King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow was the first game co-designed and co-written by Roberta Williams, the creator of King's Quest and the sole designer of the first four games in the series, and Jane Jensen, who previously co-designed EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus and finalized the script of Police Quest III: The Kindred.
The game retained all of the winks toward fairy tales that Roberta Williams brought to each game in the series and the script contained all of the hallmarks of the writing of Jane Jenson. This combination of the best of both worlds from two of the best female adventure game designers of the early 1990s, gave King's Quest VI one of the best scripts Sierra On-Line had ever produced.
The game takes place almost entirely outside of the usual setting of the series, the Kingdom of Daventry. It picks up from the end of the previous game, as Prince Alexander can't get Princess Cassima, the woman that helped King Graham save his wife Valanice, his son Alexander, and his daughter Rosella. After seeing a vision of her in the magic mirror found by his father in the original King's Quest, Alexander sails off to find Cassima.
He ends up shipwrecked in the Land of the Green Isles. This land, made up of several islands, allows Williams and Jensen room to spread out their wings in terms of myths and legends. The first island Alexander discovers is the Isle of the Crown, which is based on the middle eastern folktales collected in One Thousand and One Nights. Other islands feature homages of other famous literary works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and mythology from the Greek, Roman, and Celtic cultures.
These settings allowed the artists to create some beautiful works of pixel art. The SCI engine allowed Sierra games to have detailed, realistic backgrounds and large sprites that rivaled those of LucasArts, Sierra's biggest competitor when it came to adventure games. The music, composed by Chris Bensen, included original music in a classical style, beautifully composed in the MIDI format used in games of the era. It was designed for the Roland Sound Canvas, but it sounded great even on a standard Sound Blaster or Adlib card. Lucky owners of the Roland MT32 got the richer, almost acoustic sound that this device produced when in the hands of skilled composers.
As with most Sierra adventure games, it includes deaths and dead ends, so saving often isn't just recommended, but is required for first time gamers. The latter is the biggest thing that ages it in comparison to most LucasArts adventures. Puzzles are mostly solvable with outside of the box thinking or trial and error, with the exception of the difficult cliff puzzle that I had to look up the solution when I first played through it as a little girl. Even today, I can't understand how that puzzle would be solved organically.
King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is arguably the best game in the series. From its dynamic duo of a writing team in Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen, it has the most creative mythic homages and is among the best written of the series. The only drawback of the game, beyond the typical "save early, save often" mantra of Sierra games that hasn't aged well, is the confusing cliff puzzle. However, this is mitigated by its beautiful realistic backgrounds which are among the best produced in the early era of the Sierra Creative Interpreter. That goes for all platforms the game is on, outside of the AmigaOS. Revolution Software ported the game to its own Virtual Theater engine for the Amiga port, but that's a review for another day.
Final Verdict:
4 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment