Adventure Gamers - Forums

Old??

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/08/16/sierra-s-new-king-s-quest-won-t-be-a-point-and-click-adventure.aspx

“They are doing a contemporary reboot of King’s Quest. It’s not just an HD port,” he says. “But that’s not also to say that, maybe King’s Quest is or isn’t the right one, that’s not on the table, too. It could be HD remakes of original Sierra content. It could be contemporary reimaginings of the old Sierra IPs. It could be stuff that’s new, kick-***, awesome IP that has nothing to do with the old Sierra brand, but will be a Sierra thing when it launches.”

As for how The Odd Gentlemen are approaching the franchise, don’t expect that the gameplay will be the same as you remember from the decades old series. “There’s not much I can say about King’s Quest,” Marshall tells us. “All I can say is that I’ve seen it, and it’s not a point-and-click game. But it looks *** awesome.”

As for the future, Sierra is set to grow through the rest of 2014 and into 2015. “We are talking to a handful of indie devs about different projects, and I’m really excited about a lot of them that I can’t talk about,” Marshall says. “We’re planning to announce more before the end of the year and early next year. This is a big deal for us.”

I don’t know…LA Noire was OKAY, but it was basically the same exploration/interrogation scenario played out over and over again, and it got old fast.  The game felt way too long to me, and the gameworld, while very pretty, still felt pretty empty and not very engaging.  I honestly got bored with the story and stopped playing it pretty soon after the big character switch.  There just wasn’t enough there to keep me interested, and coming off the heels of the absolute MASTERPIECE that was Red Dead Redemption, it just fell pretty flat, I think.

I wouldn’t want to see an open world adventure where all the exploration & puzzle segments were at self-contained locations on the map.  If you’re going to make an open world adventure game, you have to design puzzles and situations that make the traversal of the world feel engaging and necessary.  I don’t think LA Noire succeeded at all in that respect.

After Heroines Quest, id like to see Crystal Shard be given a crack at a new Quest for Glory Game. Would have also liked to of seen Himalaya been given Kings Quest but they are working on Mages Initiation so the timing doesnt work. But yeah, i think Crystal Shard could make and awesome game in the QFG Universe.

tomimt - 19 August 2014 12:45 PM

I’ve always considered L.A. Noire to be a pretty good take on open world adventure game. Sure, it has its filler content (a.k.a. pointless street crime missions), but as an detective adventure the game is pretty well done and sometimes it’s just fun to cruise around old LA, especially because it’s so well done.

I’d prefer something like Murdered: Soul Suspect, which gave the illusion of being an open world, without it ever feeling too daunting.

I feel unless you are going to include action in your adventure, a 3D adventure needs to relatively ‘closed-in’ so to speak, otherwise it feels like a whole load of empty nothing. That’s how I felt with L.a noire, anyhow. Just too much for too little.

I do think the new KQ will be more action-y than previous incarnation.

I can’t believe no one has asked the question yet.

Who’s daughter is Gwendolyn!?

Is it Alexander and Cassima’s daughter? Or Rosella and Edward’s?

Hmmm…


Also, in order to capture some of the original magic of the series and really drive home the nostalgia factor with veteran questers, I think they should hire Mark Seibert and Chris Braymen to come back and score the soundtrack.

That would make a very interesting story for the KQ9 - Who the Father May Be!?

I suppose the question is,
What does the ‘Sierra’ name mean to you?
What does Sierra mean to you? What are your expectations of a product with the Sierra brand name—both in the 1990s, and now?

Sierra was at first primarily a designer and developer of adventure games, but by the middle period of their history—While still independent—they were moving away from adventure games, and looking to jump on each new bandwagon as it came along. Ken Williams has said that had he remained in charge, Sierra probably would’ve ceased making adventure games.

Sierra was independant until 1996. But if you look at 1994, 1995, Sierra begins to be more of a publisher of independent studios’ games. That transition had begun in 1990 with the aquisition of Dynamix and by 1996, “Sierra” wasn’t just a bunch of guys in Oakhurst making adventure games anymore. It was a conglomerate of various studious which were—in all but legality—autonomous and indie in spirit.

I mean, before they were bought, products like “MasterCook” and “Print Artist” were coming out under the Sierra name.

Sierra by the end of the Williams’ era had overextended itself, diversified way too far, had way too many studios operating under it’s belt, and had become more of a brand than a studio even before being bought out. There’s a reason it didn’t survive Vivendi while Blizzard (bought by Vivendi at the same time) did—Sierra no longer had a single corporate identity.

I mean, when you have a “Sierra” which has one studio making GK and KQ, another making NASCAR and flight simulator, games, another making cooking, educational and home and garden software and golf simulations…And with each studio retaining it’s own physical location and corporate identity….There’s no real identity or singular vision to the company. Whereas Blizzard is focused—Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft. Sierra by 1996 was just a publishing brand for a bunch of very different studios they happened to own.

How could Vivendi, who had no idea how to run a game company in general, know what to do with Sierra? It’s major titles, the adventure games, were considered dead ends.

The fact is, the idea of Sierra as a home of indie companies (groups of nerds, geeks, gamers who want to make games they enjoy playing themselves), is EXACTLY what Sierra was in the pre-1990, pre-acquisition, pre-Bellevue days. In a way, we’re closer to the beginning than we’ve been in a long time. There seems to be a clear focus—read interviews with the guys at Sierra—on what Sierra meant at one time, there seems to be a certain standard at play for what a “Sierra” game is. It’s akin to the old days before Sierra became bloated. And the fact that there will seemingly be a 50/50 focus on developing new IP, and leveraging the classic titles, as has been stated—is a good sign. They don’t want this to just be “the Sierra brand”—they want to be Sierra, for a new time.

And potentially, for those missing the old Sierra gang, well, who knows, maybe the Two Guys will want SpaceVenture published by Sierra—and maybe if successful it’ll lead finally to SQ7. Maybe The Coles will want to work with the company again. Maybe this will bring Josho out of whatever he’s up to. Maybe we’ll see titles by Phoenix Online and Infamous Quests and Himalya published by Sierra.

This isn’t 1994 where a once cool company of long haired guys is being slowly taken over and it’s soul is being devoured by suits, where the heart of the company has been ripped from Oakhurst to Bellevue, and there’s a lot of weirdness in the organization, and it’s a depressing time, and the CEO is focused on just buying up companies without really integrating them. That was the Sierra of our childhoods—By the mid ‘90s, even before CUC, it wasn’t a fun place to work anymore; it was depressing anyway. Go read an interview by Scott Murphy or Josh Mandel sometime for further info.

This is different. If the original Sierra teams want to work, they won’t have to even be working at a studio in a cubicle 30 hours a day. They could even do the work largely from home; the contracts could be fairer. The pressure will be much less intense because the original Sierra IPs—and indie games—aren’t AAA titles with AAA budgets—or AAA title pressure to push them out as fast as possible, as it was when the Sierra of our childhood’s was in action. As early as 1989, the Two Guys were being pressured and criticized and bitched at for not getting SQ3 out “on time.”

It’s different now—with the potential to be better. A new Sierra, with a library of awesome IP, without the baggage of the original company.

There’s plenty of possibilities, let’s try to look on the bright side.