Adventure Gamers - Forums

What?? The people who did the fan game The Silver Lining are doing Moebius? Guess I haven’t been keeping up with all the updates.

This is disappointing to me. TSL was extremely amateurish and below par. I would have liked to have known this before backing Moebius.

The so-so quality of the new Moebius trailer and the corny, artificial, melodramatic nature of its voice acting make a lot more sense now. If any of you don’t know what I’m referring to, go watch a YouTube “let’s play” of The Silver Lining.

I was hoping for something great from Pinkerton…. but now I feel extremely pessimistic. :-(

I still feel excited for Broken Age/DFA and Larry Reloaded, though. SpaceVenture and Tex Murphy may also turn out great.

Please tell me that Mystery Game X is not being developed by Phoenix Online.

Quest1 - 29 March 2013 06:19 PM

The so-so quality of the new Moebius trailer and the corny, artificial, melodramatic nature of its voice acting make a lot more sense now. If any of you don’t know what I’m referring to, go watch a YouTube “let’s play” of The Silver Lining.

The voices were cast and recorded at Bay Area Sound (the same studio that does all of Telltale’s games and has done many other adventure games) and was overseen by Jane. I think it’s hard to judge overall quality of voice acting for a few lines in an early trailer, hopefully your opinion will change when you’ve seen / heard more. And the video is from an alpha build, so there’s still plenty of refining to be done! Jane will be showing a farther along version of the game at E3 in June.

Jane’s role on Moebius is the same as her role in Gabriel Knight—she is overseeing the production entirely. (Which wasn’t true for Gray Matter, for anyone who’s wondering…) So comparing Moebius to The Silver Lining isn’t really accurate. Of course you can only comment on what you’ve seen so far, but I hope you won’t discount the game based on this trailer alone!

(Full disclosure: I’m involved with PR for this game.)

I was furious with how Phoenix Online attempted to continue the KQ series, as if they were the rightful heirs to the franchise. I believe they did a lot more harm than good to the KQ series’ chances of getting brought back the right way. Their KQ game was a disappointment.  It reminded me of what Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Box did with Leisure Suit Larry series. They perverted the KQ name and served up schlock. Ever since Silver Lining Ep 1, I have avoided Phoenix Online like the plague!

I am going to do my best to keep an open mind, but I am NOT at all happy about this.

Yeah, right, like the original King’s Quest series was such a paragon of quality…
I think The Silver Lining was a good effort. And it can be written off as a fan effort anyway, it’s not like you have to consider it canon (not that the original King’s Quest series was all that consistent in style or regarding canon anyway). Damning Phoenix for doing work for free, without getting paid, just out of sheer love and enthusiasm for the series and the kinds of games Sierra used to make back in its heyday, is…well, pretty inappropiate, I think.
The reason why King’s Quest wasn’t brought back? Clueless businessmen at Activision, and before that at Vivendi. They definitely didn’t care for the series when they poorly threw together the Sierra back catalogue for re-releases, with some manuals and games missing and merely being pre-configured in DosBox.

Anyway, even if Phoenix would have ruined the chances of a new King’s Quest, let’s say I buy that premise (I don’t), then surely AGD Interacive would have brightened the chances again with their remakes. Certainly, if you want to play any of the first three King’s Quests today, then you are certainly better off with the remakes. Heck, the second one comes close to the only original King’s Quest I like in quality, the sixth one.

Edit: In my opinion the many high quality fan efforts based on the King’s Quest series maintained an interest in the IP over the years. Probably a reason why Telltale Games licensed it a few years ago. I wonder what’s up with that deal, though…

Quest1 - 29 March 2013 06:19 PM

This is disappointing to me. TSL was extremely amateurish and below par. I would have liked to have known this before backing Moebius.

No one knew it then. They actually worked with another dev for a couple months but they switched at one point for reasons unknown.

Yeah, Jane released a video during the Kickstarter campaign that introduced a certain Russian team, I think Signus Labs it was called? Dunno, maybe it worked on Mystery Game X instead.

ozzie - 29 March 2013 07:09 PM

Yeah, right, like the King’s Quest series was such a paragon of quality before…
I think The Silver Lining was a good effort. And it can be written off as a fan effort anyway

King’s Quests 3, 4, 5 and KQ1 SCI are excellent, extremely fun games and remain some of my all-time favorites.

The Silver Lining is cheap, amateurish, melodramatic schlock and doesn’t even feel like King’s Quest. I will not write it off nor excuse it because it was free; Phoenix Online exploited the KQ brand to get attention for themselves, and they served up a very low quality product. They weren’t making a free game out of the goodness of their hearts. They were using it as a launching pad to get publicity for their subsequent commercial titles.

Sad to see Jane Jensen scrape the bottom of the developer barrel by selecting this Phoenix Online team. Was she THAT short on cash? What happened to that Russian team? Why has Jane Jensen not explained this? Were backers given a choice as to who they would want to develop Moebius?

Phoenix Online Studios would have been my absolute last choice.

Can someone confirm that Phoenix is NOT doing Mystery Game X?  I am absolutely sickened to think that MY MONEY is going into the pockets of the people who created The Silver Lining.

Quest1 - 29 March 2013 08:15 PM

Was she THAT short on cash?

yes. 400k is hardly any money when youre trying to put together a big commercial release. POS’s best asset is their enthusiasm, so it makes them a pretty logical choice considering the funds theyr dealing with.
Im not thrilled about it either. It would have been nice to know this beforehand… but it was also pretty clear from their original dev choice that this was their budget area. I suspect mgx is going to have a lot of mixed reactions too. A lot of people are imagining its going to be the best possible giant publisher. What publisher doesnt announce titles until theyr selling them??? I can think of a few, and theyr all publishers of casual and mobile games.

Damning Phoenix for doing work for free, without getting paid, just out of sheer love and enthusiasm for the series and the kinds of games Sierra used to make back in its heyday, is…well, pretty inappropiate

Actually one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever read on this forum (not you Ozzie, Quest1,obviously). Comparing a COMPLETELY FREE, 3D ADVENTURE GAME, made out of enthusiasm and love for the franchise, with those despicable LSL offerings? Puh-lease.

It might not have been your ideal King’s Quest, but accusing them of “perverting the KQ” name is so, so wrong, I don’t know where to start. (although the fact it was called The Silver Lining, and NOT King’s Quest is as good a place as any, I suppose)

For the record, quite a few people- including myself- quite liked what they did with the series. Or, at the very least, appreciated the fact that a lot of time and love and enthusiasm went into the making of them.

ETA: Just read the most recent Quest1 post. Wow. Just wow.

Yeah, no sense in arguing with him I see.

A.A - 29 March 2013 08:31 PM

Damning Phoenix for doing work for free, without getting paid, just out of sheer love and enthusiasm for the series and the kinds of games Sierra used to make back in its heyday, is…well, pretty inappropiate

Actually one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever read on this forum (not you Ozzie, Quest1,obviously). Comparing a COMPLETELY FREE, 3D ADVENTURE GAME, made out of enthusiasm and love for the franchise, with those despicable LSL offerings? Puh-lease.

For the record, quite a few people- including myself- quite liked what they did with the series. Or, at the very least, appreciated the fact that a lot of time and love and enthusiasm went into the making of them.

Enough with the whole, “they’re so enthusiastic, so let’s cut them slack for making a less than stellar game, etc”  Guess what, we are all enthusiastic. Big deal. No, once again, they used the KQ brand as a launching pad for publicity in order to promote their commercial titles. This is beyond obvious. Maybe it didn’t start out that way, but this is how it ended up. And have they even finished TSL yet? I wouldn’t care so much, were it not for the fact that they made such a hullabaloo about “bringing back” KQ, only to eventually give us the Silver Lining debacle. They created a lot of confusion, among people who don’t follow all this so closely, about what is and isn’t really KQ now. When a new KQ game is announced now, I fear many people aren’t going to pay it as much attention, since, the last time we got our hopes up over a new KQ game, we were stuck with Silver Lining. At least the AGDI games were good!

It is beyond patronizing to POS (what an acronym for Phoenix Online Studios) to keep talking about their love and enthusiasm as a way to defend them. It’s basically like saying, “sure, they’re not great, but aren’t they just so full of enthusiasm?”

I get that Jensen was low on funds, but weren’t there any other choices? Why THEM?

I hope I’ve made my views clear. Now all I can do is sit and wait and see what the final product is like.