Developer: The Odd Gentlemen |
Publisher: Sierra
Players: 1 Player Game |
Genre: Adventure

Release Date: 07/28/15

The original King’s Quest series is one of PC gamings finest moments. From its earliest entry in 1984 to the final game in 1998, King’s Quest was a magical Adventure Game series. The time has finally come to brush the dust off this series and bring it to life once more. The original creator, Roberta Williams, has given her blessing on the next chapter in the King’s Quest franchise from Developer The Odd Gentlemen. 

The Odd Gentlemen is working on bringing out 5 Chapters to the new series. They don’t like to use the term episodic gaming because each chapter will take the player much longer than a few hours to complete. At E3, we learned that Chapter 1 is coming out in late July. It is titled: A Knight To Remember. And what a game it is shaping up to be!

In the new King’s Quest series, you play Old King Graham as he focuses on past adventures he has had with his granddaughter. We were told to think of these stories like the story told in The Princess Bride. These stories will be used to help your granddaughter with a problem she is having. In A Knight to Remember, Old King Graham, voiced by Christopher Lloyd, remembers a tale of a Knights Tournament he wants his granddaughter to hear. 

A question that quickly came to my mind was how was The Odd Gentlemen able to create the visuals in the game. They are just like a moving painting. First, they printed out the 3D graphics and hand water colored them. After this, they scanned them back into the game to create the unique look of a hand painted art style. Simply beautiful. You really need to see the game running to fully appreciate it. 

As our demo begins, you come up to a missing bridge and there is a horn that is lacking a mouthpiece. We were asked what in our inventory should we try and Money was chosen by our group. You try to use your money and your granddaughter chimes in that it is a waste of money. You can keep blowing on the horn and you will get feedback like “I was disgusted for how many people who put their mouth on the horn and I never tried to blow it again.” Of course, you can keep trying to blow it.  

There are many humorous things like this scattered all over the world. For example, you can begin to walk west and our narrator, Christopher Lloyd, will say something like “I decided to go east.”  Of course, who wants to be told what to do so you can go West.  “EAST, I decided to go EAST,” he will shout.  As you continue going in the wrong direction he will chime in, “A gust of wind picked me up and carried me east and blew a tree down.”  This will keep you going the right way.  it is just amazing all the fun stuff Developer The Odd Gentlemen has packed in here.

We skip ahead and you need to get over another missing bridge. There are guards standing by that won’t let you help so you need to get rid of them. The solution to the first puzzle, cutting down a tree, just won’t work this time. You try to knock a bee hive down and that won’t work yet.  There is a river nearby and you can get the guards attention by jumping in the river and pretend to drown. While the guards are there, you can knock the bee hive down again and the guards run away. Then you can go back up the hill and try to use the rope, which a guard uses and throws it back at you.  You try to use the rope with a bow and arrow to shoot it across and you fail. Graham just isn’t a good shot.
 
Though it won’t work, Graham tries to chop down a tree. Another knight pushes the tree down and runs across it before knocking it into the water.  So Graham may not have the strength of this particular Knight. But this leads you to going down to the water and cross the log. You end up making a raft to glide across the water. But, at the same time, a smaller knight runs across. Apparently it wasn’t very deep. Ooops! Perhaps Graham should check the depth of the water before going to the trouble of making a raft.

We skip ahead again and you end up on the other side of the bank and meet the Knights. However, Graham needs to get get the most Hideous Eye from a monster. So you have to decide if you want to get an actual hideous monster, trick them into thinking it is a hideous monster eye, or you make a friend who helps you.

In King’s quest you have to pick up everything not nailed down or get the nails out to take the item. An example of this is a big pumpkin among several rotten pumpkins. As you try to pick it up, squirrels come after you. Graham will need to figure out a way to get this pumpkin. 

Not sure what you can interact with? No problem! Graham’s head will track and move to items of interest. This will help players of all skill levels. The game branches a lot. It has different endings and different midpoints. Developer The Odd Gentlemen doesn’t want to throw important decisions in your face and say “THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DECISION YOU BETTER MAKE!!!” As you go through the game and talk about it afterwards, they want your decisions to matter and be different than your friends. This is the same kind of discussion players have with open world games like Skyrim or The Witcher 3. 

Wait, did I just compare King’s Quest to The Witcher 3 and Skyrim? Yeah, I sure did. This is one of our runner ups for Game of the Show at E3 2015 and is one of the best looking and best playing Adventure Games I have seen in a very long time. I am looking forward to covering the final installment of Chapter 1 and can’t wait to see more!

By Kaleb Rutherford – 06/22/15

Screenshots for King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember