Frede

Stop this.

Couldn't draw him into the public eye?

WOW. The continual unfolding of evidence of this man's substantial ego and exponential selfishness, which is only further enlarged when he is called out, is disturbingly massive.

At least something good came from the whole Replay debacle: I got to know Jeroen, Tom, Serena and other magnificently magical people who deserved so much better.
 
Jeroen's a truly cool guy who loves adventure games and has fantastic facial hair.
 
Tom is a true friend who barely sleeps but stays up making cool shit all night instead.
 
Serena is, well ... need I say more?
 
And, for better or worse, it totally brought the community even closer together.
 
So there's that. ;)

For real? Jeez, I can't even begin to... Just... WHYYYY? I guess Bobby Kotick is too busy counting the billions that Cowadoody rakes in to check the Humble Store, or else he'd know that the Linuxers are always the ones who are willing to spend the most.
 
Just a short anecdote about tight leashes and Jane Jensen being awesome and such: When the Pinkerton Kickstarter was still going, I contacted them about whether the physical copies of their games would require Steam. And about five minutes later I get a reply from Jane Jensen herself that was basically two whole paragraphs. So not only did I learn that Jane Jensen can type lengthy, articulate and friendly replies at a superhuman speed, she also let me know very straightforwardly that while Moebius was going to be DRM-free, the situation was different for Mystery Game X, since a major publisher is involved.
 
Now fast forward to two years later: Not only did she keep her word about Moebius, she apparently also managed to get the higher-ups to agree to not only release GK20 on places like GOG on day 1, but also convinced them to let her produce a limited, backer-exclusive quantity of physical copies of GK20. In her final studio update she said that she and Robert "fought very very hard for some things" and I would not at all be surprised if the DRM-free GK20 releases was somewhere near the top of that list of battles.

Gabriel Knight is a sexist asshole, and I think it's fair enough if some people can't see past that. I think it makes him endearing, and the other characters often get to one-up him, making him the butt of a lot of jokes. It makes the outcome of his romance with Malia all the more heartbreaking and it paves the way for a series-wide character arc. He's a lot mellower in The Beast Within as a result of his experiences in the previous game. As opposed to someone like King Graham who's essentially a walking cardboard cutout throughout the King's Quest series. I don't think it has anything to do with "progressiveness". Seems that some people just don't like human ugliness in their games.
 
I completed the game yesterday. I'm not gonna write a long-winded review, but here's my personal low-down:
 
Pros:
The cutscenes are brilliant. Especially the new cutscene in the police station, as well as the way the ending plays out. The music is (mostly) great; there are still some cues that sound like overcompressed crap (listen to the way the drums drown out everything in the Gedde Mansion theme), but there are fewer of them than there was on the pre-release soundtrack. The new take on the Voodoo Museum cue is awesome. The animations are much, much better than Moebius. I'm so happy Phoenix are finally using motion capture. No more drunk hunchbacks! The new voices are surprisingly good, with the lone exception of Wolfgang Ritter whose accent is a Frankensteinian mess of German and American accents. It didn't take long before I had gotten over the loss of Curry, Hammill, Remini and Dorn. In fact, the actor playing Dr. John manages outstage Michael Dorn, in my opinion. The remake sometimes manages to outcreep the original. The rope-skipping girls outside the police station freaked me out and Hartridge's dead body looks a tad grislier to me. I wish Phoenix had let the horror element shine a bit more, cause when they have the balls to do so, they pull it off better than I expected. I love that Gerde, Schloss Ritter and Rittersberg have been retconned to match the more realistic way they're handled in the sequel. No more Disney castles, nor snowfall in June. And Gerde is confirmed to consume food other than a truckload of potatoes. Cons: The vase-busting cemetery squirrel, Sam's advertising campaign, the Ask-the-Loa machine and the Ritter crest slider puzzle are all - to be frank - moronic additions. The new stuff should have been optional. The former two could have been written by Roberta Williams in her overrated, Cheese Machine-writing "prime" and the two latter, while being relatively easy to solve, don't fit into the narrative at all. The only positive thing is that the first one allows Willy Walker to be even more of an asshole. "I said $120, m'sieur." That made me laugh. The game is still buggy as hell. Now that I've finished it, I feel that my rage against Phoenix was way over-the-top, but it still kinda tarnishes their reputation to me. Why not wait 1-2 months longer before releasing it? Big Finish pulled it off and I'm sure that time helped them make Tesla Effect more stable. It amazes me that the QA team weren't able to find the Moseley's wallet bug on their own and it gives me the (wrongful, I hope) impression that the testers frankly aren't very good at their job. The graphics are rather good most of the time, but sometimes, they also drop the ball. Like Richard Corbett mentioned in his review, some of the gritty locations in the original game are now clean as a whistle. Not the biggest of problems for me, but the graphics often just aren't as atmospheric. Some screens, like the Dixieland Drugstore, are welcome exceptions. Ultimately, while I think the cons are pretty big, I feel there are more pros to this game. I do recommend that fans of the original play it, and I hope we might see a re-adaption (rather than a 1:1 remake) of The Beast Within some day, if not a Gabriel Knight 4.

Gabriel Knight is a sexist asshole, and I think it's fair enough if some people can't see past that. I think it makes him endearing, and the other characters often get to one-up him, making him the butt of a lot of jokes. It makes the outcome of his romance with Malia all the more heartbreaking and it paves the way for a series-wide character arc. He's a lot mellower in The Beast Within as a result of his experiences in the previous game. As opposed to someone like King Graham who's essentially a walking cardboard cutout throughout the King's Quest series. I don't think it has anything to do with "progressiveness". Seems that some people just don't like human ugliness in their games.
 
I completed the game yesterday. I'm not gonna write a long-winded review, but here's my personal low-down:
 
Pros:
The cutscenes are brilliant. Especially the new cutscene in the police station, as well as the way the ending plays out. The music is (mostly) great; there are still some cues that sound like overcompressed crap (listen to the way the drums drown out everything in the Gedde Mansion theme), but there are fewer of them than there was on the pre-release soundtrack. The new take on the Voodoo Museum cue is awesome. The animations are much, much better than Moebius. I'm so happy Phoenix are finally using motion capture. No more drunk hunchbacks! The new voices are surprisingly good, with the lone exception of Wolfgang Ritter whose accent is a Frankensteinian mess of German and American accents. It didn't take long before I had gotten over the loss of Curry, Hammill, Remini and Dorn. In fact, the actor playing Dr. John manages outstage Michael Dorn, in my opinion. The remake sometimes manages to outcreep the original. The rope-skipping girls outside the police station freaked me out and Hartridge's dead body looks a tad grislier to me. I wish Phoenix had let the horror element shine a bit more, cause when they have the balls to do so, they pull it off better than I expected. I love that Gerde, Schloss Ritter and Rittersberg have been retconned to match the more realistic way they're handled in the sequel. No more Disney castles, nor snowfall in June. And Gerde is confirmed to consume food other than a truckload of potatoes. Cons: The vase-busting cemetery squirrel, Sam's advertising campaign, the Ask-the-Loa machine and the Ritter crest slider puzzle are all - to be frank - moronic additions. The new stuff should have been optional. The former two could have been written by Roberta Williams in her overrated, Cheese Machine-writing "prime" and the two latter, while being relatively easy to solve, don't fit into the narrative at all. The only positive thing is that the first one allows Willy Walker to be even more of an asshole. "I said $120, m'sieur." That made me laugh. The game is still buggy as hell. Now that I've finished it, I feel that my rage against Phoenix was way over-the-top, but it still kinda tarnishes their reputation to me. Why not wait 1-2 months longer before releasing it? Big Finish pulled it off and I'm sure that time helped them make Tesla Effect more stable. It amazes me that the QA team weren't able to find the Moseley's wallet bug on their own and it gives me the (wrongful, I hope) impression that the testers frankly aren't very good at their job. The graphics are rather good most of the time, but sometimes, they also drop the ball. Like Richard Corbett mentioned in his review, some of the gritty locations in the original game are now clean as a whistle. Not the biggest of problems for me, but the graphics often just aren't as atmospheric. Some screens, like the Dixieland Drugstore, are welcome exceptions. Ultimately, while I think the cons are pretty big, I feel there are more pros to this game. I do recommend that fans of the original play it, and I hope we might see a re-adaption (rather than a 1:1 remake) of The Beast Within some day, if not a Gabriel Knight 4.

Sadly enough, that's a fairly accurate description of how I sound like in real life... :(
 
Thanks to global warming, this is sadly also very close to becoming a reality. Ron Paul tried to warn us...
 
But yeah, summers were still summers in 1993, so this is very much a welcome addition.
 
Agreed! That's definitely one of the "Hey, Jane Jensen's still got it!"-moments for me.
 
I'm sure they would have if they could. But in all likelihood their contract with Activision stated something to the effect of "Have game ready by Oct 15th or we'll have your assetts and your balls." It was very obvious that the game had to be completed in an incredible rush (like I said, the beta I played felt like it was a year or so away from release-worthy game) and I'm really amazed that the pulled off to make a pretty good game under such conditions.
 
Damn, now I have to replay the beta version days! That squirrel wasn't there when I played it.
 
I'll take at least partial credit blame for how that puzzle turned out, since I called the puzzle as it appeared in the beta version "complete bullshit" in Pinkerton's feedback thread. Here's how it originally played out: GK needs $20, checks every other place, goes to the cemetery, notices that he now can visit the family tomb for some reason, checks out the family tomb, BANG! vase asplodes, 20 buckazoids appear, The End. Like, it wasn't even a puzzle as such, it was just pixel hunting. Other people voiced similar complaints while there was also a user who argued that this gave the scene a spiritual quality - as if his family was watching over GK. I guess that spiritual quality is gone now (unless of course that squirrel was sent by the almighty himself to help GK on his quest to buy a crocodile mask :o ).

Gabriel Knight is a sexist asshole, and I think it's fair enough if some people can't see past that. I think it makes him endearing, and the other characters often get to one-up him, making him the butt of a lot of jokes. It makes the outcome of his romance with Malia all the more heartbreaking and it paves the way for a series-wide character arc. He's a lot mellower in The Beast Within as a result of his experiences in the previous game. As opposed to someone like King Graham who's essentially a walking cardboard cutout throughout the King's Quest series. I don't think it has anything to do with "progressiveness". Seems that some people just don't like human ugliness in their games.
 
I completed the game yesterday. I'm not gonna write a long-winded review, but here's my personal low-down:
 
Pros:
The cutscenes are brilliant. Especially the new cutscene in the police station, as well as the way the ending plays out. The music is (mostly) great; there are still some cues that sound like overcompressed crap (listen to the way the drums drown out everything in the Gedde Mansion theme), but there are fewer of them than there was on the pre-release soundtrack. The new take on the Voodoo Museum cue is awesome. The animations are much, much better than Moebius. I'm so happy Phoenix are finally using motion capture. No more drunk hunchbacks! The new voices are surprisingly good, with the lone exception of Wolfgang Ritter whose accent is a Frankensteinian mess of German and American accents. It didn't take long before I had gotten over the loss of Curry, Hammill, Remini and Dorn. In fact, the actor playing Dr. John manages outstage Michael Dorn, in my opinion. The remake sometimes manages to outcreep the original. The rope-skipping girls outside the police station freaked me out and Hartridge's dead body looks a tad grislier to me. I wish Phoenix had let the horror element shine a bit more, cause when they have the balls to do so, they pull it off better than I expected. I love that Gerde, Schloss Ritter and Rittersberg have been retconned to match the more realistic way they're handled in the sequel. No more Disney castles, nor snowfall in June. And Gerde is confirmed to consume food other than a truckload of potatoes. Cons: The vase-busting cemetery squirrel, Sam's advertising campaign, the Ask-the-Loa machine and the Ritter crest slider puzzle are all - to be frank - moronic additions. The new stuff should have been optional. The former two could have been written by Roberta Williams in her overrated, Cheese Machine-writing "prime" and the two latter, while being relatively easy to solve, don't fit into the narrative at all. The only positive thing is that the first one allows Willy Walker to be even more of an asshole. "I said $120, m'sieur." That made me laugh. The game is still buggy as hell. Now that I've finished it, I feel that my rage against Phoenix was way over-the-top, but it still kinda tarnishes their reputation to me. Why not wait 1-2 months longer before releasing it? Big Finish pulled it off and I'm sure that time helped them make Tesla Effect more stable. It amazes me that the QA team weren't able to find the Moseley's wallet bug on their own and it gives me the (wrongful, I hope) impression that the testers frankly aren't very good at their job. The graphics are rather good most of the time, but sometimes, they also drop the ball. Like Richard Corbett mentioned in his review, some of the gritty locations in the original game are now clean as a whistle. Not the biggest of problems for me, but the graphics often just aren't as atmospheric. Some screens, like the Dixieland Drugstore, are welcome exceptions. Ultimately, while I think the cons are pretty big, I feel there are more pros to this game. I do recommend that fans of the original play it, and I hope we might see a re-adaption (rather than a 1:1 remake) of The Beast Within some day, if not a Gabriel Knight 4.

First things first: Two thumbs up for getting the GOG version!
 

Also, I'm pretty sure that the patching process will be greatly sped up once they roll out Galaxy.
 
And secondly, I've been pretty impressed with the speed Phoenix takes for fixing things. This is from personal experience, because they somehow managed to misspell my name in the Moebius backer credits (I wonder... How is that even possible? I always assumed that these backer names would be copypastad into some .txt file, but apparently some poor sap had to type a couple thousand names.) I shot them a mail and it was fixed by the time the next patch rolled out a few days later.
 
I know a lot of people were ultimately disappointed with the games that came out of this campaign, but personally, I can say nothing but good things about them.

Aaand the game has now reached an unwinnable state as I have run into this bug. It has apparently been patched, which I am happy to hear, but I still can't continue till the patch is rolled out to GOG.com users  :(
 
EDIT: I tried pulling the trick suggested in the same thread and that did the trick. Still one hell of an ugly bug; I'm glad Phoenix have been so swift to fix some of the most glaring issues with the game.

Beating the dead horse here (or rather the bleaching bones that are left of it), but what the shit...
 
Seems like I got so caught up in that whole #gamergate shebang that I completely neglected to check my go-to-place for lulzy interwebz drama: The LSL Reloaded Kickstarter comment section. A bloody shame, since I completely missed out on this gem left a month ago by Jeroen Dekkers.
 
"Unprofessional and harmful to the company", that's fucking golden!
 
No matter whether it's putting up with my incessant anti-Steam rants, Steve's rampant homophobia or Roland's constant reminders how Tom King's cover artwork is inferior to THAR's, Jeroen's been an enormous assett to Replay by giving that shithole some class. He's an all-around class act!

I never thought making a topic about this would lead to a profile change.  ;) btw, the Gabriel Knight parts were not so bad for me, but the Police Quest dumpster, gosh. If the image is not frightening enough, the sound does the job.
 
You're right Fronzel about Klorox II. It's not really "scary", but the morbid atmosphere is one of the bests in Space Quest games. Especially with the computer logs.

Mother Mary and Joseph! I just laughed out loud at that. That is brilliant. I'd heard about it, but I've never seen it until now. That face is some twisted shit for sure.
 
I don't know if it's "scary" as such, but the alternate Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers ending which plays out if you forget to summon Mosely to the voodoo hounfour is incredibly disturbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hoVRI1MG4I. Dr. John practically bashes Grace's skull in. This was the first ending I got when I played the game, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. It's really easy to get to the hounfour without alerting Mosely. Something is just off about the way this version of the scene plays out. The game has some pretty grim moments, but few of them compare to DJ destroying Grace's head with one single punch. And that relentless chanting...
 
And, of course, when speaking about Gabriel Knight, there's no ignoring this classic moment from The Beast Within: http://youtu.be/i-Gis_JqFRU?t=9m57s
 
In the third place, from the beginning of Police Quest 4, we have the most depressing dumpster of all time, coupled with the very effective sound of an AdLib card throwing up: http://youtu.be/U-G7C48efH0?t=5m38s.
 
Yeah, now that you mention it, Sierra did have some truly scary/disturbing moments. Looking forward to the ensuing discussion  :D
 
EDIT: I have decided to change my avatar so you can all get to enjoy it several times a day, and my signature because I thought it was a nice fit. Enjoy.

Stuff like that also gets me riled up. Again, you can almost hear someone go "Pah, no one will notice." Trouble is that the adventure game community is arguably one of the most anal ones out there. Of course we're gonna notice; the games we play require us to notice because shitty German grammar could easily be a story clue.

Mother Mary and Joseph! I just laughed out loud at that. That is brilliant. I'd heard about it, but I've never seen it until now. That face is some twisted shit for sure.
 
I don't know if it's "scary" as such, but the alternate Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers ending which plays out if you forget to summon Mosely to the voodoo hounfour is incredibly disturbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hoVRI1MG4I. Dr. John practically bashes Grace's skull in. This was the first ending I got when I played the game, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. It's really easy to get to the hounfour without alerting Mosely. Something is just off about the way this version of the scene plays out. The game has some pretty grim moments, but few of them compare to DJ destroying Grace's head with one single punch. And that relentless chanting...
 
And, of course, when speaking about Gabriel Knight, there's no ignoring this classic moment from The Beast Within: http://youtu.be/i-Gis_JqFRU?t=9m57s
 
In the third place, from the beginning of Police Quest 4, we have the most depressing dumpster of all time, coupled with the very effective sound of an AdLib card throwing up: http://youtu.be/U-G7C48efH0?t=5m38s.
 
Yeah, now that you mention it, Sierra did have some truly scary/disturbing moments. Looking forward to the ensuing discussion  :D
 
EDIT: I have decided to change my avatar so you can all get to enjoy it several times a day, and my signature because I thought it was a nice fit. Enjoy.

I wholeheartedly agree on SQ5 being pretty creepy stuff in places. The brief sequence on Clorox II is particularly memorable. I'm repeating myself here, but it's amazing how a comedy game somehow manages to do horror better than most horror games. The deserted colony, the foreboding music... the whole place just oozes eerie. Also, props to the makers for introducing the "Oh God, we're getting slaughtered!"-logs as a horror element some time before System Shock made those fashionable!
 
Come to think of it, this may be one of the reasons why SQ5 might be my favourite: If you took the comedy out of the game, you'd still have a pretty exciting, pulpy space adventure with some heavy horror undertones. But as it stands, the tense parts and the comedy work excellently off each other - the jokes are just that more funny when they also serve to relieve the tension.
 
 
As for other scary Sierra stuff: There's obviously the original Gabriel Knight. That had a bunch of good stuff in it (the ending and the deaths of various side characters are pretty memorable).
 
The Manhunter games had some icky EGA-close ups of corpses.
 
Then there are the Phantasmagoria games. The first one is at its scariest when it's being subtle (the best part about it is exploring the house every day to see what has changed) instead of being gross.
 
The second one is actually quite chilling as long as it's about some Joe Schmo who is gradually loosing his grip on reality. Unfortunately, the game goes about halfway through by introducing some truly demented sci-fi-shit. It could've been so much better...

Improved version:
 

 
;)

You know, you're a real sadistic fucker! :P
 
Hopefully being forced to stare at that mug will eventually desensitize me to it...

Mother Mary and Joseph! I just laughed out loud at that. That is brilliant. I'd heard about it, but I've never seen it until now. That face is some twisted shit for sure.
 
I don't know if it's "scary" as such, but the alternate Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers ending which plays out if you forget to summon Mosely to the voodoo hounfour is incredibly disturbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hoVRI1MG4I. Dr. John practically bashes Grace's skull in. This was the first ending I got when I played the game, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. It's really easy to get to the hounfour without alerting Mosely. Something is just off about the way this version of the scene plays out. The game has some pretty grim moments, but few of them compare to DJ destroying Grace's head with one single punch. And that relentless chanting...
 
And, of course, when speaking about Gabriel Knight, there's no ignoring this classic moment from The Beast Within: http://youtu.be/i-Gis_JqFRU?t=9m57s
 
In the third place, from the beginning of Police Quest 4, we have the most depressing dumpster of all time, coupled with the very effective sound of an AdLib card throwing up: http://youtu.be/U-G7C48efH0?t=5m38s.
 
Yeah, now that you mention it, Sierra did have some truly scary/disturbing moments. Looking forward to the ensuing discussion  :D
 
EDIT: I have decided to change my avatar so you can all get to enjoy it several times a day, and my signature because I thought it was a nice fit. Enjoy.

You should‘ve seen the beta version... Sweet Jesus, that beta version... I was exchanging PMs with some other backers and I remember saying something to the effect that I hope they‘re not serious about the October release date, because this thing was like a year away from anything remotely worth being released. So yeah, consider me really, deeply impressed that they were able to pull off what I expected would take them a year within two months. What‘s even more impressive is that they did actual bugfixing rather than going for Moebius‘ half-assed approach of restricting movement in tricky areas altogether (Amble Dexter‘s office comes to mind).

One thing they didn‘t fix was the title of the book of German poetry. It says „Das Lyrik“, which is gramatically wrong (and makes the author of the book look like an illibured moron). Funny thing is, one of the backers took it onto himself, tinkered with the game‘s files and fixed the title himself, but the correct version didn‘t make it into the final game. I guess JJ decided to keep the wrong title for teh lulz.

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  :)

That is so supremely fucked up! I absolutely love the idea!
 
(As a side note: I find it amazing how one of the most nightmarish scenes in any video game I've ever played is actually in a comedy game. Kudos to suejak for somehow finding a way to make that sequence even more terrifying.)

Someone needs to bring up The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Based on H.P. Lovecraft's story and created by Agustín Cordes (the dude behind Scratches and the short game Serena, which Frederik, Simo Sakari Aaltonen and yours truly helped write).
 
Our pal Simo is on board helping with the writing, and Jenny Pattinson (Quest For Infamy) is doing some art.
 
Agustín is perhaps the person in this world best suited to do a truthful adaptation of Lovecraft's work (hey, the dude named his adventure game engine "Dagon"!), and he's also incredibly sexy.
 
Kickstarter is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/agustincordes/h-p-lovecrafts-the-case-of-charles-dexter-ward
 
And sexiness is here:
https://twitter.com/AgustinCordes/status/519869173724635137