King's Quest: Mask of Eternity

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King's Quest VIII: The Mask of Eternity

Developer(s) Sierra Studios
Publisher(s) Sierra Studios
Platform(s) Windows
Release date December 1998
Genre(s) Action-adventure
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: Teen (T)

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, written and designed by Roberta Williams and released in 1998 by Sierra Studios, is the eighth, and currently the final, official computer adventure game in the famous King's Quest series. It is the only game in the series where the main character is not King Graham or a member of his family.

Contents

[edit] Preface for gameplay

Above the Kingdom of Daventry is the Realm of the Sun, where magical beings called the Archons guard the Mask of Eternity, an artifact which upholds truth, light, and order. Their leader, Lucreto, turns to evil and shatters the Mask into pieces. When one portion of the mask falls at the feet of a humble tanner named Connor Maclyrr, he picks it up only to find that everyone in Daventry has been turned to stone and the land sickened. Connor is then appointed by a wizard to travel through different lands and collect all the Mask pieces, eventually arriving in the Realm of the Sun where he must repair the Mask, defeat Lucreto, and bring life back to his land.

[edit] Lands

To complete the task of collecting all of the shards of the Mask of Eternity, Connor must travel to a variety of topographically different lands. These include:

  • The Kingdom of Daventry is where Connor makes his home and where his kingly quest begins. Here he encounters a partially lithified wizard who offers him guidance in finding the remaining pieces of the Mask of Eternity.
  • The Dimension of Death, ruled by Lord Azriel, serves as a pseudo-purgatory where souls await judgement. This land exists in a plane outside of any other land in the game and therefore Connor must find portals to access it. Upon the shattering of the Mask of Eternity, the order of the universe was accordingly obliterated and the skeletal soldiers of Lord Azriel became unruly and rebellious. Thus, it becomes part of Connor's mission to quell this uprising.
  • The Swamp bears within its boundaries a portion of the Mask of Eternity. Though the Swamp lies not far from the Kingdom of Daventry, the cataclysm incited by Lucreto caused the road to the Swamp to be blocked off by physical obstacles. Hence, in order to reach the Swamp and obtain another shard of the mask, Connor must travel through the Dimension of Death first.
  • The Underground Realm of the Gnomes is mainly made up of tunnels underneath of mountains south of the Swamp. During his journey, Connor meets gnomes endeavoring to reestablish an exit topside of their subterranean home.
  • The Barren Region is located above the Underground Realm of the Gnomes and at the base of a volcano. It can be accurately characterized by its abundance of lava rivers and dry, hot terrain. Prior to the cataclysm, the inhabitants of this area traded regularly with those people who lived at the top of the volcano.
  • The Frozen Reaches are the frigid lands at the top of the volcano encircling a lake of icy water. It is inhabited by Snow Nymphs, Frost Orcs, and Gryphs.
  • Paradise Lost is a small caldera near the Frozen Reaches, and the location of a stonehenge which acts as a portal to the Realm of the Sun.
  • The Realm of the Sun, like the Dimension of Death, is not materially connected to any other part of the world in which Connor's quest takes place. This was holding-place of the Mask of Eternity and the site at which Connor should return all of its broken pieces. Here Connor confronts Lucreto to determine his ultimate destiny.

Early on in the game, the half-stone wizard whom Connor encounters conjures for him a magic map that shows all explored areas plus allows Connor to teleport between lands once the teleportation sites in each land (except for the Realm of the Sun) have been unlocked.

[edit] Departure from the rest of the King's Quest series

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity was released to generally positive, but mixed reviews,[1] effectively bringing about the end of the King's Quest series. However, it sold comparatively well to other adventure games at the time; for example, it outsold Grim Fandango 2 to 1.[2] Many fans do not consider it a "real" King's Quest because of its 3D graphics, almost complete absence of the royal family of Daventry, and emphasis on Diablo-like violence that did not appear in any of the previous games.

The game's dialogue has also been written in a more conservative style rather than the modern English style of King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. The game was named King's Quest: Mask of Eternity in the English release, and King's Quest VIII on the German and Spanish releases. There was a mixed response to the King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, although most reviews tended to be positive, with the majority of ratings 70% or higher, some reviews dipped as low as 10%.

This chapter of the series seems cosmologically inconsistent with the others. Connor visits Dimension of Death rather than the Land of the Dead shown in King's Quest VI.

It should be noted however that Land of the Dead is specifically a Green Isles legend according to game manual, Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles and is the place where Green Islanders believe they go when they die. They journey to Samhain (Death) to be judged and end up in the Sea of Souls in preparation for the next stage of the afterlife. It is not a legend in Daventry, and author of the guidebook was the first person from Daventry to learn or write about it when he visited the Green Isles. Whereas according to Mask of Eternity's Manual, in Daventry's legends the Dimension of Death is a kind of limbo ruled by Azriel where souls are judged before being moved to their rightful afterlife.

According to the game's producer Mark Seibert they were intended to be unique and different places. This is not particularly unusual, as all the games in the King's Quest series contain anachronisms and contradictions someplace.

Also the game is the third game in series (after "Quest for the Crown" and "The Perils of Rosella") that does not have a spoofed name unlike most of the other games in the series, where titles and sayings such as "Romancing the Stone", "Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder", "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow", and "The Princess Bride" were changed to parodies such as "Romancing the Throne", "Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!", "Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow", and "The Princeless Bride".

[edit] References

  1. ^ GameRankings
  2. ^ Roberta Williams Speaks Out ...

[edit] External links

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King's Quest series