Unused scene in KQ7?

[Akril15,Akril15_aol_com]

Hello,

It’s been a while since I posted here, but since this is a subject that can probably only be answered by Sierra’s employees, I thought I might as well post it here.

Thanks to SCI Resource Viewer, I’ve been able to take a look at the insides of Sierra’s games. To be more precise, I can view the various animations, objects, backgrounds, scripts and text from Sierra’s VGA and SVGA games. I’ve discovered a lot of unused material in several games, such as rough mock-ups of the puzzles in Shivers and an unused scene of the Realm of the Dead in KQ6.

However, the game that has yielded the most unused material by far is KQ7. I mean, there are animations of Rosella and Valanice doing various actions from all eight angles, and when I counted up how many animations there were in the resource files versus the number of animations actually used in the game, I calculated that only 18% of the animations were actually used! There are also a lot of background images that are nothing more than black-and-white pencil sketches.

Though it’s been easy to figure out where most of the unused material would have appeared in the game, one small bunch of animations still puzzles me. They are animations of Valanice and the hooded stranger from Chapter 6 frantically running along. They show the stranger leaping over a fissure of some kind, then turning around and catching Valanice as she leaps over it. He then starts to fall into the fissure, but Valanice graps his hand and pulls him to safety. The two then turn and continue running. There are also animations of a crack appearing in the ground and then growing wider as well as some stones raining from above, with one landing in what seems to be water (judging by the color of the splash).

These animations appear along with the media from the scene in Vulcanix at the base of the elevator to Ooga Booga (where Rosella has to take out the bridge-guarding troll), and judging by their content, chronologically they must appear in Chapter 6, after the stranger has destroyed the debris blocking the elevator but before he and Valanice arrive in the Volcano Control Room in Vulcanix.

However, I have no idea which background these animations were meant to be displayed on, or anything else about the scene aside from what I’ve deduced on my own. I’ve contacted Lorelei Shannon asking about this, but I suspect that she’s busy with other things, since I haven’t heard back from her in some time. Can anyone else possibly shed some light on this topic?

(By the way, here are a couple of the animations:
The stranger catches Valanice
Valanice rescues the stranger
 I had trouble “stitching” most of them together smoothly, but these was the best two I came up with. Also, here is an unused background I found in the resource files that looks like it’s from Vulcanix. I’m starting to suspect that the animations were meant to be played on this scene, but I can’t be too sure: The Mystery Scene

And finally, here’s a site where I’ve compiled many of my findings, if anyone is interested in seeing them.

[Baggins,]

As you may know from other files found in the games inner workings. You can find a menu that shows that the game was originally going to be seven acts.

Based on information from several sources including the KQ7:The Authorized Guide, and King’s Quest Companion, 4th edition, it seems that there was apparently going to be another Valanice chapter in which you may have had more interactivity with the stranger. Scenes that run on their own in the finished game.

This would suggest that chapter 7 would probably been primarily Rosella chapter finishing the game, or possibly chapter 6 may have been alternating back and forth playing both characters parts. Although that never came to be.

But its not entirely clear.

[Author]

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