KQ3 Redux Articles

[navynuke04]

Here are some online articles covering the announcement of the upcoming release:

http://www.gamershell.com/news_109914.html
http://www.adventure-treff.de/kommentar.php?newsid=5202
http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubbthr ... cs/693132/
http://www.gamingshogun.com/Article/855 ... ruary.html
http://www.bluesnews.com/s/118004/king_ ... -announced
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/King-Q ... 29612.html
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showth ... p?t=134673
http://www.gamezebo.com/news/2011/01/25 ... g-february
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... ruary.aspx
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2011/0004 ... onible.htm
http://worthplaying.com/article/2011/1/25/news/79483/

[Brainiac]

The Escapist posted an article as well.

[aozgolo]

Blistered Thumbs has a little write-up as well!

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/01/ ... ii-remake/

[eriqchang]

Take a peek at the first-ever exclusive shots of the newly enhanced King's Quest III interface design (and more) at the Gnome's Lair preview:

Enter the little Gnome's cave...

And watch for the full exploration of the making of the interface bar and more, featuring John Paul Selwood, launch day on the official site.

[navynuke04]

I was about to post the same link!

And for those of you who are Facebook friends with Mr. Chang, you get some exclusive shots!

[Bobbin Threadbare]

WOW! The borders looks absolutely gorgeous!

btw,on the background... isn't that the scenery before arriving at Daventry's main land?

[Erpy]

Nope.

[Gronagor]

No. You'll never guess.

[AGP]

Oh, wow, you made King's Quest 3, after all? So three questions:
1) How different is it from IA's?
2) Given IA's version, why not move on to the last EGA one, KQ4?
3) How does IA feel about it? :-)

Way to show discipline (every little progress I make on QG I want to show people) for not telling anyone until just now.

[MusicallyInspired]

1) Different enough.
2) Because ActiVision won't let us even if we wanted to do another free game.
3) They're quite looking forward to it.

[Erpy]

2) Given IA's version, why not move on to the last EGA one, KQ4?

If the question was...why KQ3 INSTEAD of KQ4 (with IA's version in mind), this project already existed before IA was founded and by the time IA announced their remake, this project already had too much work put into it to kill off.

Way to show discipline (every little progress I make on QG I want to show people) for not telling anyone until just now.

It's a long-term vs. short-term thing. Showing screenshots and progress gains you a few days of fan praise and that's a nice ego booster, but it also creates the long-term issue of people eventually getting impatient and demanding more and more updates. We initially planned to announce the project once it reached a stage where we were positive it wouldn't be canceled anymore, but our experiences with QFG2VGA made us realize unexpected setbacks could kill the hype and create frustration with fans. (of course, there's still the possibility of unexpected setbacks now, but they're rather minimal since the game itself is unlikely to need massive calibrations at this point) Since there was no longer the need for us to PR the project in order to attract a fanbase or team members, we were quiet about it because we could afford to.

Also, personally, I don't like hyping stuff I'm still in the process of completing or merely have the intention of completing. If you walk the walk and THEN hype it, the praise feels better.

[AGP]

OK, so answer 2 begs a follow-up: how far were they along when they announced KQ3? Would they have made 4 instead? Just curious.

[Klytos]

OK, so answer 2 begs a follow-up: how far were they along when they announced KQ3? Would they have made 4 instead? Just curious.

We (IA) were far enough along that we weren't going to cancel ours either. When we announced our version of KQ3 we had the game completely scripted, with all the backgrounds completed and about 1/2 way through the animations. So it was far enough along that we were confident of finishing and not willing to cancel our own project. It was a couple of months after this we found out through sources not related to IA that AGDI were deep into their own version of KQ3.

We decided to approach a couple of people at AGDI who were stuck between a rock and a hard place in that they couldn't really talk much about it because they were still going through and had yet to announce their fan license, so they had a lot of restrictions on themselves. Internally at IA, we went through a lot of different emotions about their game. From anger that they were cutting our turf, to resignation, to acceptance, to competitiveness and a desire to be better and do what we needed to do to make a great game. But once enough of the facts became clear, once we realised they were deep into their remake we (IA) took a live and let live approach. One versions existence doesn't negate another versions. We also assumed that AGDI would follow with their Father storyline from their KQ2+ so that made the decision easier as that was something that we wouldn't want to do.

Both teams were knee deep in production so it wasn't likely at the point where we became aware of each other that either team would drop everything we had done.

A note I'll make and one that diplomatically AGDI probably wouldn't (they're nice like that) is that IA at the time we announced ours was just another group who didn't have any track record and from their point of view we could have just folded up and nothing come of our remake. In 2003-2004 when we announced our version, there were a LOT of fan groups out there remaking everything Sierra ever made, and AGDI were the only one to have completed a game. Nobody ever said that, but I could imagine that it floated through minds back then. AGDI after all had canceled their SQ2 remake because someone else was making it and that project ended up disappearing.

As for KQ4, we never seriously considered remaking it, although I'll admit that at times we've probably considered every Sierra game out there as a candidate. There's so many good games!

3) How does IA feel about it? :-)

Personally, I can't wait to see what they've done. The screen shots I've seen are exceptional!

[navynuke04]

I showed a couple of these articles to my daughters. Their reaction was: "Hey! I remember that game! You let us play it a couple years ago. And you let us be the voices of the mice in the ship!"

Hehe... To them, this game has always existed.