Now that it’s officially come back from the dead, Sierra is bringing some of its classic PC games along with it. Activision said in a press release today that its recently-revived subsidiary is working on a new instalment in the renowned adventure game series King’s Quest.
Fans of the genre have a lot to be happy about here. The King’s Quest series is considered one of the hallmarks of eighties and nineties-era adventure gaming alongside other classics like Loom and the Monkey Island series. And while Tim Schafer has given people hungry for more of these kinds of games plenty to look forward to with his recent crowdfunding-enabled successes, Sierra’s sudden revival at the hands of Activision also suggests that the upper echelons of the big-budget video game industry are now keen to revisit the form as well.
Indeed, Activision’s presser went on to suggest that it’s planning to use Sierra as a sort of gateway through which smaller, indie-friendly projects can pass. Bob Loya, Sierra’s director of external development, said that his company’s new goal is “to find and work with talented indie developers working on their own amazing projects, or passionate about working on great Sierra IP, and leverage our expertise to aid them in bring these fun and exciting experiences to gamers with the level of visibility and awareness they deserve.” They’re already in talks with “a large number of other indie devs,” he added.
Keep in mind, this is Activision we’re talking about. So “smaller and indie-friendly” could mean pretty much anything that’s not at the size of Call of Duty, Diablo, Skylanders, or World of Warcraft. That’s, well, a lot of games.
First up? In addition to a new King’s Quest, Sierra and Activision also announced that they’re producing a new Geometry Wars. Dubbed Geometry Wars3,the game is due out later this year. If these next-gen triangles are half as much fun as Sony’s arcade style shooter Resogun, I’ll be happy.
Comments
31 responses to “King’s Quest Is Coming Back”
I think I missed something somewhere… Did TellTale give up on their KQ series?
Yeah, they confirmed they were dropping it very quietly a while back.
I loved King’s Quest, particularly the sixth game. Here’s hoping this is good!
Danny and Ross will be stoked!
There has been a non-profit team working on a new KQ for a long time. Pretty sure they’re just about finished, too. It’d be nice if the new Sierra hired them and helped them polish it for retail release.
Do you mean Phoenix who now have 3 episodes of ‘The Silver Lining’ out?
They’re pretty reasonable games, and Activision gave them a non-commercial licence to the brand.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with that now that Activision are looking to make money off the brand themselves now… they might not want the competition.
Oh cool. That’s good to hear!
Oh Sierra, how I’ve missed ye.
“look”
You are in an office cubicle. The sound of people working is overwhelming. You see a man posting on a website.
“talk to man”
The man ignores you.
“look at man”
The man is quietly sitting at a desk sipping a coffee and staring intently at the screen with fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“ask man about coffee”
You don’t know what coffee is.
“save”
Game saved.
“attack man with sword”
You don’t have a sword.
Your boss kills you for not doing your work.
“load”
The man kills you for looking at his screen.
“load”
You step on a power cable and are electrocuted to death.
“load”
You really should have saved that mouse eight hours ago…
Awesome! I LOVED KQ as a kid. However I remember getting KQ5 and we didn’t have much hard drive space, so every time we went from one screen to another, we had to put in and take out about 4-5 floppy disks for it to load.
I remember my parents buying the earlier versions for us (when they came out) because it taught us good problem solving skills, and to a certain extent, it helped us to spell, because if you couldn’t write a command, you couldn’t advance in the game (I learned how to write ‘inventory’ really well).
GOG.com has them all
…and I have them all on GOG! (plus Space Quest, Heroes Quest/Quest for Glory and Police Quest)
http://imgur.com/7MniOSq
aaaaaaaand, SOLD! Cheers. (Including Police and Space quest)
I forgot fan remake of qfg2 at agdinteractive
LOL I also new how to spell inventory from a young age 🙂
Alas, you never learned the difference between ‘new’ and ‘knew’
or that in many cases you could get away with just ‘inv’ 😛 sometimes even just ‘i’
No it wasnt needed in KQ’s
There are fan remakes available of KQ 1, 2, and 3 that feature a number of enhancements, including full voice acting.
They’re well worth checking out, and they’re available for free:
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
Awesome, thanks for that badger, had no idea that existed 🙂
+1 on spelling inventory!!!
I don’t think it will be the same unless they bring back some of the people behind games like Kings Quest which were the owners Ken and Roberta I think who wrote the story (i think). If they can bring these people back then it will be (at least to me) great stories again mixed with great graphics. I would also like a re-mark of all Sierra classic games like Police, Space, Kings and Hero Quest titles and the other too. Same story but amazing graphics as an intro to new players who don’t know the back story.
Oh good lord, no!
Roberta Williams was responsible for the most nonsensical puzzles ever!
I loved those puzzles as it made me think instead of clicking randomly. One of the ideas of these games was to make you think
Thinking and solving a puzzle is great. Williams was infamous for making garbage puzzles with crypto dream logic that were literally ‘use A on B’ until some completely random stuff happened. She nearly killed KQ with number 2. 3 actually made some sense because she wasn’t left to run wild with Batmobiles.
I think of the Williams like Freud: they introduced some really groundbreaking stuff to the world, but we’ve since improved on it in practically every way. There’s no need to go back to the original ideas. By modern standards they are laughable.
Kings Quest VI was the best of the series! This is a dream come true. Great news for KQ fans!!!!
Now we just need Space Quest and Police Quest and we should be sweet.
Ahh Roger Wilco and Sonny Bonds 😛
This is awesome! I absolutely loved Kings Quest.
I am excited about this.
I adored the Sierra games, even though yes the puzzles really didn’t make much sense a lot of the time! I personally loved KQ3 because it did create a much more complete world that made more sense, with the wizard working to his nefarious timetable.
And I really like the idea of them working with Indie teams to bring back some of these games. They should totally do something with AGD Interactive. Their remakes/additions to KQ 1 and 2 were very good.
I’d also love to see a Text Parser game come back. Albeit, one that says a lot less of “I don’t understand that!”
I think the most important thing is for the games to have their hearts in the right places. The tone of the games, the overall writing and sensibility needs to match the original IPs.
King’s Quest was always about a lead who did the right thing, helped people, he was a traditional good guy with upstanding values.
Larry was always wry and humorous.
Space Quest was absurd and inventive.
If the developers can get those things right, I can’t wait to play! 🙂