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If somebody remade Quest for Glory 5 with EGA graphics and an interface similar to that of QfG1 and 2 (complete with text parser), would you play it?

Do you think such a remake would work well?
Yes
and
Maybe

In that order
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dtgreene: If somebody remade Quest for Glory 5 with EGA graphics and an interface similar to that of QfG1 and 2 (complete with text parser), would you play it?

Do you think such a remake would work well?
Just as a matter of intrigue, I would play the heck out of it.
There's a Facebook group page called 'Quest For More Glory' that has entertained the notion of "demaking" certain games in EGA, even going as far as to show EGA screenshots of QFG5.
Well, I'd play it, but if they were going to do that game with different graphics, I'd rather they do VGA.

Ideally, if they were to remake QFG5, I'd rather they remake not basically the same game that we got in 1998, but the game the Coles originally wanted to make before Sierra's management muddled with it. That would be interesting.
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cbingham: Well, I'd play it, but if they were going to do that game with different graphics, I'd rather they do VGA.

Ideally, if they were to remake QFG5, I'd rather they remake not basically the same game that we got in 1998, but the game the Coles originally wanted to make before Sierra's management muddled with it. That would be interesting.
What was the Coles original vision for QFG5?
I would assume it was supposed to be an adventure game with RPG elements just like the first 4 games were, instead of an RPG game with adventure elements. I would assume there was a story in there that was more than "The hero enters a competition to become king and performs all these dangerous tasks for the interim king." I would assume there wasn't supposed to be any mandatory combat unless you were a fighter (because that's how the first 4 games were). I would assume the graphics weren't supposed to be 3D. I would assume there was supposed to be a guest appearance by a famous group of comedians like the first 4 games had.

It's pretty well known that executive management at Sierra fiddled around a lot with these games, especially the late 90's games. For some reason, in the late 90's management forced all of their programmers to use 3D graphics and add more action to the games. "Gabriel Knight 3" wasn't affected too much as they were able to keep it as a standard adventure game. "King's Quest 8" was horribly ruined. "Quest For Glory 5" was somewhere in between the other 2 games in terms of how it was affected. It's definitely more combat-oriented than its predecessors as combat is mandatory in parts of QFG5 regardless of your character class whereas in the first 4 games, combat was almost always optional unless you were a fighter. I don't believe that's how the Coles originally wanted it. Of course, one of the main differences between "Quest For Glory" and "King's Quest" is that combat was always a part of QFG, so QFG5 doesn't spin my head around and turn it upside down like KQ8 did, but I don't believe the Coles intended it to be like this.

I started a thread a while back asking about who were the guest comedians in QFG4 and QFG5. I had guessed that the 3 heads of Cerberus was a reference to a 3-piece group of comedians that I didn't know about (and that wasn't in a previous game). But the answer that I got is that QFG5 had no guest comedians because it was knocked off the rails by executive management.

Issues with management at Sierra are well-documented. There is a reason that the city that gets taken over by evil in QFG2 is an anagram of Sierra and that the main villain of that game is named after one of the managers at Sierra, and that reason only grew more true as time progressed.

I'm not claiming to know what the Coles' original vision for QFG5 was. I'm saying I want to find out.
I don't like the text parser much - especially since I'm a non-native English speaker, plus it's also not very comfortable from the purely "manual" point of view. However, the real issue is that I love retro graphics - both VGA and (high-resolution) EGA, but I usually hate 3D graphics. They are just ugly for me.
I loved the first two Quests for Glory. For example it's amazing how places change after nightfall - it's much more gorgeous in EGA than even in VGA (where the places just become - more realistically - darker and less detailed). The parser is, as I said, uncomfortable (however, it also allows easy cheating ;)), but the graphics are lovely. I very much like graphics from Sierra games from the SCI-EGA period (QfG 1-2, KQ4, Codename: Iceman, Conquests of Camelot, Laura Bow 1, PQ2, SQ3) and also high-resolution EGA games from other developers ("Loom", EGA version of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"...), I love "hand-painted" VGA graphics, I love graphics from some yet other games ("Broken Sword" 1, 2 and 5, Humongous Entertainment children's games)... but nothing can convince me that 3D is nice. Very high-quality 3D is hard on the computer and looks just too "glossy", in low-quality 3D the game world looks like after a nuclear armageddon. No thanks, I just prefer retro graphics. Fortunately, there are still developers who appreciate this style.
So, altogether, I'd love QfG5 to be remade in either EGA or, perhaps even better, VGA. I don't fancy the parser, but still EGA with parser is better than ugly 3D.
I feel like my first post was a bit chaotic, so I'll show some examples.
Some of my favorite games from the purely graphical point of view (because not all of them are so great in terms of storyline and gameplay, for example "Codename: Iceman" is visually very nice, but also a too hard and annoying game) are:

"Quest for Glory" 1 & 2
"King's Quest" 1 (1990 version - 1st remake) & 4
"Loom" (DOS version)
"Conquests of Camelot"
"Codename: Iceman"
"The Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow 1)"
(320x200 px EGA)

"King's Quest" 2, 3 (AGD remakes), 5 & 6
"Loom" (FM Towns version)
"Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis"
"Legend of Kyrandia 1"
"Hand of Fate (Legend of Kyrandia 2)"
"Gabriel Knight 1"
"Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes" ("The case of the serrated scalpel", but I always knew it as just "Lost Files...")
"The Dig"
"Blackwell Epiphany"
"Quest for Glory" 2 (AGD remake) & 4
"Heroine's Quest"
"Inherit the Earth"
"Quest for Infamy"
(hand-painted VGA)

"Broken Sword" 1, 2 & 5
"Die Höhlenwelt-Saga: der leuchtende Kristall"
(hi-res / more realistic VGA)

"King's Quest 7"
Humongous Entertainment games, particularly "Pajama Sam" series and the "Let's Explore the..." mini-series (which are more interactive encyclopedias than games)
"Monkey Island 3"
(different cartoony styles)

the "Submachine" series, particularly 7-10 and the spin-off "Submachine Universe"
(hand-drawn)

By contrast, I have actually played few 3D games - also because of my dislike for 3D. But pretty much the only one I liked in terms of graphics was "The Witness" - perhaps because its sceneries are somewhat simplified for 3D and it lacks the typical 3D textures, it looks a bit hand-painted at the first glance.
Post edited February 21, 2018 by ewaulinska
Maybe it's because I grew up during the time, but I feel as though there is something quite charming about the old style EGA graphics. Having a text parser also helps with immersing yourself with the character since it forces you to remember topics, rather than just going to someone and clicking on every single option. It's been years since I played QFG5, so I definitely don't remember everything, so this would work in my favor. Hell yeah, I'd play! An option to avoid combat as a non-fighter class would be a plus as well.
Graphically, I prefer the first game's VGA (while nights in the EGA version are prettier, days in the VGA version are prettier) and the second game's EGA.

But I'd absolutely play an EGA remake of three and four as well.
Post edited February 21, 2018 by Zachski
Both EGA and VGA have aged rather well, with QFG5's extremely dated 3D graphics appearing very jarring against the hand-drawn backgrounds.

I would be extremely curious to see a fan remake of QFG5, not just because it would be interesting to see it in EGA or VGA style but also because there is a lot of room to make other improvements in there.
Honestly? I wouldn't play it, but I would watch it. I never was fond of the text parser, except as an optional addendum, QFG2VGA style - contrary to how some people think it improves role-playing, I argue that it encourages out-of-character knowledge instead, and that dialogue trees are better for RP, as they properly let you choose things that your character would say or do, rather than being able to "Hiden Goske!" or "Hut of Brown, Now Sit Down!" without Ego knowing those passcodes; all while elegantly avoiding the problem of forgetting what to ask after putting the game down for a few weeks on a blind playthrough. (And you can't use the thief's sign by painstakingly typing out every part of it, either, so it's not even consistent)

Besides, I actually like the idea of both combat and puzzles being mandatory for all classes, with different weighting based on class choice and hybrid talents. If a Thief or Mage can skip the fighting, why can't the Fighter skip all the puzzles and just brute force his way through everything, like the fluff implies Fighters often prefer to? Forfeit any chance of becoming a Paladin due to being a big, dumb thug, sure. Make "puzzle immunity" the one thing that the Fighter does better than the Paladin, definitely! But having the choice to combat through every single situation in the entire series would legitimately be fun. Yes, the Thief and Mage do have to fight in every game except 1, but only in 4 and 5 do they need to use the combat system to do it, as opposed to the "fight" being a framing device for a puzzle.

Honestly, I just like a good combat system. A good, in-depth combat system with balanced mechanics (like QFG2VGA, and what QFG5 comes surprisingly close to being if you pretend that Hide, Dazzle, and Frost Bite don't exist) lets you craft a puzzle with every encounter, and these puzzles can have a large number of potential solutions, provided that the player has enough tools in the box to handle them. While an adventure game's puzzle might have... two or three hard-coded solutions. Fun the first time, but then you've solved it and you're done.

That said, if there was a fan sequel, that bridged the gap between Quest for Glory and Hero-U (never mind that Activision would hate you) by explaining things like both Erana and Katrina being alive, and actually discussing aforementioned character's backstories in a gameplay context like Dragon Fire's expansion was most likely going to do, and you also had good combat and good puzzles, with good replayability between the four different classes and waifus (Nawar would be the ultimate puzzle queen, no combat skills, but still very talented) then I would-that'll sadly never happen.
I wouldn't play it in EGA but would prefer some Unreal Engine Remake in 1920x1080 resolution.