Alright, first thing: this will not work with a previously saved game. The game saves whether to enable subtitles somewhere in your save file, and I don't know where. Maybe someone can figure that out later on.


So, before beginning a new game, open up your RESOURCE.CFG file and add audioSize = 0K to the file. save it. This tricks KQ7 into thinking you have no ability to play voices, but that you still have a sound card. So it will turn the subtitles on! Unfortunately, it will also, of course, disable all the digital sound effects. To alleviate this problem, save your game with subtitles enabled, then remove the audiosize line in the cfg file. Sounds will turn back on, but since you saved with subtitles enabled you'll get those too.

They are kind of ugly and sometimes run off the side of the screen, which seems to indicate that they eventually gave up on the idea, but I can confirm that the game does indeed feature subs all the way to the end and is perfectly playable as such. Like so: http://lpix.org/1976389/Clipboard10.png

I tried it and it worked to activate the subtitles. Unfortunately, when I deleted the line in the .CFG file, the voices and SFX were still off :/

The GOG version now launches through ScummVM, which can do voices and subtitles at the same time, though it's not turned on by default. They can be turned on through the ScummVM launcher. If you start the GOG version, you'll have to hit ctrl+F5 to bring up the ScummVM options menu, then hit 'return to launcher'. Click the Options button, then go to the Audio tab, there's a radio button for Speech, Subtitles, or Both. Select Both, press OK, then start the game again.
The saved games from the dosbox version are not compatible with the ScummVM version, at least from my brief check.
If you have an older version installed, or the Steam version (which might use dosbox, not sure), you can download and install ScummVM separately, and just point it at the game's installation folder and set the options before you start the game.
:)