Adventure Gamers - Forums

wilco - 07 September 2015 10:54 AM

Second episode before the end of the year

http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/28/9223837/kings-quest-episode-two-will-be-rubble-without-a-cause

Will be called Rubble without a Cause

and

Korba added that while the first episode was inspired by the original King’s Quest and its sequel, the next will be more like King’s Quest 3. “Those games were always changing and evolving,” he said. “We want to play with that.”

Hype hype hype

Edit: Small Teaser

Hype indeed.
The pacing of release is fine too if the mileage of 2nd one will be as long as ep1.

Chapter 2 preview

Some bits:

After fumbling around in the darkness, you realise you are in a prison cell with no way to get out and very low strength. Fortunately for Graham, the goblin home has been covered in cobwebs – and not being creatures to live in squalor, the Goblins decide that Graham is the perfect candidate to clean them up thanks to his height. As you leave your cell on your quest to clean all the cobwebs, you find the other members of the town have also been imprisoned, so as king you decide it is your duty to save them – although it’s not quite that simple, as they are all slowly dying.

Puzzles feel slightly more challenging than last time, but one of the many solutions will usually make itself clear within a decent amount of time, whether that results in the outcome you wanted or not is a different story. A new mechanic of living through multiple days means that sometimes the solution to the puzzle isn’t possible until you have had a sleep, and offers up an interesting new mechanic. Most importantly, I never became frustrated with any of the puzzles, even when I was running out of ideas I would remember something I had forgotten about, sparking that aha moment.

Seems to change the mechanics and tone a bit keeping it fresh.

Zelda Williams interview

wilco - 28 November 2015 11:54 AM

Puzzles feel slightly more challenging than last time, but one of the many solutions will usually make itself clear within a decent amount of time, whether that results in the outcome you wanted or not is a different story. A new mechanic of living through multiple days means that sometimes the solution to the puzzle isn’t possible until you have had a sleep, and offers up an interesting new mechanic. Most importantly, I never became frustrated with any of the puzzles, even when I was running out of ideas I would remember something I had forgotten about, sparking that aha moment.

woah. Those are some big changes.
I badly need a cryo-stasis pod so i can leap into 2017 and play this whole season all together.

Lucien21 - 28 November 2015 12:59 PM

Part 1 is free on PSN plus this December. So from early next week if you are like me and have a Playstation 4, a plus account and have never played it then you can get it for Nada, zero, zitch, free as a bird.

It’s their trick to get you hooked up on this awesome game so you buy the rest of the season that is definitely worth buying Steam also has a discount of 10 dollars on the game, selling it for 29.99.

Cool, perfect game to play on Xmas.

Ep1 free for PS4 on PSN is live now (PS+), play it and buy the Season Pass after that

Chapter 2’s out!

im having fun so far. Theres no question though theyr walking a fine line between interesting ideas… and just frustration

Yeah it sure got repetitive!

the towns people don’t actually die then if you fail to feed them?

aaroncarney - 16 December 2015 08:35 AM

the towns people don’t actually die then if you fail to feed them?

correct.
I just finished, and overall i liked it. It is much shorter than the first episode.. but still “standard” length compared to other episodic titles. Also this episode almost exclusively re-uses characters from the last episode.. and even then only uses some of them. Surprisingly QTE is gone… like completely. I cant say i really miss it. The sim aspect was interesting but also created tedium (sleep another day so x can happen). I do love that they continue to focus on puzzle solving with very different branches. This episode has pretty high replayability because of it (especially since theyv added a skip button!)

I know I am really late to the party, but I just finished episode one (played it free using PS+), and I completely LOVE this game. The puzzles were logical and fun, and some of the puzzle structures reminded me of the old Lucas Arts games(like you needed to compete in 3 competitions to become a knight versus you need to pass three trials to become a pirate). The ability to finish the game through solving different puzzles in multiple paths is genius, and I am not sure I have seen a lot of that before(I guess Fate of Atlantis did that but not many other adventure games as far as I know). Telltale games do not count, because they are more like choose your own story rather than tackle the same problem via your choice of multiple puzzle solutions. The voice acting is top notch, and I for one loved all the silly puns, and how the game is self aware when Gwendolyn complains about them all the time. Dr Brown should be in every adventure game going forward The cell shaded graphics are breath taking, and they look like an animating painting brought to life. One surprise I have was how BIG this first episode was. Unlike Telltale’s episodes, this took me a good 5/6 hours to finish, and I can see myself replaying it to try to tackle puzzles differently.

I did have some minor complaints. You cannot skip cut scenes or speech you have visited before which gets annoying after a while, especially after multiple deaths.
The QTE’s and action sequences are very unforgiving. I wish they use something like some of the Telltale or Quantic Dream QTEs, where if you miss a QTE, you don’t die right away like in Dragon’s Lair, but you are knocked back and on the defensive and you’ll have to fail a lot to actually fail the sequence. Also I do agree that navigation is a little difficult, and having fast travel options and a map would have helped. Hope they can take care of these small details to make it a little more accessible to adventurers who are not good at the action sequences.

Overall, I was blown away by this episode, and I can’t wait to play the second one now that it came out.

zane - 16 December 2015 05:32 PM

aaroncarney - 16 December 2015 08:35 AM

the towns people don’t actually die then if you fail to feed them?

correct.
I just finished, and overall i liked it. It is much shorter than the first episode.. but still “standard” length compared to other episodic titles. Also this episode almost exclusively re-uses characters from the last episode.. and even then only uses some of them. Surprisingly QTE is gone… like completely. I cant say i really miss it. The sim aspect was interesting but also created tedium (sleep another day so x can happen). I do love that they continue to focus on puzzle solving with very different branches. This episode has pretty high replayability because of it (especially since theyv added a skip button!)

My impressions exactly, lots of recycling of assets, limited environments, old cast, still music, puzzles worth it.
Length is surprisingly gutted, but again they released it before the years end.

7/10

Just finished episode 2 and proceeded to read both the Kings Quest threads (took me four hours to get through 45 pages!)

I absolutely loved episode 1!  I felt the nostalgia as soon as I saw the title screen.

I’m pretty lucky in that I actually enjoy QTE in games so pretty much every aspect of this game was fantastic.

I see that the main complaints were regarding not being able to skip cutscenes.  Anyone else notice that change in episode 2?

P.S. WHISPER CAN DO IT!!!

I finished it. Liked the different structure and the puzzle design of the different branches that lead to the perfect being one big puzzle which gives it a very good reason replaying. Although I did not try to tackle the perfect run and don’t know if I will because of 2 problems - Graham walks too slowly and the auto-save doesn’t leave much space for experimenting…

It did have more technical problems than the 1st episode and I don’t think the story was nearly as strong or entertaining. Still a solid second episode that does a good job of mixing things up and telling a new stand alone tale.

I wonder where they’ll go next - maybe after Graham gets married and before Alexander is kidnapped