King's Quest Message Board

Yesterday, I put on my fuzzy-eared detective hat and grilled Telltale president Kevin Bruner about his company’s next big, hopefully not bad thing, The Wolf Among Us. The Fables-based caper sounds like a worthy (though unexpected) follow-up to The Walking Dead, but it’s hardly the only story being writ large by Telltale’s ostentatiously oversized quill pens. The developer also regularly creates experimental prototypes involving AI, story structures, the way players communicate with characters, and tons more. Fittingly – given the developer’s love of episodic stories – they call it the Pilot Program. Some of these “weird” ideas make it into games, but many of them don’t. Ultimately, though, this is Telltale’s way of paving a path to its own future. I quizzed Bruner about the good, the bad, and the ugly of his company’s experiments, as well as a couple other loose ends like King’s Quest. It’s all after the break.

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Two years ago, adventure game specialist house Telltale Games revealed plans to make an episodic game based on King's Quest, the classic Sierra adventure game series about accidentally walking into alligator-infested waters and/or dying in the desert. However, those plans have gone yonder.

"While we deeply love King's Quest here at Telltale, we can confirm that we are no longer working on the franchise," Telltale Senior VP of Publishing Steve Allison told Digital Trends. "There was a time last year that we investigated partnering with third party developers to produce the game as a partnership but decided against outsourcing. We are not privy to what plans Activision has for the franchise, if any."

Rights holder Activision has its own episodic King's Quest series. The Silver Lining was originally conceived as a tribute project by fans, but developer Phoenix Online Studios later gained non-commercial license permission from Activision.

Telltale’s pretty much synonymous with The Walking Dead these days, but it has plans. Big plans. Maybe it’ll build a rocketship to Mars. Or perhaps it’ll make the world’s tallest ice cream sandwich. Also to Mars. Or I guess it could be making some more videogames, but that’s kinda reaching a bit. Regardless, I asked Telltale CEO Dan Connors what lies beyond his studio’s tear-blurred vision of the apocalypse, and he laid out quite the roadmap. Click past the break for updates on Fables, King’s Quest (sorta), potential plans for an entirely original multimedia universe, and a discussion of why JJ Abrams and Valve are hardly the only ones building bridges between entertainment’s many scattered islands.

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#magesinitiation More »

#arranger Coming November 15 to an iTunes near you, Arranger is a madcap musical adventure that stitches together a Zelda-style RPG, WarioWare-esque mini-games and King's Quest questing and style into an epic tale of world-saving and saxophone-playing. More »

Could Roberta and Ken Williams be about to come out of retirement? Speaking to Al Lowe and Paul Trowe for an interview due later today, RPS learned that the company remaking the Leisure Suit Larry games is also in talks with other Sierra adventure alumni about bringing back their classic series. Replay Games‘ Trowe revealed that they’re currently in negotiations with both Sierra On-line co-founders Ken and Roberta Williams, as well as Space Quest creators, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, with an interest to see King’s Quest and Space Quest brought back. With the added obstacle of Activision to manoeuvre around too.

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More adventure gaming news now, following John’s tearful account of the beautiful To The Moon. Sunday sees the release of the fourth episode of Pheonix Online’s unofficial King’s Quest game, The Silver Lining. As with the others, it’s absolutely free but they are after money for something else. While working away on The Silver Lining, they’ve announced a new project, Cognition, in collaboration with Gabriel Knight designer Jane Jensen. It looks like a darker affair than King’s Quest, which admittedly isn’t a stretch, and there’s a short promotional video for that as well. Two videos in one post – it’s like a multiplex down there!

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#spoilers These days, if you're stuck in a game, you hit the internet. YouTube and GameFAQs are your best friends. Back in the 1990s, things weren't so simple! More »

Telltale has plans to take us back to the kingdom of Daventry, confirming its King's Quest reboot is currently underway. "We have agreed to a multi-title, multiplatform deal to reboot the King's Quest franchise," Telltale SVP of marketing, Steve Allison, announced during a press event last night. "Much like we did with Tales of Monkey Island, we're rebooting King's Quest with all new episodic games and multiple series." He provided no details beyond that, but promised more would be revealed at E3 this June.

King's Quest is one of the most influential and highly-lauded adventure series of all time, spanning eight canonical games (and a trivia game) throughout the '80s and '90s. The series is the brainchild of Roberta Williams, co-founder and former co-owner of Sierra Entertainment. Currently, the rights to the franchise are owned by Activision.