Telltale Games no longer working on King’s Quest
It was an odd day for fans of classic adventure games today. We reported on the closure of LucasArts with a heavy heart. Thankfully, Telltale is still around to carry the torch. While we were looking forward to the eventual release of an updated King’s Quest, the company has now revealed that it no longer has the resources to continue its development and the IP has reverted back to Activision. That’s a bummer, really. Not that we don’t think Activision will one day continue development, but because it seemed like we were genuinely close to reigniting the classic Sierra brands soon.
Adventure brands are a funny thing. They’re not like action or adventure games, where a reboot is generally made up of a single game to relaunch a series. Adventure games rely on longer story arches, always expanding on their characters and plots. King’s Quest was to be an episodic series, much like The Walking Dead and Sam & Max. It would have contained humor and puns, articulate writing and gorgeous visuals. And it would have been done by a studio that understands the genre well. Classic Sierra Online is fondly remembered by all who played its games in the 80s and 90s, and the hope remains that they’ll eventually be brought back. But without a champion like Telltale to do so it may be a while before that happens.
Thankfully, the torch is carried by smaller developers and indies. Hopefully they get the opportunity to give some of these properties a try… it’d be a shame to lose them in the flux of corporate mire.
Source: Digital Trends
Bravely Default may actually be coming Westward
According to Siliconera, the much-desired (though slightly niche) JRPG Bravely Default may actually be coming Stateside. Square Enix’s gorgeous 3DS game has thus far remained a Japan-only endeavor, but according to their trusted sources that’s about to change.
For a company stuck in an endless circle of despair, failing to recognize when it has a good thing, it’s almost odd that it would release the game now. BD won’t gain a million sales. It probably won’t make it past 150k at best, truthfully. But perhaps that’s all the company needs. Portable games are usually easier to translate over — unless you’re Fire Emblem — and with the game presumably reaching its Japanese sales goals it may not be a huge investment to do so. Either way, it’s going to be interesting to see if this does happen, given Square Enix’s latest state.
Source: Siliconera
And animated Doctor Who almost happened
There have been animated Doctor Who specials in the past, but never a full-length series. That almost happened, according to Bleeding Cool. Posted recently to DeviantArt were initial sketches and a nice poster for a series that was in the works. The artist behind them, Dan Norton, has worked on several animated TV shows in the past, with the new Thundercats one of his most recent works. Smartly, BBC wanted to keep the focus on the live action show at the time.
However, looking back at how often threads are left dangling in the series, never to be answered, this could have been a great way to close some of those loops. A transition to a series of online animated shorts could have been the right direction to go in. It’s working for the current show, and could potentially add to some of the mythos of the Doctor, especially now that the 50th Anniversary is upon us.
Source: Deviant Art via Bleeding Cool
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