I did this as a Let's Play thread on the Something Awful Forums with great success; it took about ten months from start to end, posting two to three videos a week during that time. While doing the playthrough, a VGA remake of Quest for Glory II came out, which I highly recommend anyone interested in the series pick up (it's free to download.)
I also managed to land a really cool interview with the original creators of Hero's Quest, Lori Ann and Corey Cole. It's worth a read but maybe after you've watched the game.
The playthrough was approached as a fighter, not because it would make the most entertaining path but because the fighter is the easiest character to transition into Paladinhood, an almost Easter Egg-like 'fourth class' that players who import their characters can choose. The Paladin gets some special scenes in Quest for Glory IV and V especially, so even if you're familiar with the games you might not have seen some of the things the Paladin gets to see.
The rules for the playthrough were:
1. To make it through all five Quest for Glory games,
2. With 500 points in each game (except for Q4G3 where a bug prevents it),
3. As a Fighter becoming a Paladin,
4. Which we'll get in Quest for Glory 2,
5. So we'll end up with 550/500 points in that game,
6. And record ourselves as we go.
We did indeed glitch out of some points in Quest for Glory III, which I noted during the playthrough.
There is a little bit of skipping here: some of the games require some very boring grinding or long traveling for thirty seconds of payoff, so those portions have either been turned into a montage of still screen captures that show the action, or in one case cut completely and supplemented by screen captures (these points are noted in the videos.) There are also some critical bugs in Quest for Glory V that necessitated turning the recording software off at one point, which is also noted.
I've added commentary to all the videos through Overstream.net. The idea was to be entertaining and share as much of my knowledge of the games with you as I could. If you find the subtitles annoying, you can head on over to the Classic Let's Play YouTube Channel and watch them commentary-free.
Obviously this was a labor of love, both for the game series and the adventure gaming genre as a whole. This series is fascinating, as you can visually trace the progression of adventure gaming from a 16-color EGA text-parser-based genre through to 256-color VGA with graphics, to the introduction of voice talent and the genre's sunset with flashy 3D effects and environments while storylines and quality start to suffer. It's a roadmap of gaming in the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, and it is easy to trace the fortunes of both Sierra and the adventure game genre they helped forge.
But hey - have a great time. This is a game, it's supposed to be fun after all.
And now... a montage!
Back to the game!
It's an East Fricana MONTAGE!
And the points that are cut:
Freeing three villages cut out due to repeated computer crashes that made video capture impossible, skipping to the last village:
Note that the excessive pausing in the last video is the only workaround to prevent the game from crashing. Sorry 'bout that!
Bonus Videos:
Quest for Glory IV Dream Outtakes:
Laurel and Hardy from Quest for Glory III:
Arne the Aardvark from Quest for Glory III:
"All Toked Up"
X-Ray Glasses from Quest for Glory II:
Bonus Material:
Interview with Lori Ann and Corey Cole
Hope you enjoyed it, and this was either a pleasant trip down memory lane or introduced you to how adventure gaming used to be!
Note: If you watched all the videos in order without stopping (excluding the bonus scenes), it took you 1 day, 3 hours, 9 minutes and 51 seconds. Maybe it's time to go outside, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment