| King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human | |
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Apple II cover art for King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human |
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| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Engine | AGI |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, Tandy Color Computer 3 |
| Release date(s) | October 1, 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
System requirements
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King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human is the third installment in the King's Quest series of computer games produced by Sierra On-Line. It was the first game in the series not to feature King Graham as the player character.
The game was released for the Apple II and PC in 1986. The latter was the first Sierra game to be DOS-based instead of using a self-booting disk. A year later, it was rereleased with the slightly improved AGI V3 engine.
Contents |
In King's Quest III, the story moves away from Daventry and King Graham to the land of Llewdor, where a boy named Gwydion is being kept by the wicked wizard, Manannan. According to the introduction, for as long as he could remember, 17 year old Gwydion has been held captive by Manannan as his servant, cooking and cleaning for him in his home atop a large mountain in Llewdor. From this vantage point, and with the help of a telescope, the seemingly all-knowing wizard watches the countryside, with the shore to the east and the desert to the west.
It is revealed that Gwydion was kidnapped from Daventry by the magician when he was young, and this adventure tells the story of his journey back to Daventry.
The player plays Gwydion in King’s Quest III. The major events of the story include breaking free of Gwydion’s captivity by turning Manannan into a cat, escaping Llewdor, returning to Daventry where he frees both the land and Princess Rosella from a three-headed dragon, and finally discovering that he is actually the royal couple's lost son, Rosella's twin and heir to the throne, Alexander.
The actions taken by Gwydion in this story lead directly to the events that begin King's Quest V.
Most of the game's various lands and locations appear in the magic map. Once Gwydion reaches a new region, he cannot use the magic map to travel to a previous region.
Llewdor, the region in which the bulk of the game takes place, has no hard boundaries. In the north and south directions, the game map loops: if Gwydion travels far enough in either of these directions, he will come back to where he began. To the east and west, however, the sea and desert (respectively) are endless, and attempting to travel more than a few screens will result in Gwydion's death.
The "wrap around" characteristic creates an unusual situation with the game's graphics. The magic map shows the topography of Llewdor.[1] It shows Port Bruce and the Three Bears' house as being south of Manannan's house, which is supported by some of the in-game descriptions of each location; at the Three Bears' house, one can see the mountain with Manannan's house to the north. Yet from Manannan's mountain, one would see the both the village and Bear's house to the north of the mountain.[2]
Once on board the Pirate Ship from Port Bruce's dock, Alexander travels across the Western Sea. This sequence in the game is marked only by a red line crossing the magic map, leading towards the north coast of the continent where Daventry is located. During this sequence, Alexander's movements are limited to the ship. If Alexander is caught by the pirates or jumps off the ship, he will drown out at sea. Later, when the ship docks, he can jump off and swim to the beach.
Once past the Western Sea, Alexander reaches the Great Mountains at the border of Daventry. Daventry itself is a small region, made up of only a few screens. Most are based on areas seen in the original King's Quest AGI version. This includes the broken well, a dried river bed, the crumbling castle, and the broken door into the mountain. These areas, while being based on landmarks of the original KQ1, are not located in the same places as they were in that game. Areas beyond these few screens are blocked off by piles of boulders, the Great Tear (a large chasm), stone walls and fences, or broken bridges. The old gnome from KQ1 has moved into a rickety old shack that rests over the dried river bed (where Graham picked up pebbles in KQ1).
The door into the mountain leads to a crumbling staircase (based on the staircase in the original KQ1) leading up to the Cloudland (based on the Land of the Clouds in KQ1). Cloudland is a bit smaller than it was in KQ1, only made up of three screens. The land is scorched, the trees are dead, and the area is full of steam. The three-headed dragon takes up the middle screen. Trying to open the magic map in this region will cause the map to disentegrate. Alexander must be invisible to travel very far in the region.
A novelization of the game is included in The King's Quest Companion. The novelization is written in the form of an interview between Derek Karlavaegen (KQ6: "Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles") and Alexander sometime after the events of KQ3-4. This was written to be a 'novel' walkthrough used to solve the game. The 'Encyclopedia of Daventry' in the second edition offered a few more backstories and details about the various characters and objects from the game. The chapter the 'The World of Daventry' also included more details about the Land of Llewdor, and its inhabitants.
The manual contains a short prologue story by Annette Childs, that tells of Manannan's previous slaves, and their deaths. The book also contains spells from The Sorcery of Old, needed to cast the spells in the game.
The KQ3 Hintbook was written by Roberta Williams the creator of the King's Quest series.
This was allegedly the first adventure game featuring auto-mapping, with a "magic map" found in the game that can be used to teleport to most locations that the player has visited before. This feature was unpopular among some fans who claim it made the game too easy, hence magic maps in future Sierra games were more limited in their teleporting ability.[9]
Roberta got together with a team consisting mainly of the same people that worked with her on the previous two games, but more people were involved in the production this time. Al Lowe, who made the music in King's Quest II, became the lead programmer of King's Quest III, while his wife Margaret made the music instead. This was the game in which Al Lowe fully cut his teeth before moving onto his own series, Leisure Suit Larry.
The Apple IIGS version had improved music and sound effects.
The game was released on five duel sided floppy disks, it became Sierra's second largest game, after Time Zone (computer game) (12-duel sided floppies). It was almost 50% larger than King's Quest I or King's Quest II.[10][11] KQ3 has 104 rooms (whereas KQ1 had about 80, and KQ2 had about 92).[12]
The developers also introduced a real-time clock, with actions based on the clock. The developers also introduced a automagic map, although panned by critics (never used in future KQ), was later introduced into Mixed-Up Mother Goose.
King's Quest III was the first game in which Sierra used a manual-based copy protection scheme. Nearly all AGI games (including King's Quest III) have a disk-based copy protection, requiring the original game disk to be present in order to play the game. This wasn't entirely effective and unofficial versions were widespread. (This key-disk check was removed from the later released "King's Quest Collection" versions.)
However, to complete King's Quest III, the player needs to create a number of magic spells, through alchemical formula that are only available in the game's manual. Many considered the process slightly overdone, 140 of the 210 possible points in the game are obtained through simply doing what the manual says, leaving less room for real puzzles. Starting with KQIV, later Sierra games would open with a dialog requesting that the player enter word X from page Y of the manual.
This was not a true copy protection and was actually considered a game feature, and thus the complete spell list was reprinted in many of the official guides at the time including the Official Book of King's Quest, and the King's Quest Companion.
Though for the most part well received, winning the Softsel Hot List Hottest Product Award in 1987,[13] the release of this product in 1986 was quickly met with loud protests from gamers claiming that King's Quest III wasn't really a King's Quest at all. Because it focused on a young slave named Gwydion and his attempts to escape his evil master, players didn't grasp the connection between Gwydion and King Graham of Daventry until they finished the game some months later.[14]
Notice the "automatic mapping feature" of the game. This feature was widely promoted on King's Quest III's introduction; however, it was not included in future King's Quests games as player feedback indicated it reduced challenge.[15]
"KQ3 was very dark, and it utilized lots of magic and magic spells with the basic idea of finding ingredients for "black magic" spells and then casting those spells. (Certain religious groups were upset with me over that one!)"-Roberta Williams, 1997
King's Quest III was markedly more difficult than its two predecessors. The player was required to type in magic spells line-by-line from a spell book that came with the game. The spells partially served as a form of copy protection, although the game already had a disk-based protection. The spells were later reprinted in The King's Quest Companion. The spell book that came with the initial release of the game also had typos in it. In addition, the player has to work under time pressure, as certain activities like casting spells can only be done when the wizard is asleep or not home (this wasn't so bad as the game actually paused when typing or preparing the spells). The connection between Gwydion and King Graham does not become clear until the end of the game (unless the player overheard certain animal conversations), which also made the game's story line confusing.
A review in Computer Gaming World described the game as exceedingly frustrating, from the task of climbing stairs to identifying objects from their low-resolution graphics. The hint guide was highly recommended as a way to alleviate some of that frustration. The reviewer suggested gamers new to the series play King's Quest I instead, it being much easier.[16]
There have been two unofficial fan remakes. Infamous Adventures created a VGA style remake, King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human (Infamous Adventures). It was released on June 19, 2006. It is a slightly expanded remake offering new material, including new cutscenes, a few new characters, expanded narration or dialogue, full speech, new or modified locations, and easter eggs. Most of the original puzzles remain intact, although the spell system was streamlined.[17][18][19] The game was made by the team because they wanted to see if they could do it, and prove they had the drive and ability to recreate the game with updated graphics and sounds.[20]
AGD Interactive released another VGA style remake, King's Quest III Redux on February 23, 2011.[21]
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