King's Quest VI

King's Quest VI:
Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

Cover art by John Shroades
Developer(s) Sierra On-Line
Revolution Software (Amiga)
Publisher(s) Sierra On-Line
Director(s) Jane Jensen
William D. Skirvin
Roberta Williams
Producer(s) Robert W. Lindsley
William D. Skirvin
Designer(s) Jane Jensen
Roberta Williams
Programmer(s) Robert W. Lindsley
Artist(s) Michael Hutchison
John Shroades
Writer(s) Jane Jensen
Roberta Williams
Composer(s) Chris Braymen
Series King's Quest
Engine SCI1.1 (DOS, Mac, Win)
Virtual Theatre (Amiga)
Platform(s) MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, Amiga
Release September 30, 1992
Genre(s) Adventure game
Mode(s) Single-player

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is the sixth installment in the King's Quest series of adventure games produced by Sierra On-Line. Written by Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen, King's Quest VI is widely recognized as the high point in the series for its landmark 3D graphic introduction movie (created by Kronos Digital Entertainment) and professional voice acting (Hollywood actor Robby Benson provided the voice for Prince Alexander, the game's protagonist). King's Quest VI was programmed in Sierra's Creative Interpreter and was the last King's Quest game to be released on floppy disk. A CD-ROM version of the game was released in 1993, including more character voices, a slightly different opening movie and more detailed artwork and animation.

The name of this sequel is a pun on the common phrase "here today, gone tomorrow". This pun is related to the abrupt departure of Prince Alexander after the events of King's Quest V, where he was just rescued by King Graham along with Princess Cassima, who asked Alexander to come visit her at the end of that game. King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human also contained the word "heir" in its title and also featured Prince Alexander (then known as the slave Gwydion) as the main character.

Gameplay

Gameplay is designed using a point-and-click interface. The player is given a toolbar of the functions walk, look, action, and talk as well as inventory items. This was an evolution over earlier games in the King's Quest series in which the player must perform actions by typing commands in a text window. King's Quest VI was the second game in the series to feature this interface, after King's Quest V.[1]

A booklet titled "Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles", written by Jane Jensen, is included in the game's package.[2] Aside from providing additional background to the game's setting, this booklet serves as part of the game's copy-protection. The player will not be able to pass the puzzles on the Cliffs of Logic that guard the Isle of the Sacred Mountain without information from the booklet. The booklet also includes a poem encoding the solution to one of the puzzles in the labyrinth on the Isle of the Sacred Mountain. In the re-released edition, the guide is part of the manual released on the game CD.[3]

Travel between the islands that make up the game world is accomplished by means of a magic map. Although a magic map had been used in earlier games of the series such as King's Quest III, its implementation in King's Quest VI was different from earlier games in that it was only used for travel between islands, which could not be reached using the walking interface.[4]

Plot

The game takes place almost entirely in a fictional kingdom called the Land of the Green Isles. The kingdom comprises several islands, and is described as being largely isolated from the outside world.[2] The player can travel between different islands after obtaining a magic map.[1]

The center of the kingdom is the Isle of the Crown, which has an Arabian Nights theme. The Isle of Wonder is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and the Isle of the Sacred Mountain is inspired by Classical mythology. The Isle of the Beast is heavily forested and scattered with magical barriers. There also are additional hidden areas.[5] One of these is inhabited by a tribe of druids, while another gives the player the option to confront Death.[6]

The game's opening cutscene shows Prince Alexander haunted by his memories of Princess Cassima, who he met at the end of King's Quest V when they were both rescued from the wizard Mordack. After seeing a vision of Cassima in the magical mirror that his father acquired in the first King's Quest, he sails to find her. At the beginning of the game he is shipwrecked on the shore of the Isle of the Crown, where he learns that the vizier Abdul Alhazred (named after the author of the fictional Necronomicon) has assumed control in Cassima's absence, and plans to force her to marry him. Alexander must explore the Land of the Green Isles in order to find and learn what he needs to rescue Cassima from the vizier.[7]

Multiple endings

A significant aspect of KQ6's story and gameplay is the option for the player to receive different endings based on choices made during the course of the game. Partway through the game, the player has the option to pursue either the "short path", which finishes the game rather quickly, or the "long path", which contains more puzzles and leads to a more satisfying ending. Upon completing either path, the player is given a clue about what choices would have led to the other ending. In addition to the two main paths and endings, the game's endings also contain many minor variables based on optional tasks in the game that the player may or may not have performed.[5] Almost half of the game's quests are optional, many have multiple solutions, and because of the game's open world design players can solve most in any order.[8]

Development

King's Quest creator and designer Roberta Williams first met with Sierra newcomer and co-designer Jane Jensen (who would go on to create the Gabriel Knight series)[1] in May 1991 to discuss the design for the upcoming sixth title in the series.[9] Williams began preliminary work on King's Quest VI in June, "laying out the basic story"[10] and worked alongside Jensen throughout July and August on coming up with design ideas; after five months, Williams and Jensen finished the documentation for the design.[9][10][11] Two key goals of the writers were to keep the game's tone consistent with its predecessors' while still making it a distinct title, and to make players connect emotionally with the game; Williams wrote the love story of Prince Alexander and Cassima specifically for this emotional attachment.[10]

Crew filming real-life actors for motion capture in a behind-the-scenes footage of King's Quest VI.

Co-director and project manager Bill Skirvin and the artists created the storyboards and character sketches. John Shroades was responsible for sketching the 80 background paintings that would be used for the game. The method of motion capture was used to transcribe the movement of real-life actors shot on video to the over 2000 character actions in King's Quest VI on computer. Williams and Skirvin chose the actors and costumes for the shootings, and Michael Hutchinson led the animation team that integrated the footage into Shroades's backgrounds.[9] The game's MIDI music was composed by Chris Braymen, who also produced the sound effects.[12]

The game's opening 3D-animated introduction was produced by Stanley Liu of Kronos Digital Entertainment, a company that did special effects for such films as Batman Returns and The Lawnmower Man.[13][1][14] In the game's initial 1992 release, this sequence was present in all platforms (DOS, Amiga and Macintosh) albeit with different edits and narrations across versions.[15]

Jensen scripted the game, defining for programmers the game's responses for the player's actions and the over 6000 lines of written messages. Robert Lindsley served as the game's lead programmer and, along with the other programmers, coded the game's elements. Robin Bradley served as the quality assurance tester; throughout July 1992 the game went through constant testing. Development wrapped in September, when Sierra's marketing and distribution departments began promoting and releasing the game.[12] In an interview with The New York Times, Williams estimated King's Quest VI's budget to have been "about $700,000" and stated that the crew included over 20 people who worked for 14 months.[11]

King's Quest VI was initially released in September 1992[16] on nine floppy disks for DOS, Amiga and Macintosh. The Amiga version was ported by Revolution Software, and uses their Virtual Theatre engine instead of the SCI engine.[17]

CD-ROM version

A CD-ROM version of King's Quest VI, released in 1993 for DOS and Microsoft Windows, featured an extended version of the opening sequence, a full voiceover of every line of text in the game,[15][18] and a revised soundtrack that includes a full version of the ballad "Girl in the Tower", which was composed by Mark Seibert with lyrics by Jane Jensen and serves as the game's love theme, playing in the end credits.[1][19] Sierra sent a CD with the song to various radio stations and bundled with the game a pamphlet listing these stations and suggested fans to call them and ask for the song to be played.[20] This resulted in Sierra receiving legal threats from stations bothered from excessive requests by listeners. Ken Williams responded to the stations by jokingly stating that the stations "were the criminals for ignoring their customers — something I believe no business should ever do".[21]

Emmy-winning director Stuart M. Rosen directed the voice cast of King's Quest VI for the CD-ROM version,[22] which included actor Robby Benson (voice of the Beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast), who voiced Prince Alexander.[23] Five additional people to the game's team were involved in the development of the CD-ROM version.[23]

The second King's Quest Collection had a number of editions in which the CD with King's Quest VI did not include the "Girl in the Tower" theme song audio CD track, so the Windows version simply crashed during the credits and the DOS version played the credits with no music.[24] The King's Quest Collection release by Vivendi in 2006 includes the Windows version of the game, but is set up to run the MS-DOS version with text and speech in DOSBox.[25]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score
AggregatorScore
GameRankings88.75%[26] (based on 4 reviews)
Review scores
PublicationScore
Adventure Gamers
AllGame
Dragon

According to Ken Williams, King's Quest VI sold around 400,000 copies in its first week of release.[21] Dragon gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.[27] Chuck Miller of Computer Gaming World stated that the number and quality of puzzles made King's Quest VI the first Sierra adventure in which he did not miss the older games' text parser. The magazine stated that while the graphic and sound were as good as other Sierra games, the animation was especially lifelike. It concluded that the game was "the best of the King's Quest games to come out of Daventry, and Sierra's finest adventure to date ... [it] has all the signs of becoming a classic".[8] PC Format magazine was less positive, giving the game a score of 72%. It liked the lushly drawn graphics and pleasing sound, but disliked the game for overuse of sudden death and being too limiting.[28]

Barry Brenesal of PC Magazine wrote, "King's Quest's latest sequel may be more of the same, but that's no cause for concern. A formula that's rooted in the likes of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm needs no excuse for its theme. And with Sierra at the design helm, it also needs no apology for its treatment." Brenesal also praised the references to other classic works of fantasy such as Through the Looking-Glass and Beauty and the Beast.[29]

When reviewing the CD-ROM version, Computer Gaming World's Charles Ardai compared the game and series to "vanilla ice cream", but praised the "incomparable" graphics and stated that the voice acting was "much stronger" than in the previous game. He concluded that "King's Quest VI is a heartily inoffensive game full of light touches and not a great deal else"; however, "for plain vanilla, King's Quest VI on CD-ROM is about as good as it gets".[18]

In retro reviews, made in the late 2000s, Allgame gave both the PC CD-ROM and Macintosh adaptations 2½ stars out of five,[30] while Adventure Gamers gave the game 4½ stars out of 5.[5] King's Quest VI was inducted into GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time.[6] In 1994, PC Gamer US named King's Quest VI the 48th best computer game ever.[31]

See also

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Hagerup, Eivind (20 April 1998). "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". Adventure Classic Gaming. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  2. 1 2 Jenson, Jane (1992). Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles (PDF). Sierra On-Line. Retrieved 6 July 2014.
  3. ↑ "1992 – King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". Game Nostalgia.
  4. ↑ King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow review
  5. 1 2 3 Morganti, Emily (2008-05-16). "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow review". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved 2012-03-03.
  6. 1 2 Gouskos, Carrie. "The Greatest Games of All Time: King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". GameSpot. Archived from the original on April 10, 2006.
  7. ↑ May, Scott A. (May 1993). "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". COMPUTE! (152).
  8. 1 2 Miller, Chuck (January 1993). "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". Computer Gaming World. p. 12. Retrieved 5 July 2014.
  9. 1 2 3 Shannon 1992, p. 2.
  10. 1 2 3 DeBaun, Rich (Fall 1992). "The Quest for King's Quest VI" (PDF). InterAction Magazine. Sierra On-Line. 5 (3): 20–26. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  11. 1 2 Ceccola, Russ (February 1993). "All about King's Quest VI: EG learns the inside scoop from Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen". Electronic Games. Sierra On-Line. 1 (5): 84, 85.
  12. 1 2 Shannon 1992, p. 3.
  13. ↑ Spear, Peter (Winter 1992). "King's Quest VI: A Landmark Game" (PDF). InterAction Magazine. Sierra On-Line. 5 (4): 37–40. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  14. ↑ Miller, Chuck (January 1993). "The Puzzling Plight of a Princess in Peril". Computer Gaming World (102): 12–14.
  15. 1 2 Morganti, Emily (16 May 2008). "King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow REVIEW". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  16. ↑ Barton & Loguidice 2009, p. 154.
  17. ↑ Davies, Jonathan (September 1994). "King's Quest 6". Amiga Power (41): 38, 39.
  18. 1 2 Ardai, Charles (November 1993). "King's Quest VI on CD-ROM". Computer Gaming World (112): 22.
  19. ↑ Busch, Kurt (June 1993). "King's Quest VI CD: A Multimedia Masterpiece" (PDF). InterAction Magazine. Sierra On-Line. 6 (1): 49. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  20. ↑ The radio station insert pamphlet that was bundled with King's Quest VI
  21. 1 2 McElroy, Justin (28 July 2015). "Royal with cheese: A King's Quest primer". Polygon. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  22. ↑ May, Scott A. (June 1994). "Entertainment Choice - Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers". Compute!. ABC Publishing (165): 89.
  23. 1 2 Lewis, Peter H. (20 December 1992). "Sound Bytes: The Queen of Gaming Reigns at Sierra On-Line". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  24. ↑ "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow Help". Sierra Help Pages. 2006.
  25. ↑ Buying game collections. Sierra Planet.
  26. ↑ "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow". GameRankings. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
  27. ↑ Lesser, Hartley; Lesser, Patricia; Lesser, Kirk (April 1993). "The Role of Computers". Dragon (192): 57–63.
  28. ↑ Ricketts, Ed (December 1992). "King's Quest VI Review". PC Format (15): 54.
  29. ↑ Brenesal, Barry (February 23, 1993). "After Hours; Fantasy Follow-Ups; With Four New Sequels, Computer Role-Play Lives On". PC Magazine. 12 (3): 470-473.
  30. ↑ "King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow – Overview". Allgame. Retrieved 2012-03-03.
  31. ↑ Staff (August 1994). "PC Gamer Top 40: The Best Games of All Time; The Ten Best Games that Almost Made the Top 40". PC Gamer US (3): 42.

Bibliography

  • Barton, Matt; Loguidice, Bill (2009). Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time (1st ed.). Focal Press. ISBN 978-0-240-81146-8. 
  • Shannon, Lorelei (1992). King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow Hint Book (1st ed.). Sierra On-Line. 
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