King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride Development
 |
This article is a Development development stub page. You can help the Sierra Wiki by expanding it. |
Game Design Document
Concept ArtNone available
Developer Notes
THE CHALLENGE
According to Designer Roberta Williams, the King's Quest VII adventure game will be one that players will not want to tackle alone. They should bring their whole family along. The challenges and puzzles of the game are designed in such a way that kids may have an easier time understanding some quests because of their references to children's stories, while others are more complex and will probably require the input of mom or dad.
Even the plot of King's Quest VII, (it deals with a runaway daughter, an over protective mom, and a disagreement within the family), is designed in such a way that both parents and offspring will see events from their own perspectives. Single Players may be advised to call their moms whenever they get stuck on a game puzzle.
THE SOUNDTRACK
King's Quest VII utilizes the talents of professional voice actresses and actors, adding personality and depth to the characters. An elaborate opening animation sequence features a fully orchestrated song warbled by the princess herself, Rosella.
The motion picture styled score resounds with over 120 musical themes, each representing a different character or land.
The composer, Jay Usher, says "The score is an original composition utilizing a full complement of strings, brass, woodwinds. and percussion as well ac the traditional flutes and guitars from previous Kings Quest games. Along with creating a mood or emotional context to carry the player dramatically from scene to scene, I feel that it's equally important to include memorable melodies and themes."
THE CAST AND STORY
The Princeless Bride continues the adventures of Rosella, the daughter of King Graham, whose exploits were last featured in King's Quest IV. Several other favorite characters play major supporting roles. You may recognize such familiar faces as Queen Valanice and Edgar the ???,
In King's Quest VII, the player will travel to six lands, including Nonsense land, the Rubber Jungle, Cloud land, and Ooga Booga Land (home of the dreaded Boogeyman). You will meet (and in some, cases, defeat) such strange and wondrous creatures as the Headless Horseman, the evil witch Malicia, the Three Fates, the Lady of Dreams, and the Troll King.
ART + ANIMATION = AWESOME!
The King's Quest VII artists made full use of SVGA capabilities (creating stunning visuals that will absolutely take your breath away). They used a palette of rich, high-key (saturated) colors to paint the vibrant backgrounds and characters that seem to leap right off your screen. And that was dust the beginning. King's Quest VII was made using true film quality animation techniques. The characters now move their entire bodies (not just one part at a time), creating a more realistic effect. Comparing the animation from previous episodes with King's Quest VII is like comparing a Saturday morning cartoon to a full-length animated movie.
High-quality animation requires a mind-boggling number of people-hours devoted to generating mountain of cels (individual paintings shown in rapid succession to create the appearance of motion). To assist the in-house artists and animators with this immense task, Sierra On-Line contracted four professional animation houses, including facilities from as far away as Russia and Bosnia.
THE CREATORS
Roberta Williams and her co-designer Lorelei Shannon have dreamed up a kaleidoscope of visually stunning fantasy lands in King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride. Delightful characters guaranteed to dazzle and amuse the entire family are found throughout the game.
Lorelei says that, "I think King's Quest VII is so special because of its quirky, lively characters. We had an incredible amount of fun creating them, and Marc Hudgins' animation brought them fully to life. Roberta and I were actually sad when the plotting process for the game was over. We were on a roll, and I think we could have dreamed things up for another year or two."
IN SUMMATION
Beloved characters, exciting new adventures, dazzling colors, vibrant animation, and stirring music, is King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride Who could ask for anything more (in the way of classic computer entertainment designed for the enjoyment of the entire family)? "King's Quest VII: The Prince-less Bride" will be on the shelves this Holiday season.
Ken and Roberta
Ken Williams
I wanted to do something really blow-away and decided to contact Pixar to see if they would be willing to do the opening for KQ7. Pixar was a company formed by Steve Jobs (formerly and currently of Apple) to do major animated films. My memory is that at the time Toy Story, their first film, had just been released or was nearing release. To my surprise, I got an almost immediate call back from Steve Jobs himself. We had met a few times back at the birth of the industry, but had never really said more than a few words. He was in a very talkative mood, and it wound up being a half hour chat about a wide range of topics. Unfortunately, Pixar was well beyond having any interest in charging me a few hundred grand to do a short animated film, so nothing ever came of it – but, it was fun getting a brief audience with one of the most creative and interesting people of our time.
Game Transcript
File:KQ7-GameTranscript.pdf PDF File [295 KB] [3]
References
- ↑ InterAction Magazine - vol07 num1 - Fall 1994 page 16
- ↑ www.sierragamers.com/forums/topic/kq6-opening-movie/#post-22988 - December 30, 2003 at 10:56 am
- ↑ Text Extracted by Bonny Ploeg
Related Links
