King's Quest: A Knight to Remember (Episode 1) - Review

So for those of you fortunate to be as wise (aka 'old') as I am, might remember the King's Quest series that went all the way from King's Quest 1 in 1983, through to King's Quest 8 which was released in 1998. King's Quest is an adventure game that puts an emphasis on a family friendly narrative and personality "...which chooses charm and wonder over realism and grit".

So, a lot has changed in the video game industry since 1998 so the question that begs to be asked is "How much does King's Quest: A Knight to Remember differ from the original series?" Well the answer to that would be not a whole lot. The biggest and most obvious change is the graphics. The bright new engine renders hand painted characters and environments which are both beautiful and practical but the game doesn't steer too far away from its roots that it wont be recognisable.

King's Quest: A Knight to Remember has followed the footsteps of modern style narrative based video games with the likes of Telltale's "The Walking Dead" series without just blatantly copying what we've all seen before. While King's Quest is heavily narrative based, the game play does put the player in more control than what we've seen with the Telltale games. 

While I'm on the topic of similarities from the Telltale games. Along with the episodic design to the game, and the heavy narrative focus, also the decisions made within the game will also influence the overarching plot of the story that you're playing through. It isn't as obvious in King's Quest like it is in the Telltale games which insist on telling you every time that "John Smith will remember that". You have the ability to move your character through a story of bravery if you choose options that are particularly valiant or you can passage through a more compassionate character story if your choices are more thoughtful for other people's feelings regardless of how they may treat you.

The main story that you will play through is a bit like a prequel to the original King's Quest game that was released about 31 years ago. The story is told by a very old King Graham (the main character for the series) which kicks off before he even became a Knight. The story telling is set up by King Graham telling bed time stories to his granddaughter Gwendolyn, of how he came to be the man he is today.

The game play provides a little more interaction than similar styled games. The intro is exciting and fast paced where King Graham tells a story of how he embarked on an adventure to retrieve a shiny artefact from a fierce dragon to begin his quest towards earning a shiny head piece. It paces brilliantly through sections of stealth which will have you sneaking around objects to avoid making noise which may wake the angry dragon. You will also play through sections that will require quick thinking to avoid certain death. All of this appears to have been crafted with precision which allows the player to feel like they are simply amazing at what they're doing. There are several moments where the game will completely switch into a first person view to allow you a nice aiming mechanic with a bow and arrow. This integrates nicely with game play and offers a solid experience.

This is however just for the introduction to the game. The pace severely drops once you get into the meat of the story and game play. Unlike the Telltale series of games, that heavily focus on moving forward through a narrative without much player interaction, King's Quest will slow the pace right down and make the player start to work through puzzles to make progress. At first the tasks at hand are quite obvious and are singular in the required actions needed to progress. After these initial sections you will encounter sections that will, for example, require a pumpkin to receive a lantern, but to get the pumpkin you need to work out how to remove some squirrels, but to remove the squirrels you need to do something else. These puzzles or tasks compound over and over again to a point where I became sick of making progress to just butt my head up against another wall. The puzzles frustrated me because they all seem to have a very simple solution but for the sake of making the character do certain things, the puzzles are made difficult. For example, as I mentioned the pumpkin before. I couldn't take the pumpkin because there were Squirrels all over it, I guess guarding it in a sense. They're squirrels, not wolves. Just take the damn pumpkin from the little critters. Same goes with a piece of meat that I needed that was strung up in a trap. You can clearly see the trap set up but for some reason this gallant Knight to be can't work out the intricate design of rope and sticks to just grab the piece of meat to move on.

King's Quest definitely has charm and a certain beauty that a lot of people will love. For those that liked the games by Telltale but though they left the player to be a little too pedestrian for their liking, will probably love King's Quest for the player gets a lot more input into the game play. King's Quest: A Knight to remember is a five episode series with only the first of five being available at this time. Let's just hope that unlike Telltale, that the game is complete and the following episodes will be released in a timely fashion.

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Lucas Aurelius (LewkOne)

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