The Silver Lining intro

[MusicallyInspired]

Well.....I've played it. I understand why it's short and the reasoning....but is that really a good enough reason?

Besides that, the narration is incredibly long-winded. I found myself more and more apt to avoid interacting with things just so I wouldn't have to sit through the long descriptive texts. The narrator was a little annoying as well, but most of the fault is due to the writing itself. The jokes were very bad and forced and served to completely undermine the ultra-dramatic tone the game had set.

The music wasn't all that special either. It was of great quality, don't get me wrong. Very impressive work and very professionally done....it just didn't do anything for me. It was all very ambient and directionless. It was just there to do its job and it did it to satisfaction. Portrayed the right atmosphere everywhere, although the constant dreary overtones were a little overwhelming. But it works for where the direction of the story is supposed to go. The worst thing about it was that there was no central theme to be found anywhere....it was all just very background-ish.

Something I loved from the original King's Quest games were that the soundtracks had wonderful themes for any given area, situation, or scenario. Very well done. And often even enchantingly so (KQ5 and KQ6 accomplished this best I think). Very bright and alive. I'm not referring to the tone of the tracks but rather the nature of their composition. By comparison, TSL's soundtrack is nothing like the classics' soundtracks at all. And maybe that was intentional, but I don't think it was a smart move. My opinion, of course.

After KQ7 went a similarly underwhelming route regarding direction of the soundtrack (I'm sorry, I didn't like it), I was happy to see that at least MOE brought the bar back up a little bit. Some of those themes in that game struck similar chords that KQ5 and the earlier Sierra games found, though not nearly to the same degree. I'm sorry to see that trend isn't coming back for TSL this time around, though. It's all just bland ear-filler so far.

Although, I was impressed and surprised to hear the presence of an electric guitar in one specific track. That was a bit of a bold move for a fantasy setting and I tip my hat to the composer for such a move. The theme itself, however, wasn't that memorable.

All in all, I'm intrigued to play the next episode (possibly even all of them if they keep interesting me), but I just hope it's full of a lot more variety (and a lot less wordiness) than the first episode was. As an introduction to the rest of the game, I don't necessarily think it did a very good job, but it did raise a lot of questions that I want to see answered....so it got part of the job done at least.

[Collector]

I agree about the soundtrack for KQ5 and 6. Very memorable tracks. What I have heard of the music did not strike me as very King's Questy. It was rather forgetable. For fan games, the VGA remakes did better music wise.

I wish that I could say more about TSL, but since only the intro cutscene works on my PC, I am limited to only that and the reactions of others. Based on that, a post on the IA forums (I think by "Bt"?) seems to sum up my impression the best. There is a lot about it that is impressive for a fan game, but it also suffers from some of the same flaws of most fanfics. I can't say that I like the character modeling. I can forgive the obvious low number of polygons for a fan game, however, the style is too cartoony and awkward for my taste. It is nice that they decided to use a more modern engine than AGS. I realize that a lot of people like the nostalgic look of VGA graphics, but it is time to move on.

Just from the intro, the writing did seem overly dramatic, if not hammy. For an adventure game, this is for most the single most important part. This is what needs to transcend far above the typical fanfics. In addition, I can't say that I care for the episodic release, either.

That said, if I could get more of the game to run on my machine I would not be too disappointed. I wasn't counting on too much anyway. I don't want to be overly critical of a fan game and discourage future efforts, but it is hard for me to not notice the flaws.

[Fender_178]

I like the game so far the graphics are excellent. I like the narrator she is funny imo.

Hmm I have windows 7 pro 64bit and Im not have any issues running the game but I have an Nvidia card rather than ATI.

[Collector]

I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. It now works, though occasionally the audio produces noise. The voice acting is better than I was thinking. It's the animation that is over done that gives it a bit of a hammy feel. It was better than the impression that I got from the intro. My main complaint is a minor one. The walk paths need to be smoothed out Graham has a tendency to get hung up if you click on a spot too far from him and there is anything between that might get in his way.

[Fender_178]

Ya thats good that you got the game working Collector.

Ya I know what you mean. Theres one thing that annoys me with the game when you go from the town to the next screen where the ferryman is located you have to click with the walk icon up towards the sky to get Graham to the next screen.

[wilco64256]

I'll agree that our pathfinding does need more work - it can be pretty tough at times to get some of that stuff to work the way you want it to but we're trying to clean it up a bit for the next episode.