Join Kosta Andreadis as he plays through some of the most seminal adventure games of all time over the course of 2014. Click here for part one, which took us back to King's Quest I and the world of PC gaming in the early-mid ‘80s.
The original King’s Quest was the most advanced adventure game of its day, and as we discussed in part one, a huge hit for Sierra. So, what was next? Well, those of you with even a vague notion of the series’ existence will know that the company made quite a few King’s Quest games; tens, if not thousands. Well, eight to be exact, but it didn’t take long for the first sequel to appear, thanks in part to the scripting engine Sierra developed with the original – the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI).
Although the first game bore more resemblance to a collection of well-known fantasy and fairy tale tropes than a fully realised world, all subsequent King’s Quest games took place in the Kingdom of Daventry and its surrounding lands (as established in the first game), and even followed newly kinged Graham and his immediate family on their numerous adventures.
King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne was first released in 1985 and began the trend of pun and referential subtitles the series would use throughout its many sequels, with this one in particular referencing the Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner adventure movie blockbuster from 1984, Romancing the Stone. A cutting edge pun at the time to be sure.
Interesting sidenote, although directed by Robert Zemeckis who would only a year later release the timeless Back to the Future, both Romancing the Stone and Romancing the Throne have not aged particularly well. As a sequel the game looks virtually identical to its predecessor with the same engine utilised and only a handful of noteworthy technical improvements.
The slick, dazzling action movie veneer of the 1980s.
But we’re talking about 1985 here and even though the AGI engine is definitely more than a little dated thanks to it being just shy of 30 years old, this didn’t stop publications of the day raving about how playing these first few King’s Quest games were akin to being in control of your very own animated film. And this was simply because you controlled a character who could move not only around the screen but also around objects present within said screen.
The below isn’t a direct quote (translation: it is completely made up) but could have very well been ripped from a review of King’s Quest II.
“There I was, controlling Graham as he moved around the screen, where lo and behold up ahead I saw an amazingly detailed (and possibly magical) tree blocking my direct pathway. So I decide to try to walk behind it - something I had a feeling would be futile because you know that true 3D graphics don’t and will never exist in games! - but to my amazement it worked! Like some sort of magic trick, Graham disappeared behind the tree and actually walked around it. It was like living in a fully realised and magical animated world, where everything looked utterly real, from the lakes to the trees and even the sky. I felt like walking straight through my monitor to be there, like in that magical Tron movie that came out only a couple of years ago. So needless to say I spent the next few hours walking around various objects in the game. It was like magic!”
Excerpt taken from Computer Gaming and Magic Aficionado Monthly (CGMAM Issue #21 February, 1986)
Although that may seem like an exaggeration, it really isn’t, and during the time of their release (maybe not so much with the third game) these early King’s Quest titles were praised on their visuals, which - with the help of hindsight (and although charming in their own way) - feature more crude realisations of real or fantasy-world objects than artistically sound ones.
In the first game especially, a lot of the backgrounds look like something whipped up after a few minutes spent with the DOS-based classic PCPaint. Not too surprising, really - in-game graphics were still relatively new for adventure games, team sizes were incredibly small and there were plenty of technical constraints to be overcome.
"What is it to be a hero? A true hero?" Graham pondered as he stared out to the distant horizon.
Although King’s Quest saw two sequels released in relatively quick succession from 1985’s Romancing the Throne to 1986’s To Heir is Human, the advancement in computer graphics - especially in the arcade market - was noticeably ahead of PC gaming. It was only after sales elevated most early developers outside of the realm of hobbyists that they were able to establish development studios with teams comprised of designers, programmers and artists.
The first three King’s Quest games share the same engine and the same remarkably old resolution of 160x200, which even today’s indie-obsessed pixel-art retro gamers would probably look down their noses at. In fact, it’s worth pointing out that at this time both a mouse and a sound card were luxury items, and weren’t supported – even by the third game.
Dear modern industry, more covers like this please!
No need to put music or sound in the games outside of a few basic bleeps and blerps from the PC speaker, then, and yet disk space was still an issue. Releasing each game on floppy disks that stored somewhere in the vicinity of 100kB of data, directly impacted the scope of each subsequent sequel.
This is worth noting as designer Roberta Williams and her team at Sierra wanted to create adventure games that had an expansive narrative with meaningful outcomes based on player decisions. So when a developer today decries the lack of storage on an optical disc that could house 100,000 copies of King’s Quest II be sure to give them a snide look or two to remind them how good they have it. That’ll learn ‘em.
The lofty goal of trying to create a compelling narrative instead of a collection of loosely connected puzzles as presented in the first game was not really achieved with King’s Quest II. The story here is pretty simple: after being crowned the new King of Daventry, Graham finds himself in that awkward position men find themselves in when they’re all alone - single and horny.
Unlike Eddie Murphy, Graham does not look to Queens, NY in search of his bride but instead into the magical mirror he retrieved in the first game. The mirror shows him a far off land where a damsel finds herself in a little bit of dis-something, so he immediately knows that if he rescues her from the dragon or whatnot in the magical land of Kolyma, he’ll get himself a Queen to help him rule Daventry. Or at the very least some Kingly over the shirt touchy feely action - after saving her life of course.
Saving the girl isn’t exactly complex narrative by any stretch but it did enable Sierra to connect various puzzles together and even introduce some linear progression in the way the world changed around the player as they got further into the game.
The central conceit in the land of Kolyma is that there are three magical doors requiring keys to open them, and after each door is opened the surrounding area changes slightly. This ranged from things like a store that was previously closed now being open to characters appearing, like the mermaid.
One of the aforementioned magical doorways. Magic!
With this introduction of a changing game world, there were fewer dead ends than the first game, apart from one particularly cruel one which we’ll get to. Graham can still die from drowning, falling off ledges, stairs and so forth but the game also introduces a witch, wolf, and evil dwarf to contend with. And of course, any of these three characters can show up randomly to turn the game into more of a “leave screen immediately or reload your last save” adventure as opposed to an adventure that isn’t that.
In order to open up the first magical door you’ll need to cross a rickety bridge to reach it, read the inscription on it to get a clue as to where you could find the key to unlock it, recross the rickety bridge, and go find said key and return. For the second and third magical doors you’ll need to wash, rinse, and repeat, the above.
Now, as you can only read each inscription and open each door one at a time, if you’re counting the times you’ll need to cross the rickety bridge to open all three doors, you’ll know that it adds up to seven. You may be asking why would you count how many times you need to cross this rickety bridge, and why do I keep using the word ‘rickety’? A perfectly understandable question with a perfectly understandable answer.
Significantly more rickety than it appears at first glance.
Attempt to cross this bridge one time too many (that being eight) and you will find that it will collapse, Graham will fall to his death, and you’ll need to restart the entire game. Rickety, indeed. Very few games outside of early Sierra adventures feel the need to punish players for reasons that aren’t made clear or would seem unfair to such a degree. But of course some would say this is part of the series’ charm, in the same way some serial killers have no trouble finding spouses, namely they’re all King’s Quest fans – the spouses that is.
Now even though the underlying quest of rescuing the future Queen of Daventry gives King’s Quest II a very clear narrative path, the overall nature of the exploration and puzzle solving feels very similar to that found in the first game with many pieces of random jewellery to collect, as well as various characters from fairy tales and fiction to interact with. In this game alone you’ll come across Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, a mermaid, Dracula, a wicked witch, and even a Jesuit priest.
The various ways in which each puzzle can be solved is expanded upon, meaning that if you decide to eat the delicious leg of ham yourself, you’ll need to find another less humane way to deal with the game’s man-eating lion – translation: you’ll have to stab it in the face with your sword for fewer points. Overall, the puzzles in this sequel were a lot easier to manage with only a few providing any real trouble, causing many people to decry it as not as challenging as it should have been.
As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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