SHP Forums

I really don't think Tim overdid the accent in GK1. It was great!

Certainly in GK3 he was a bit over the top, though.

Like Dean Erickson said in an interview once, he didn't need to do as much with the voice because he could also act with his face, body, etc. The GK1 actors could only use their voices, so they had to express everything verbally.

Mostly wrote:I really don't think Tim overdid the accent in GK1. It was great!

Compared to a native from New Orleans, his accent was way overdone. I recognized that right away (but like I said, I grew up in Houston, which is relatively close to NO and shares a lot of culture with it) and so did Tawmis, as he's been there.

Spikey wrote:I can't imagine right now what it would be without 3D though, but a lot of players obviously think it should never have been 3D in the first place.

I think a lot of people disliked the primitive 3D graphics in it, not 3D in of itself. Even at the time GK3 was released, the graphics were outdated and given the false perception that "3D equals FPS" that many Adventure gamers had back then, it's little wonder why they disliked it.

The 3D graphics we have today, however, could turn GK3 into a visual masterpiece. That's assuming, of course, that GK3 ever got the go-ahead and was given the necessary funding to either develop or license a 3D engine.

I'd prefer 2D or 2.5D to bad 3D, but I'd rather see good 3D if possible.

Spikey wrote:I disliked the Beast Within, particularly because I didn't like the actors; if Jane should ever make a new version of it, I hope it will be in the classic style.

The actors didn't bother me so much as the overall lack of interactivity, which was normal in FMV games. It was basically "click, watch cinematic, click, watch cinematic, etc."

To be fair, some developers have been doing just about the same thing in 3D games today, even those titles outside the Adventure genre. A lot of FPS games have forsaken gameplay in the name of "telling a story." That doesn't sound bad at first, but it eventually turns into a situation where the player is watching the game, rather than playing it.

Spikey wrote:It is a shame we must do without Tim, though.

Maybe, but like some of us have been saying, his accent was way overdone. Besides, I'd prefer to reserve judgment on the voice acting until we hear it. We might be pleasantly surprised.

OK, here goes...

As far as the art styles go - to be honest, I thought the original GK1's art-style was best. It impressed me enormously at the time: the art in grandma's house almost made me instinctively think of mothballs and tea, the art in St George's bookshop positively made me think of dust, and so on. I never finished GK2 - partly because I didn't care for (but persevered through) the FMV videos - but mostly because I ended up getting stuck in day 4 (so I never got to see Wagner's "lost opera", which is a bummer). I did manage to finish GK3, and I love the Le Serpent Rouge puzzle (Yaaay!!! )... unfortunately, I still didn't care for the 3D graphics, which I found to be silly. Oh, and I hope that whoever thought of the syrup-and-cat-hair puzzle got the sack... I know it wasn't Jane! I also loved the "close-up" shots of the characters when Gabe was speaking to them. I'm not sure why, but it felt better to me than either GK2 or GK3.

As for the sound quality - well, GK1 is a victim of its time, with the stutter. I also agree that GK1 had far too many controls and icons.

In spite of all this, though, I still enjoyed GK1 more than the other two. I disliked GK2 because of the start-and-stop nature of FMV; as for GK3, I simply could not enjoy it (at least to begin with) because I knew that I had various tasks to accomplish within each time bracket, so I felt like the game was trying to rush me - and I was never sure if I'd accomplished everything I needed to, or if somehow I'd missed something and later on I'd have to re-load. Quite annoying, that...

DeadPoolX wrote: Even at the time GK3 was released, the graphics were outdated and given the false perception that "3D equals FPS" that many Adventure gamers had back then, it's little wonder why they disliked it.

KQ8 pretty much confirmed the "3D equals FPS" illusion, what more proof does anyone need than a badly executed action/adventure in 3D as a follow up in a pure point and click series. It helped destroy what little hope was left, because if they can't do a King's Quest right, what is the point? At least it's what I thought, unitl GK3 hit the shelves.

I've always enjoyed the GK3 graphics, and still do. I can play the game over and over again, and they don't mind me one bit.
I'm interested to know which games from 1999 you think were so much better in 3D graphics? I never played much 3D on my PCs myself, so I would like to try and compare in retrospect.

It was also very popular with my peers, and seemed to have sold well here in the netherlands because the only major electronics chain store at that time carried it as one of its top titles for months, and afterwards the cheaper versions of it.

I'm with you on that, I always liked GK3's visuals as well. My problems with the game are the controls which, while interesting, are just too complicated.
I'm not sure if there were any other fully 3D graphic adventures back then (or even that many since), so the closest competition would probably be an Action-Adventure like Tomb Raider 4. On a wider scale, there's games like Unreal or Quake 3, the 3D benchmarks of that time.

You are correct. I don't mind the interface / controls right now probably because I overplayed the game, but a few weeks back I let a newbie play it, and man was THAT frustrating and tiresome to see. I was like "isn't it obvious how it works", but of course it isn't. Being an invisible character yourself that can walk around like in a FPS is an interesting take, but it makes it difficult to aim for the actual objects you want to click on. The CTRL & Shift options to look and strafe are not really explained ingame, so some things are just too easily missed. A common miss-click is made just a little bit too often (of course if you play it longer you that the coloured line around the arrow changes colour as soon as it changes hotspot), especially true now that you use a touchpad sitting on your couch in front of a tv; the hotspots in the binoculars are easily missed, the exits of certain areas are hard to find if you don't know where they are, using the escape on some seemingly arbitrary occasions makes you miss vital parts. Why the hell is the inventory in the options menus? You need it too often, it's just too far away. Of course "user experience" wasn't back then what it is now, and they really just made a concession for missing the topnavigation, but why you need to go into the game options menu first before being able to go to your inventory, and then select "pick up" to simply select an item in your inventory is beyond me.

Thanks for the suggestions on the games, will have to compare. I guess what I like about the graphics of GK3 are all the tiny details, which they had time for to create because of the relatively small setting of the areas. Many FPS and Action-adventure 3Ds have a lot of areas that are big and without details, and therefor uninteresting to the p&c trained mind.

Spikey wrote: I'm interested to know which games from 1999 you think were so much better in 3D graphics? I never played much 3D on my PCs myself, so I would like to try and compare in retrospect.

Try SWAT 3. That game was released in 1999 and it was created using a modified version of the same engine used in GK3.

By today's standards those visuals are horrendous, but in 1999, they were fantastic. Unfortunately, it's tough to really see the details in those pics. You'd need to play it to get a better idea.

Some news about Moebius and the GK1 Remake...

An interview with Jane... (from Game Trailers)

A look at some of the scenes from GK1! (from Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

An interview with POS and Jane Jensen about Moebius. (from Expansive DLC)

Hope you enjoy. Apologies if these have already been covered before... I certainly haven't seen them, and they look (and sound) quite exciting! ^_^