Adventure Gamers - Forums

Yes, my personal episode ranking:

1>3>2>5>4

I wasn’t impressed by the puzzles in this episode but thought they ended the story well.

Overall, I like this new King’s Quest, but chapter 4 made me think that maybe something happened in the production of that particular epsiode, which made it go over budget and hastily re-designed into that unimpressive line draw puzzle it was. That led into chapter 5 to turn into something shorter.

My guess (complete speculation, but based on experience with episodic development) is that they had to seriously shorten their schedules and make chapters 4 and 5 at the same time so they could get the retail version out for Christmas. I also think they were too ambitious with chapter 1, which put them behind (schedule-wise and money-wise) for the rest of the episodes. It would have been a great standalone game but that length and complexity wasn’t sustainable for a full series.

With episodic games devs often count on the series to keep selling as episodes release, and use those sales to either fund the later ones or at least justify the effort. But episodic games tend not to sell consistently throughout the series, they sell more at the beginning and at the end. So they may have just hit a point where they had to do whatever it took to get the series finished before Christmas, even if that meant giving the games less attention or scaling back their original plans.

[/speculation]

A chapter 4 question: Was it possible to do anything with the gift from the Hobblepots? I just carried it around the whole time so I expected it to be important in chapter 5, but it never came up. I thought I saw it in Graham’s room at the end—a box with pictures in it?—but if that was the same box, it was pretty anti-climactic.

I agree, it seems like it might have been better to release it as a yearly stand alone episode and try to maintain the quality of the first episode.
Since it seems it didn’t sell all that much these last 2 probably needed to be released soon.
About the question, I have no idead, doesn’t seem to be more to it.
And what about the dragon?. I thought he would show up in the last episode.

Also the new “Sierra” initiative seems have gone all quiet for the last year.

Just started playing this week. Episode 1 was a nice surprise and above expectations. Ep 2 is tedious and I’m not a fan of the repetitive structure. I realise it’s more than likely a tribute to KQIII, but the “choices” fall flat when you have no idea what the consequences of your actions are going to be.

For me episode 1 was good
Episode 2 was pointless… really
Episode 3 was good i really like it
Episode 4 was odd but in some way somewhat intriguing
Episode 5 was good but short

wilco - 28 October 2016 11:38 AM

Also the new “Sierra” initiative seems have gone all quiet for the last year.

Its Activision, they will slowly kill it if it wont bring good $$$
How many dead franchises they can revive realistically and make money?

nomadsoul - 04 November 2016 05:33 AM

wilco - 28 October 2016 11:38 AM

Also the new “Sierra” initiative seems have gone all quiet for the last year.

Its Activision, they will slowly kill it if it wont bring good $$$
How many dead franchises they can revive realistically and make money?

Not adventures
RPGs (Wasteland), strategy games and FPS (Doom, Shadow Warrior)

Oscar - 04 November 2016 01:13 AM

Just started playing this week. Episode 1 was a nice surprise and above expectations. Ep 2 is tedious and I’m not a fan of the repetitive structure. I realise it’s more than likely a tribute to KQIII, but the “choices” fall flat when you have no idea what the consequences of your actions are going to be.

I liked episode 2 but have a problem with how the “choices” in that one carry over to the rest of the games.

Not saving particular characters wasn’t a choice I made, I just never managed to do it! We see at the end of the episode that they weren’t actually killed off, but it seems like if you “lost” a character in ep2 you never see them again. Their shops were off limits to me in the later episodes—not because they were dead, but they just randomly weren’t around. In chapter 4 everyone just seems to be off on vacation. That’s not a natural result of my “choice”, it’s an arbitrary gating off of certain characters as a penalty for my failure.

I would have preferred to have the characters still around, but have their attitude toward Graham change depending on whether he’d saved them or not. Even better would have been if you could earn their trust back and renew your friendship with them in chapter 5.

wilco - 04 November 2016 07:31 AM

nomadsoul - 04 November 2016 05:33 AM

wilco - 28 October 2016 11:38 AM

Also the new “Sierra” initiative seems have gone all quiet for the last year.

Its Activision, they will slowly kill it if it wont bring good $$$
How many dead franchises they can revive realistically and make money?

Not adventures
RPGs (Wasteland), strategy games and FPS (Doom, Shadow Warrior)

I meant Sierra franchises?
Is there any that has more market than KQ?

nomadsoul - 04 November 2016 03:33 PM

wilco - 04 November 2016 07:31 AM

nomadsoul - 04 November 2016 05:33 AM

wilco - 28 October 2016 11:38 AM

Also the new “Sierra” initiative seems have gone all quiet for the last year.

Its Activision, they will slowly kill it if it wont bring good $$$
How many dead franchises they can revive realistically and make money?

Not adventures
RPGs (Wasteland), strategy games and FPS (Doom, Shadow Warrior)

I meant Sierra franchises?
Is there any that has more market than KQ?

Space Quest of course! Just make it a 3d platformer

Kings Quest is probably the biggest but a new good GK (not point-and-click) or a horror like Phantasmagoria (but good) could do ok.
Outside of adventures Caesar series or Outpost could do well

fov - 04 November 2016 03:30 PM

Oscar - 04 November 2016 01:13 AM

Just started playing this week. Episode 1 was a nice surprise and above expectations. Ep 2 is tedious and I’m not a fan of the repetitive structure. I realise it’s more than likely a tribute to KQIII, but the “choices” fall flat when you have no idea what the consequences of your actions are going to be.

I liked episode 2 but have a problem with how the “choices” in that one carry over to the rest of the games.

Not saving particular characters wasn’t a choice I made, I just never managed to do it! We see at the end of the episode that they weren’t actually killed off, but it seems like if you “lost” a character in ep2 you never see them again. Their shops were off limits to me in the later episodes—not because they were dead, but they just randomly weren’t around. In chapter 4 everyone just seems to be off on vacation. That’s not a natural result of my “choice”, it’s an arbitrary gating off of certain characters as a penalty for my failure.

I would have preferred to have the characters still around, but have their attitude toward Graham change depending on whether he’d saved them or not. Even better would have been if you could earn their trust back and renew your friendship with them in chapter 5.

Actually I didn’t mind that at all. It’s a story being told, so how could there be different choices? I just wish they’d made that clear from the start, so I didn’t go to the trouble of trying to get a different outcome. (by saving different people)

Actually I loved the second chapter. It’s a chapter that I immediately replayed trying to find a way to save everybody. I thought it added a resource management dimension to the adventure game which I thought was very original and quite fun.

I still didn’t finish chapter 4 though, I was playing on parallels on a mac and the latest update causes some kind of graphic artefact when playing King’s quest…

But so far I’d say 2>1>3>4
With 2, 1 and 3 relatively close together and 4 being far below.