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TimovieMan

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What happened at Sierra between the year 93 and 94?

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Joined 2005-02-20

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Sierra went with a big bang in the year 93 by, surprising, releasing all those games in the same year. It’s like Sierra were on a roll.

- GK1
- QFG3
- LSL6
- PQ4
- SQ5
- EQ2
- FPFP

They were all classic in their own way, and they all had something in common, they all followed the traditional pixel graphics, cycling cursors and no highlighting cursor.

But then came KQ7 in 94, and it abandoned and changed everything that Sierra fans were accustomed to. And most Sierra games afterwards started following that gameplay style. And most importantly, why favor the cartoony graphics over the pixel one? Was their long time great artist fired or something?

     
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Total Posts: 8720

Joined 2012-01-02

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I always think they took everything for granted at the time, it was a double edged sword as much as it was a big push, as much as it ,they took over themselves a great number projects and a great burden, I remember hearing Ken saying once at an interview saying he once used to have fifty projects he is leading their production at one time (add to the ags all the other applications and no adventure games they were giving)


aah.. and inst that was around the time when they abandoned their Aakhurst headquarter!!

     
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Total Posts: 2653

Joined 2013-03-14

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All those games are the harvest of Sierra’s old tech, which was something Sierra always tried to push forward. Sierra was, at the time, technically cutting edge and the technical changes for KQ7 were direct results from their continous journey of using the best tech available for their adventure games. And King’s Quest was the flagship series in which those technical strides were introduced.

     
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Total Posts: 506

Joined 2003-09-10

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Jane mentioned in her recent interview with AG that there was an engine revision in the middle of GK1 production and they had to move to the new version. If you look at Wikipedia’s list of SCI versions for the games, the GK1 demo was made with SCI1 (the same version as the other “classic” icon games mentioned) but the GK1 game (which shipped in Dec 1993) was made with SCI2. It seems that they had to transition to the new engine but kept the old look, possibly because they were far along in development already.

The only other game on that list that looks like the “oldies” is QfG4, which also shipped in December 1993 and was rushed out the door for a Christmas release, so I’m assuming ran into the same problems during development of having to change tech. My guess is that SCI2 was designed with the new interface in mind since every other SCI2 game uses smart cursors and a more cartoony look, or photo realistic/FMV. As for *why* that would have happened, I don’t know the details, but it was clearly something in the works from the time SCI2 was being developed… it wouldn’t have been a coincidence that this new engine had such different capabilities. Probably a business decision to keep up with what else was happening in the market (greater screen resolutions, multimedia capabilities, and an attempt to streamline the UI to emulate recent bestsellers like Myst and 7th Guest).

If you comb through the back issues of Interaction, which are archived online, you can probably find Ken or Roberta talking about some of the reasons for the changes. They wouldn’t have introduced something like that without talking it up for months earlier…

     
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Total Posts: 1368

Joined 2012-09-28

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Every company has their golden age and decline, Sierra’s best definitely came in the early 90s and dropped off quickly.

Guyper - 14 November 2013 10:27 AM

And most importantly, why favor the cartoony graphics over the pixel one? Was their long time great artist fired or something?

I think they just didn’t know what to do with the higher resolutions. KQ7, SQ6, Larry 7. I actually think they all would have turned out better with a low-res pixel style, where your imagination played a big part in what things looked like. For Sierra it was either FMV or cartoon, no in-between. QFG5 tries to take itself a little more seriously than the cartoony style but it’s not pretty. Technology got the better of beauty, that’s all.

     
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Total Posts: 2653

Joined 2013-03-14

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Bullcrap Zifnab. Larry 7 still is the crowning achievment on the series. SQ6 was a bad game because it was a mess of a project with no clear vision behind it and KQ7, while okay game, tried too much to be a Disney cartoon. Resolution had nothing to with it.

     
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Joined 2012-09-28

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Larry 7, crowning achievement? How so? It’s funny you talk about “vision” and there LSL7 is certainly weaker than the first 3 Larry games, turning him into a middle-aged fun-lover instead of a commentary on the desperation of love in the modern age. I feel the cartoon style (starting, of course, before LSL7) had something to do with that, removing the edginess and realism of the series in favor of Larry, the harmless lovable loser who bears no resemblance to reality or our inner selves. Everything is sacrificed for the comedy aspect because it’s all a joke, right? Something to be forgotten after you press the “quit” button and everything’s cool because Larry is only someone to point the finger at, nothing at all like you and me, the outcast despite the fact there is a piece of him living in all of us.

     
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Total Posts: 2653

Joined 2013-03-14

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I think you are reading way too much in Larry 1-3. They’re parody games revolving around certain kind of life style. Social commentary Lowe did in Larry 1 was always rather mild and did not ever dig very deep. Larry 2 is pretty directionles spy poof that fails more often than not.

Larry 3 is the best of the original three, but I would not call it the best in the series. It is second best though. But I think it’s beacuse Al Lowe learned from his mistakes from the two previous games, took what worked in them and mixed a good game out of that.

IMO Larry 7 takes everything that worked well with the mixture and turned that into a very entertaining game. It’s clearly defined, well structured game with good production values. I recently replayed it, and the others, and it is the one game in the series that makes me laugh the most.

     

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Joined 2014-06-08

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Quest for glory 3 was not released in 93, it was released very close to qfg1vga in 92

     

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Joined 2014-06-08

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Also you forgot to mention qfg4 being originally released in 93 with the cd rom speech version being released in 94

     

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