ve seen, this new impressive-looking “King’s Quest” project will continue stories developed from previous games AND since it seems like it’s being created with the old, familiar Sierra adventure game “spirit” in mind, then as far as I’m concerned this new project deserves to be considered a continuation (at least of sorts) of the series.
I guess I don’t see the point in insisting that new non-Sierra projects like KQ9 aren’t “real” parts in the series. I think we all know the difference between official Sierra projects and fan projects, and we all also understand that we probably won’t be seeing any new old-style adventure games from Sierra in the near future, so why not appreciate and enjoy the fabulous new work that is being done in this old adventure game spirit.
But back to what i was trying to get at in a previous post… I was simply curious whether the KQ9 creators saw their project as a kind of conclusion (at least their version of one, if even a temporary one) to the series/stories given the previously described, less-than-satisfactory KQ8 ending.
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“… (by DJ ) <<< Not really a fitting end to such a series, but I guess spectacular flameouts like that are to be expected when the company gets sold off and the core devteam either leaves or gets fired. If you want another case study, look what happened to Ultima. >>What happened to the Ultima series? Was the final game a disappointment? I remember playing Ultima in the early 90’s… I remember # 7 — “The Black Gate” — had a fabulous ending with that monster yelling “d*mn you, Avatar!” etc. Did Richard Garriot (aka Lord British) stop designing?
Anyhow, is the KQ9 game expected to close out the series, or leave open the possibility for more KQ games?
…”
The Ultima VII’s were some of my favorite games. But then EA picked up Origin and things started getting weird. Ultima 8 wasn’t that bad story wise, but it was an incredibly frustrating game. They put in these ridiculous arcade-style sequences where you had to get across, say, a lake and you had to jump the stones to do it. The jump length was fixed so if you made a misstep (very easy to do) you’d die and get to spend 5 mins restoring, as the game was quite a pig. Eventually they released a patch that allowed you to double-click where you wanted to jump and the Avatar would bullseye it. That made the game playable. Wasn’t anywhere near as good as the previous Ultimas though. The thing that ticked me off most about U8 is that they took a step backwards and got rid of the close-up character portraits that U7 was known for. Overall, U8 had the feel of a game that was hammered out because someone didn’t have anything better to do at the time.
Where do I begin with Ultima IX? Let’s just say it was released 6 months before it was done. It was literally unplayable and broke all sorts of common sense rules, the first one being “Don’t render objects the player can’t see..Like, say, the entire game world that’s outside of the room you’re locked in”. I had a pretty beefy system at the time and that thing was wheezing on U9. After an endless stream of patches, it resembled a somewhat playable game, but there were still a lot of quest killers. One of the quests was to get a dagger sigil, and that involved killing three demons. However, it was possible to kill all of them early in the game BEFORE you took on the quest. If that was the case, no dagger sigil for the player, and no way to finish the game. I almost fell into that trap…Luckly I only found two of the three demons. Had I found the last one I probably never would have seen the end of the game. There were also problems with savegames going corrupt, the player getting stuck in a perpetual poisoned state, etc. Yeah, it was good stuff. The story was so-so. By no means was that game adequate to top off a series lasting more than 20 years.
Richard Garriott still had a hand in designing the later Ultimas, but was probably marginalized after the buyout, and maybe figured “Why bother? I’ve made my millions”. He hasn’t dropped off the face of the earth, though.. I heard he’s running the American arm of the company that’s doing City of Heroes.
I’m certainly not an authority on KQ9. I don’t have any inside scoop and all I know about it is derived from tidbits and screenshots I see on the site. I’ve seen some posts from the lead, Caesar Bittar, around here and my understanding is that there is enough of a script to win a paper drive trophy at the local elementary school. I’ve got to think that it will be a pretty cool game.
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“… (by Johann de Waal) But how can something close out the series when it isn’t even part of the series?
…”I wouldn’t be so quick to marginalize fan efforts. I think KQ9 could shape up to be as good as anything Sierra did. I thought that AGD’s revamped KQII was better than the original. It had more of a story, more depth to the characters, and most importantly, it was fun to play. Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate the original KQII, but I think AGD delivered a great game.
Also, let’s not forget that Sierra is dead, and the only relevance it has anymore is to the fans that played their games. Who better to make new ones, then?
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“… Also, let’s not forget that Sierra is dead, and the only relevance it has anymore is to the fans that played their games. Who better to make new ones, then?…”Wow, you’re right… I keep forgetting that Sierra as a development company no longer exists in any form whatsoever… purely a brand name at this point. Sad…
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Wow, you’re right… I keep forgetting that Sierra as a development company no longer exists in any form whatsoever… purely a brand name at this point. Sad…
…”It wasn’t going to last forever. The writing was on the wall when Sierra was sold to CSC, and the news of Vivendi dissolving it just confirmed what everyone already knew. Sierra had a good run, though, and Ken and Roberta single-handedly changed the industry. Ever wonder how sound cards came to be standard gear on PCs?
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