Activision is bringing back the Sierra name and doing a new King's Quest game !

I'm a total junkie for old adventure games, and I even like to write text-based ones sometimes. This news is pretty exciting, but I'm honestly a little worried, too. I'd hate to see another favorite franchise turn to suck.

What do you guys think about this?

Did you play the new fan-made King's Quest? Apparently it earned the blessing of the IP holders (whoever that is, I dunno who owns King's Quest now) and is now considered an "official" KQ game. If you haven't played it, you can download it here http://www.postudios.com/company/games/thesilverlining/.

I have some fond memories of the Sierra games. Unfortunately, that style of gameplay doesn't hold up too well these days.

I haven't played it yet, but thanks for mentioning it. I've actually been working my way through all the old ones again recently, since I picked them up during a gog.com sale a while back. Just got through King's Quest VI.

It's a shame this type of game doesn't fare well in the market anymore. I guess it's pretty niche. Admittedly, a badly made adventure game can be quite frustrating and terrible, especially when it seems like there's nothing to interact with and there's no freedom of movement. Modern players just have a lower threshold for boredom and frustration, too, I think.

About the new/upcoming game: The article I linked to mentions that it will have an "art style," which kind of made me twitch. I think I've been following too much TS4 news. Hopefully, I like the style they choose and the direction they choose to go.

I also really love that they're using the Sierra brand to promote indie game companies, rather than just slapping the old Sierra logo on a branch of Activision.

New King's Quest? I don't know whether to be excited or worried. Both? Hopefully there will be minimal meddling from Activision, the place where great game companies go to die.

And get resurrected later, apparently.

I'll reserve my right to be cynical. After all people were raving about the SimCity reboot before it launched chanting: "Maxis is back!".


P.s. LucasArts > Sierra

I have reservations and fears, too, but I'm looking at it this way -- new King's Quest, even if it's bad, is better than no new King's Quest at all. *shrug*

I wonder how the interface is going to work. Do people still have the patience for the old icon-based look/touch/talk/walk/inventory thing? Or will the be a whole new kind of UI?

Most new adventure games have ditched the look/walk/touch/talk/etc icons. Instead, there's a contextual icon that changes based on what you mouse over (kinda like The Sims). So, if you click on a floor, your character walks to that spot, if you click on an interactive object, you get an interaction or menu of actions, etc.

If you're interested in playing a new adventure game from one of the old Sierra authors (Jane Jensen), check out Gray Matter. It has very nice production values, and the gameplay is quite similar to Sierra's stuff. You might want to have a walkthrough handy though.

Here's the link:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/260570/