JubalBarca

I finally finished Space Quest 3 and reviewed it today :)

@JimmyTwoBucks: Ah, yes, good point about "the ART of looking up hints." Because once I've had to look up a hint to solve a puzzle and it turns out it's something I never would've thought of, or if the solution was just unfair (e.g. relying on pixel hunting), then I will be more predisposed to look up hints as I play the rest of the game -- because, in my mind, I KNOW the game isn't playing fair. ;)

Yeah, I'm certainly not arguing that it should be banned, I'm just arguing it's kind of naff. I'm also not even arguing that it's not a true love story or that those are bad - just that it's a badly done and rather skewed true love story and the way it's presented grates on me personally. Also the specific bits I was getting annoyed at, as I was saying, aren't the bits that are age old or that everybody wants. I'd have no issue with you getting to the tower, using the amulet, and then having a cutscene that has a brief note that your relationship then blossoms and she later agrees to marry you- and rescuing someone from peril seems to me a not wholly unreasonable way of meeting prospective partners. I was solely focussing on the rather male-acquisitive way that tower scene is presented on screen (and I don't think you can draw a clear line that that's an adult twisted fantasy, whilst children may not be able yet to interpret that sexually yet they can certainly objectify gender differences, though I'd also clarify that I'm not doing the "games are a bad influence" argument which I think is crap - the game reflects the issue rather than causing it, but it's a reflection I don't much like).
 
Or as a tl;dr for that paragraph - you can have a true love romantic fantasy without placing an activity/passivity action/object romantic gender distinction into your gameplay. I'm not arguing it's going to bring about the downfall of civilisation, but I don't think it would have taken too much to improve the plot a tad there.
 
Also, self sacrifice? Which person are you arguing is being self-sacrificing? Because I'm pretty sure the mirror only told Graham about the princess when he decided he wanted a wife (which is pretty dickish on the part of the mirror, thinking about it, at least if we're going to be charitable to Graham and suggest that he presumably would have rescued her before he realised he needed a spouse).
 
I should look into KQ2+, I've not seen it (and should thus clarify that all my comments above only relate to the original).

I suggest you also look into playing what's been released for Phoenix Online's The Silver Lining series. They try to tie some of the backstory together, including Graham's first encounter with Valanice.

I quite like some P&Cs (something like MOTAS for example), but I'd express a marginal preference for parser games I think, just because I like the challenge of them. I like the idea of a parser that lets you talk to the character; that could be a very neat game concept...
 
I've been working on making a parser-based adventuring RPG game for quite a while (mock-humour-fantasy-ish, written in Python), though it's rather stalled because the original design (and indeed the engine) includes functionality for each location to have a static illustration and finding an artist has proven impossible. :/

I am also on Twitter in two forms:
@jubalbarca as myself, which I don't use thaaat much but has a cute echidna as profile picture
 
and in my role as exilian.co.uk Megadux (Content Director - I'm a Byzantine history geek and I got to come up with the role names):
@Exilian_Press which is possibly actually of interest to people - that account will post announcements about Antares IV, the various parser games being made on the site, etc. :)

I guess I should admit that I am a Man With Opinions when it comes to fairytales; which is to say, it's not really old-school fantasy either in the sense of following the giants of C20th fantasy writing or in the sense of having much of a basis in folk fairy stories. It's 19th century style sanitised upper middle class Victorian fantasy, which I just don't like much as a genre. I dislike the "thou gaineth a WOMAN" plot trope that makes the female character a barely-animate quest objective with no agency, and the original KQ2 ending is very, very definitely falling into that trap in my opinion. It's obviously a matter of personal preferences and I imagine it may be just me that thinks this, but I think a few simple changes to the portrayal could have made the whole thing feel a bit less bland and C19th-tacky whilst keeping the "this is a shiny fantasy story of shininess" theme wholly intact.

I try and avoid walkthroughs but will use hint books where I need them - I think it's mostly a case of whether it increases or decreases one's enjoyment of a game, wrestling with something you had no idea might be there for hours can just be vexing and frustrating and not particularly fun. There are several cases in SQ where the basic "look" command could ideally have a couple more hints added to it (the deep part of the SQ2 swamp springs to mind, AFAIK there's no way of finding it other than blundering into that area at the back of the screen and so it's extremely easy to play through a load more game, save a bunch of times, and suddenly you're in the dark in a cave system and the game is nigh impossible).