Frede

Yeah, overall, the animations are a lot better than those of Moebius, which I'm relieved about. A hunchbacked Malachi Rector stumbling drunkenly around before stopping to pop a pill in slow motion is a sight that will stay with me forever. I have no opinion on the new puzzles yet, as I still haven't reached any of them, so I can't really address that part of your post. The voices are also, much, much better than I had expected. Most of them aren't just good replacements - they're very good in their own right, with none of the wooden acting that sometimes plagued the V.O. of Moebius. Judged solely by the acting and not by the celebrity factor, I actually prefer the new voice of Dr. John to Michael Dorn's original performance. I do wish Phoenix would either learn how to do the 3D right or change styles to something they can handle, to be a bit blunt. The clipping issues at Jackson Square still really bother me. I also had Gabriel walk through the exterior of Marie Laveau's tomb yesterday and I've seen a lot of characters walk through him. And I haven't been trying to break the game or anything. I've just played it in the same fashion I've played the original. At the very least, the remake should be able to cover that ground without any huge bugs. Heck, Grace plunges her foot through the St. George's Books door step at the beginning of each day, and that's a cutscene. I get that the budget is low, the schedule was tight, they took over from another team, yadda-yadda-yadda, but as much as I want to support these guys, I'm getting a bit sick of the "Sorry about that, we hope you still liked it!"-excuses. This is 2014 - it can't be right that one of the most promising indie adventure developers out there either know next to nothing about collision detection, or, worse, that they simply went "So, he walks through the mime at his first try. No one will notice. It's good enough." No, it's not good enough. If you do not master your craft yet, please don't charge $19.99 for it and don't credit your Quality Assurance Team until they have to balls to point out that there are problems. It gives me the impression that they're a bit too willing to take advantage of the fact that most of us adventure gamers are gonna view this game through rose-tinted glases because it's Gabriel Knight. I'm sure they know the vast majority of players will shrug at these issues because it's Gabriel Knight, and I don't like what that implies. And, should someone from Phoenix stumble across this, I am genuinely sorry for the harsh words, but it's partly meant as a compliment; you're so goddamn close with this one, and that just makes the kinks infinitely more frustrating. Looking at this as a gamer, I just think these problems should have been weeded out years ago, and it's a damn shame that Gabriel Knight now has to pay the price because they weren't. And I have to stress that I really am enjoying loving the game so far, but it is annoying that it should even be remotely tarnished by such superficial issues.

I don't think anyone is complaining that there are new puzzles. I think they're complaining because they're just logic puzzles that seem to break the immersion. I haven't reached any of the new puzzles yet, but I can see what the people complaining about this mean. Gabriel Knight is not Myst, and if the new puzzles don't really add anything to the story (the main focus of this game, IMO), I believe it's fair to ask why the heck they're there. That said, I'm giving Phoenix the benefit of the doubt. I like what I'm seeing so far, even though Jackson Square really suffers from lack of proper collision detection. Either that or Gabriel is channeling Patrick Swayze in "Ghost".

I have to confess I've never thought about it that way, though I love the idea! The only thing known about the identity of the zombie is that he must be a former Xenonian rebel who was caught and "enhanced" by Vohaul. That's what's revealed by Professor Lloyd. So there's really nothing to prove that the zombie is future Roger... but there's nothing to contradict it either :)

The problem for me is that I don't think the Space Quest universe lends itself well to a multiplayer experience. At least not if we assume it's a traditional SQ game starring Roger Wilco. But I could see an MMORPG set in a similar sci-fi comedy universe. Maybe based around the universe of SQ5. Or a multiplayer offshoot of one of the arcade sequences. Battle Cruiser, for instance. But as far as a multiplayer adventure game goes, I don't think it would work.

Whenever I get that "I want to play some Space Quest!"-feeling, I'm most likely to go for SQ3. It is also one of my favourites of the series - probably an extremely close second to SQ5 - but I think it's because it just kinda has the right mix of everything. It looks great, it's funny, it lets you control your own spaceship and the narrative is relatively simple without feeling dumbed down. Perfect for when I want a slice of more-or-less "casual" vintage gaming.

Ah, damn. Had forgotten all about this, and now I'm unable to join in. For everyone else, that might be a source of relief! ;)

That makes sense. I never had a Tandy, so I'm used to hearing those soundtracks in monophonic; any approximation of three-channel audio instantly sounds better to me. Well, it's not as if I have to run all my old games in ScummVM or else. I use DOSBox a lot. But if the game will work well in ScummVM, I might tend to go for that instead. There's not really much of an "opinion" or bias going on, nor am I trying to make others jump on my bandwagon. As someone unqualified to judge the fine details of the emulation, I just happen to prefer ScummVM.

Happened more than once around that time. King's Quest 7 has lines from King Graham in the voice files, and obviously, he never even appeared in the final game.

That makes sense, though I haven't followed their SCI improvements over time. The division between global and game-specific settings is actually a feature I dig about ScummVM, because it makes it easier for me to handle that one exception where I might want the AdLib soundtrack. I've never run into any conflicts either, so I'll have to take your word for that and ultimately chalk that one up to preference. I can see why some people would mind, but I personally don't. Not as much as manually editing conf-files. I'm pretty sure the PC speaker emulation has been fixed in a while. At any rate, I find that ScummVM emulates the PC speaker just as well as DOSBox. Though I do remember that damn piano (mostly through NAGI, I think) - oh boy... My laptop is an Intel Macbook Pro, but I also desktop PC which - I think - is still fairly high-end. The performance issues I'm referring to was with my old Asus laptop. Not the best of computers (to put it mildly), but I still did a lot of multimedia work on it. Music creation, mainly, often rendering my master files at a whooping 96 KHz / 24 bit. I realise emulating something will always require more raw power than running it natively. But it still made me roll my eyes a bit when I asked around here and was ultimately told that the computer probably wasn't powerful enough. As someone with a degree in Computer Science, I sort of get it the issue. As a gamer who could run this stuff without a hiccup on a Pentium 200 MHz way back when, I don't. ScummVM ran fine on that laptop too, apart from the MT-32 emulation. I never had any issues with the audio emulation of either, but the computer my family had while I grew up also had a no-brand sound card with a Yamaha OPL3 chip on it. I've never had access to a genuine AdLib, nor a genuine, vintage SoundBlaster. So while I haven't heard any issues, I'm not qualified to be nitpicky. As far as I can tell, these days, ScummVM forces the game to use the driver that matches my choice of device, emulated or not. So, I'll admit that most of this stuff boils down to preference. Most of the time, ScummVM just gets the job done for me. Good Sierra support may have entered fairly late in the game, but it plays the games like I remember them, which I ultimately what I'm looking for. It feels like the easiest route for me. That said, I'm in favour of anything that makes the configuration hell simpler. I use, and tremendously appreciate, your installers and I used to use D-Fender for DOSBox.

Why are the results in DOSBox "better", though? I don't mean to be snarky - I'm genuinely curious. Cause I can disable ScummVM AGI mouse support, making it a pretty robust experience. Doesn't it depend if you're after 100% fidelity? If you just want to play the game, I see no major differences. Personally, I've experienced more grievances with DOSBox through the years, but mainly with talkies and the like. Games that are more resource-consuming. And it's not because I don't know to configure it for sure.

Objectively, it is indeed a very pretty game to look at. But, again, I think it's a bit too colourful. Much like SQ6 is a bit too cartoony for me. SQ5 remains my favourite game, but I've really grown to think of the high-res (compared to AGI, at least) EGA of SQ3 as the definitive look for the series.

"Hey, Scott! A whooping five people have said they prefer the VGA remake of SQ1!" Yeah, I can feel WilcoGate coming... ;)

But John being able to tell the T-1000 and Sarah apart near the ending doesn't make any sense in the theatrical version. In the director's cut, it's revealed that the T-1000 has started to malfunction on account of the sudden temperature shifts it has experienced, and John spots its feet melting into the floor. In the theatrical version, he takes a chance and has a 50% chance of shooting his mom. That alone makes the DC worthwhile for me. Cause I never understood that scene in the theatrical version.

It's not even the fact that the Two Guys did not work on it that bothers me the most. I'm not that adamant about the original creators always having the final say. Sometimes, bringing in other people can be a good thing - "Star Wars" is probably the best example. But I do think it sucks that they weren't even told anything about the project. There's just no explanation for that, other than someone wanting to spite Scott and Mark. They had no chance at all to approve anything related to the game, so it makes sense to me that they'd disown it. I think it's fair enough to let that sour my impression of the game, to a degree where I prefer the original one. It's not as if I want the remake to be forgotten or anything. But I would actually like to see a sanctioned remake by the Two Guys themselves, assuming they could make it more interesting than LSL:R.

Well, I wrote it, so at least hear me out here - confused non-native English speaker asshole or not. Brandon pretty much nailed most of what I meant, so I won't repeat that. But outsourcing it was no doubt also going to make it cheaper. As far as I remember, the KQ1 remake sold poorly and was criticised by people who favoured the original. As good as certain aspects of the Space Quest remake are, it was a money grab that purported to be designed by the Two Guys. And by that, I am referring to the redesigned game and not the original design. And if I must provide more "valid" criticism (I know we've been there, but seriously - we spent weeks reading bitching and moaning about every little bit of SpaceVenture criticism being valid) than that to be able to not love the game, I will say that while I don't the VGA graphics are bad, they don't match the look of the rest of the classic games in the series. It's all a bit overly colourful and garish to me, even if the 1950's B-movie angle was indeed interesting. The copy protection and CPU timer issues are also annoying, but granted, they are not problems exclusive to this game. But the look and feel is just "off" to me, with the exception of the awesome music. tl;dr You'll probably still think I'm a racist and Fronzel will probably "overlook" that I praised a couple of aspects of the game above and will have to write that I'm being silly again.

I'm surprised to see so many (well, okay, two) people going with the first one. I agree with everything said about it. It's a brilliant piece of sci-fi storytelling. Some of the effects obviously betray the shoestring budget, but the film is so good on the whole that it never matters. It's such a shame James Cameron descended into CGI nonsense and never came back, because he used to be brilliant. I also like Terminator 2, but the extended version is far superior to the theatrical cut. If you haven't watched that version, do it. You won't regret it.

And that's not valid criticism (where have I heard this before?) because..?

Are you now also unable to read, Mr. Neekburm? I stated that the VGA version is something I "like". Then went on to state why I still prefer EGA. I don't know why you took offence - it isn't a Guys from Andromeda game. It might say so on the box, but it isn't. I was stating a fact that affects my impression of the game. You are able to judge the VGA version however the fuck you want no matter what I think of it. I don't know who "we" are, so kindly relay that message to the rest of them. Sometimes it's as if some of you guys are deliberately trying to stir up shit. I don't know why, but can you go duke it out somewhere else and then come back when your voices have dropped?

I like VGA, but it's not a Two Guys from Andromeda game. It's a Bunch of Random Guys from Korea game. That takes some of the glitter off it. So I went with "No", even though I'm not sure you can even answer the question you posed with a no. Whatever - you sure as hell aren't getting a "Yes". Also, 4chan called. They want their posting style back.

Of course. Screw the remake.

Sure - I'm in!

It really does annoy me how Schafer is always in the spotlight, as if he's some sort of adventure game design guru. He made some great stuff, but now I feel he's stealing a lot of attention from more talented, but less interwebz-famous, designers just by throwing crap at the wall till something sticks. I don't have anything personal against the man at all, but judging from what I've heard about Broken Age, his talent is massively overrated.

Nice! Love the TFT screen; nice little touch in what is otherwise a very faithful render of the guy. Good job :D

If you ever find yourself in the presence of Scott, don't ever imply that he's interested in working closely with Mr. Moneybags. You'd find yourself with a boxed copy of SQ1VGA up your ass in no time. If they wanted that kind of my help, my gut feeling they would've asked straightforward for it where possible a long time ago. I'm sure a company like Phoenix wouldn't mind throwing some dough in their direction. But they seem to be hell-bent on staying independent. Can't say I blame them either. Could be that IGN were the ones to reach out.

True, I'd forgotten that this was an episodic game that was never finished. I haven't played it, but I agree with you that it'd be nice if the people actually behind it get to wrap it up properly.