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Episode 68 - Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness
2 Playsin 11 hours
It's time for SPOOKY MONTH once again! Mwahahaha!! Matt has been raptured but don't worry, he still has access to the internet and can play games when he's not being harassed by St. Peter.
Matt and Roses then discuss the spooky nature of Quest for Glory 4, an adventure RPG hybrid with questionable choices, but amazing world building.
Games mentioned:
- Eulogy for Nonno
- Dad’s Monster House 2
- Hollow Night: Silksong
- Quest for Glory 1-3
- Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness
- Quest for Glory 5
- King’s Quest
- Dagger of Amon Ra
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/jXWwJ3yc
Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/saveyourgamepodcast
Email us at MattandRoses@gmail.com
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Transcript
Rapture and Podcasting from Heaven
00:00:00
Speaker
and So i don't know, Roses, why everybody is treating this rapture thing like it was a hoax.
00:00:12
Speaker
Rapture thing? you You weren't aware of this? We were raptured? No, there was, yeah, the rapture happened. we're recording this on September 2025. And the rapture just happened.
00:00:25
Speaker
and the rapture just happened Oh, I was busy. And everybody everybody's on the internet being like, ha ha ha, rapture, it's a hoax. and so I'm up here. Oh no.
00:00:39
Speaker
Well, I'm not. How are we recording? Well, they have internet up here. Oh, that's good. They let you podcast from up here. And I'm up here. And I guess because everyone else thought it hoax, no one else is here.
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm here. are you alone, Matt? No, St. Peter's here. And he's being really annoying. I guess he's just been up here by himself for like a long time. And so he just keeps wanting to talk. And like, dude, his cultural references are so old.
00:01:11
Speaker
Oh, no. Right? Because he's like, who's like so um have you seen that new tablet? that
00:01:20
Speaker
that And you're like the iPad Pro, right? And he's like, what? Yeah. yeah Yeah, he's like, no, no, the tablet that ah Ezekiel carved. And I'm like, no, dude, I haven't seen the tablet that Ezekiel carved. He's like, oh, no, no, it's just, it's real cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool.
00:01:37
Speaker
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Did you hear that monotone chant that Jebediah wrote? and No, I didn't hear the monotone chant that Jebediah wrote.
00:01:48
Speaker
Oh, no, it's cool. It's cools cool. No, it's it's good it's if you get a chance. That's all he's doing. And i I thought, I was like, oh, cool, rapture. i'm I'm going up. Here we go. It's going to be a big party.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah. It's just me and this fucking guy. No. This fucking guy. Do you need me to come get you? know No, I don't want to. Hold on. Sorry. No.
00:02:15
Speaker
i don't I don't want to play the game where you just push stick back and forth. No. No.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, okay. All right. I'll be back. I'll be around. Stay over there, please. Fucking Christ. Yeah. They don't... This guy... They don't have any... They have internet, which is... Strange. But it's good.
00:02:38
Speaker
yeah But this guy doesn't know how to use it. So he's just been... Anyway. Now he's just telling me the history of... I'm... Can we just start the show? I fucking...
00:02:52
Speaker
I got something special to start the show with even. How? What do you mean? Are you ready for this? Peter, St. Peter, are you ready? Don't talk to him. No, go
Introduction to 'Save Your Game' and Spooky Month
00:03:04
Speaker
back over.
00:03:05
Speaker
he gets so confused. Ha ha ha ha
00:03:39
Speaker
everyone, PushingUpRoses here. Welcome back to Save Your Game. With me as always, the raptured? ah guess. the Matt Offcamp. This isn't spooky enough. It's the beginning of spooky month.
00:03:52
Speaker
You could have been like, with me, the ghoulish. With me, the living skeleton. Wow. living than a living skeleton wow um What I meant to say was that I am a ghost. sorry is spooky month though. Are you so excited?
00:04:14
Speaker
I'm very, very excited. I'm so excited that I played a spooky game this week. St. Peter, what are you being for Halloween? Don't talk him. he doesn't know what He doesn't know what Halloween is.
00:04:27
Speaker
They have a one holiday and it's when... ah it's It's just when the rice grows. I don't know. What do they have in ancient Aram? Just when the rice grows. It's when the rice grows and it's their one holiday and they they just call it Rice Day.
00:04:42
Speaker
Never mind St. Peter. It's fine. and they just i didn't eat anything. They just sit around eating rice and they say it's their favorite day of the year. And again... I'm not in like ancient Aram.
00:04:54
Speaker
I've just for hours now been sitting with St. Peter and he's just telling me everything. Are you going to come back or is this your new reality? I don't know. I've been Googling it.
00:05:05
Speaker
but paty How to get back from rapture. I've been so busy during the rapture, like watching the X-Files in my house. And I, I made a cat toy. yeah,
00:05:19
Speaker
ah I made a cat toy from from crafting stuff because it's much cheaper that way and it's her favorite thing ever. And I just didn't really notice. So does that mean that you're like naked?
00:05:30
Speaker
Because when you get raptured, don't your clothes like fall to the floor? Okay, come on. No, I'm in an angel robe. Duh. Angels wear robes? Yeah, all my clothes. Yes. gonna Google it.
00:05:41
Speaker
All my clothes are still on the ground in on the earthly plane. The last place you were. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But... Now I'm in a big im i'm in ah ah ah a big white angel robe.
00:05:54
Speaker
That sounds comfy. They are comfy. They are comfy robes. Is it made of wool? They might not have
Exploring 'Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness'
00:06:02
Speaker
a lot of culture up here in heaven, but they do have they do they do have really nice robes. And they you know they have really good lemonade.
00:06:10
Speaker
Oh, that's nice. Maybe I'll join you in the rapture. i know't i think it's already done. you were left behind. no. Oh, no. ah Yeah. It's already done. It's already done. And i was the only guy.
00:06:23
Speaker
was the only guy that got it. was only one who got it. I guess I was the only one who was good. I mean, that seems unrealistic. But the that being said, how do you play games if you're like up there?
00:06:40
Speaker
i have the internet. I told you. So did you... Do you... Okay, wait. Okay. yeah you have the and So you brought your computer. Your computer was raptured. No, they have computers up here. They do.
00:06:53
Speaker
There's a computer lab.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's like a student lab. yeah Yeah, there's a computer lab in here. It's like Excel on it Yeah. And you might be saying, yeah, well, why doesn't St. Peter know anything about the modern day if he has he has computers here? He doesn't know how to work them.
00:07:12
Speaker
He keeps hitting them with hammers. Yeah. Because he thinks it's like the clay tablets that him and his friends used to use. So he keeps hitting it with hammers. ah it I mean, it sounds like St. Peter has been alone for so long that he's lost his mind.
00:07:28
Speaker
you know, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know if this guy's ever had it. I think that's how we got the job. earn I think that honestly, think that's how we got the job. i think they were like, they were like, hey, we're all going to be inside the gates.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah. You stay out at the gates. Yeah. yeah when dick Here's a stick to play with. And now you might be saying, wait, well, Matt, you're saying you're outside the gates. Yeah, there's like a waiting period.
00:07:54
Speaker
Oh. When you get raptured, go heaven. You have to wait. And there's a wait. So you've spending all your time in the rapture computer lab? Yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's like pretty much the only thing. Besides the lemonade, that's the only real thing there is to do up here. Do you have to eat? Do we eat food? I can if I want to, but I don't have to.
00:08:16
Speaker
Wow. Also, it's only been like nine hours. Oh, sorry. I can't i believe I'm pulling you into this podcast when you've just been raptured. That's so inconsiderate of me. No, we it was we had this scheduled. It was scheduled. That's true.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah. What are you doing for spooky month? How's your spooky month start? Okay. Peek behind the curtain. Yeah. I mean. It's not spooky month yet. Yeah.
00:08:42
Speaker
Listen, it is for me because it's always spooky month in this house. we We celebrate Halloween every day in this house. And it's spooky month for our listeners.
00:08:53
Speaker
By the time they're listening to this, it's spooky month. but yeah I'm excited for all the things that I am always excited about when it comes to spooky month. I always go to a pumpkin patch. Okay.
00:09:05
Speaker
Um, they usually have a little, it's on a farm. So they have their animals, uh, open to give carrots to. And it's like their favorite day. Cause they just get carrots all day and they don't get tired.
00:09:18
Speaker
How do they not get tired of the carrots? Yeah. Yeah. If you were given carrots all day, how would you feel? um okay. Well, but think about it. Like carrots are a treat for them though. I think about it Yeah. Think about what's analogous. Like if you were given,
00:09:34
Speaker
um I don't know if you like donuts as much as I do. I love donuts. Are you fucking serious? I love donuts. Roses, I accidentally ate three donuts today.
00:09:45
Speaker
Was it an accident or was it a choice? Yeah. Yeah, I'm going therapist on your ass.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah. So you're saying if you were fed donuts every day, you wouldn't get sick of them? If... Okay, well, it depends. All right, do do you think...
00:10:05
Speaker
the carrots will give their little tummies acid reflux. No. Then, ah no, no. If I didn't get acid reflux from the donuts, no way, no way. i would never, I wouldn't get tired of them. you kidding me?
00:10:20
Speaker
There is one time. So like you can buy a cup of carrot sticks to feed the animals, not all the animals, because not all the animals want to be bothered. Like they need their own space. But ah to the animals that are very like human friendly, like goats and stuff like that, you know, you can give them little carrot sticks and they come in a cup.
00:10:38
Speaker
And I went over to, they had a special animal. They had an eland, which is the tattoo I have on my ah right thigh. It's why I have an eland tattoo. saw this animal. Yeah. yeah at ah At a farm.
00:10:51
Speaker
Thought it was the most majestic, amazing creature i've ever seen in my life. And I offered it, but like my hand of carrots got too close and he took the cup.
00:11:02
Speaker
And kind of ate it. And now you're not allowed back. Now I'm banned from the pumpkin patch. But no, i that's one thing I always do every year. I go to the pumpkin patch. I watch ah specifically Halloween type movies.
00:11:17
Speaker
I'm always watching spooky movies because I'm a horror girly. But... on I like to watch Halloween specific movies that have, you know, like this is for Halloween came out on Halloween and that's what we're going watch.
00:11:29
Speaker
And yeah, I always try to play a spooky game. And I think last year we played a ton for the podcast. Yeah. And this year we're going to play a ton again. yeah we are Yeah, we are. we are. We have a bunch planned. Because again,
00:11:44
Speaker
i there's five Wednesdays during Spooky Month. Yeah. So that means five Spooky Month episodes. Amazing. And we're not going to tell you what they are. They're all going to be ah surprise.
00:11:58
Speaker
the of Sure. Okay. okay All right. I'm i'm i'mm okay with that. We didn't talk about that, but I'm okay with that. Yeah. Let's surprise people. We'll surprise them. Some of these titles are kind of strange. So ah and they deserve to be you know kept on the edge of the seat. There's a hint as to what next episode that's true is going to be in last episode.
00:12:20
Speaker
episode we won't I don't think we should reference it again Okay, fair. i'm And I'm excited for this episode because we not only played a spooky game with kind of spooky themes, we also played a classic it was classic game on top of it. It was a classic game with a spooky ah a spooky theme.
00:12:40
Speaker
And i think that's was my idea. um but just kind of came to my brain. And um I'm just going to say it. It's in the title. We're going to be talking about Quest for Glory 4 Shadows of Darkness.
00:12:53
Speaker
Hell yes. Yes. And this is the spooky game in this series. They are not all spooky games. Every every game in the Quest for Glory series has a um has has a specific personality to it, has a specific flavor. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
And 4 happens to be the you know vampire, Transylvania type of a type of a thing. And it's great. So I'm replaying it. I just love it.
00:13:18
Speaker
It was so fun. It's so broken, but it's so fun. Yes, it was very fun. It was a very fun game. did you this is I'm guessing this is the only game you got around to playing this week.
00:13:30
Speaker
It is, but I did do something productive. I did finish a script for Purr for the whole thing. I did finish my ex my next X-Files script, but ah which is also going to be a very spooky one. So that's finished. I'm going to record that tonight.
00:13:46
Speaker
isn't Is all X-Files spooky? No, I don't think so. i think I understand the argument because like I cover a lot of murder mystery. And one could argue that the majority of them having murder in them makes them a little bit spooky. Maybe not horror. Maybe not frightening.
00:14:03
Speaker
but But spooky. But I think some of the X-Files is just corny. Okay. And just Mulder being douchebag the whole time.
00:14:16
Speaker
This one, i think I think there are tiers to spookiness, right? I think the X-Files, it's got that vibe to it. It might scare you if you're younger. the The episode I'm doing is very specific specifically a scary episode.
00:14:30
Speaker
Like scarier than the others, more disturbing than the others, notoriously so. And also, ah it was only broadcast two times to cable because it was so unsettling. real And the second time it was broadcast was on Halloween because that was the most requested episode.
00:14:48
Speaker
They played it as a special on Halloween. So I'm sure you guys already know what it is now, now that I've kind of given these hints and- it Yeah, it's smoky.
00:14:59
Speaker
So i've been that's what I've been kind of working on. And also, again, I've been playing Quest for Glory, which I can't play other games when I play Quest for Glory. I'm like all in. You just want to think about and play more Quests for Glory.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, because there's just so much to do. It's like multiple games within a game. You're doing so many quests. yeah it's kind of It's in the same vein as Stardew. I'm doing quests for everyone, so I don't want to play another game. got games within this game.
00:15:30
Speaker
What about you? Have you played anything? Have you played anything spooky that you could talk about? I haven't really played anything spooky. The games that I've played this past week... unfortunately are not spooky can we make them spooky okay the first one's about death okay a little bit okay so i played a game oh wait okay one of them is spooky okay okay but anyway i'll start with the game that was gonna talk about that's not spooky that's not spooky but it is about ah it is about death oh my god
00:16:06
Speaker
Um, it's by the guy who it's by, ah Fabio Guggeri. Okay. Uh, he's the, he's the guy who made the will of Arthur Flabbington.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yes. Yes. hmm. ah Which I think is on our, I think it's on our, neither of us have played it. It's on our adventure game, our list of adventure games. Oh, I'm sure it is. Yeah. Ranking, our ranking list. Anyway, but ah he released a game called Eulogy for Nono. Nono?
00:16:38
Speaker
Okay. ah And it is free. It's short. It's a point and click game. Well, it's it's one of those pay what you want. So, you know, I'd suggest throwing them a couple dollars. Sure. But it is a pay what you want game made for the, made for, you know, some ah short adventure game challenge. The Adventure Game Challenge 2025. Cool, cool.
00:17:00
Speaker
And you play... ah and you play a flower delivery guy who shows up, uh, who's delivering bereavement flowers to some house. Right. And you show up and the person at the door is, so the person who answers the door is an Italian guy in a really nice suit with slick back black hair. and he immediately recognizes you or thinks he does.
00:17:34
Speaker
As his long lost cousin.
00:17:40
Speaker
Who left the quote family business and they haven't seen him for years. Okay. So if you're picking up the implications here.
00:17:53
Speaker
It's heavily implied immediately that this is a mafia family. Yeah, it's a mob family. So you feel too intimidated to say no.
00:18:04
Speaker
That, no, that's not me. Well, you you kind
Folklore and Mythological Influences
00:18:07
Speaker
of say, no, that's not me at the beginning. And the guy thinks you're joking with him and you find you're too intimidated to sort of insist. So he brings you into the house and ah everybody takes you to be this long lost cousin.
00:18:23
Speaker
um And he's like, so I'm so glad you showed up for our no-no Vinny. Yeah. Or Vinny's the I'm sorry. I'm so glad you showed up for the no-no's wake.
00:18:37
Speaker
And we think it would be just great. We think it would mean a lot to everybody if you gave a eulogy.
00:18:47
Speaker
Can I make a guess on how this game plays? Sure. I'm going to guess, I'm going to suspect that the way this plays is that since you're not actually part of the family, you have to get to know them now.
00:18:59
Speaker
And you say yes to doing the eulogy. And now you have to learn what to say. yep Yes. He gives you a ah like ah ah template of a eulogy. And yeah you have you have to fill in all the details. yeah So you have to ask, I'm just making this up, but you have to ask fe family members for like trivia maybe.
00:19:19
Speaker
um Yes. And there's all there's all sorts of things in the house like ah like that if you do it wrong, they will instantly know you're not the guy. Oh, okay. Okay.
00:19:32
Speaker
Do they kill you? Well, it just sort of fades to black. So the implication is they kill you. yeah i There's some twists in this game, so I don't want to give anything away.
00:19:43
Speaker
But it is a very funny... cute little game yeah it's called eulogy for nono you can find it on itch at uh gu games gu games i don't know how they i don't know how he pronounces it but um you can find it there nice and it's it's a cute little game eulogy for nono go check it out uh the second game i played is the game that released during our last episode remember that
00:20:15
Speaker
No. What release? While we were recording our last episode, Dad's Monster House 2 Metal came out. Yeah, yeah. Like, during our recording, I got, like, ah the Steam email, and I played it, and, you know, it's it's cute. It's cool. It is it is spooky.
00:20:34
Speaker
It looks spooky. Yeah. it looks it's It's got that spooky vibe. I love that vibe. So it's Dad's Monster House, like all the Cotton games, they're not... They all have this, like, adorableness to them. and Yeah. And it's clear that Dad's Monster House is sort of like...
00:20:56
Speaker
ah Edward Gorey inspired, right? Like unlike other cotton games, this one has a lot of cross hatching and a lot of pencil work and it's all nice mostly black and white.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah. um And you're, it's cute. Your character. So, Your character gets grabbed by a big monster hand from his house and dropped into this mansion in the middle of nowhere.
00:21:20
Speaker
um And much like the first game, you're... much like all Cotton games, there's a lot of, you know, contained... Like, self-contained puzzles, mini-games, if you will, ah scattered around the house.
00:21:37
Speaker
Logic puzzles. And at the same time, you have a diary and you're collecting. well So while you're collecting inventory items and, you know, fetch questing them back and forth to different people, there's also or using them to solve a puzzle.
00:21:55
Speaker
You're also finding pills and there's a spider that's latched onto your journal. And when you feed him a pill, he runs away and then you can read the next couple pages of the journal.
00:22:08
Speaker
Okay. Until you come across the spider again and then he's latched onto your journal and can't go any further. This is exactly how Dad's Monster House 1 was. Okay. And it's cute. Like, there's all these weird spooky sounds, like the floorboards creaking or like, wind tearing through the house. And ah your little character ah shivers in fear and looks left and right all the time. And it's very it's very cute like that. um Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
But there is – there's something – like a lot of the Cotton games, there's something a little deeper going on here. Sure. Throughout the mansion, you find a bunch of pictures of people who are pioneers in AI and virtual reality and altered reality.
00:22:58
Speaker
It weaves its way into sort of the emotional – um Symbolic narrative of the game. There's something a little deeper going on that you find out through reading the diary and then through cut scenes.
00:23:13
Speaker
And something something a little more emotional about your relationship to your father. it's ah so again it's like a cotton game it's good it's got the same sort of puzzles as all other cotton games have it's just it's just a fun thing to sort of play through and think through ah as far as the spookiness there's the stuff we've already said yeah um but it's also a house just full of monsters and the monsters aren't particularly scary Right. And like, like kind of, I said, it doesn't have to be scary to be spooky. Yeah. um This definitely has a spooky aesthetic that spooky people would enjoy the black and white, the crosshatched look, you know, right very, very simplified Edward Gorey.
00:23:58
Speaker
but it's going to scare you. Yeah. It's not going to scare you. But like, again, it doesn't need to be scary to be spooky. Spooky is a vibe. Yeah. Spooky is a way of life. Yeah. So you find a rocket ship and you realize your goal is probably to take off in this rocket ship, right?
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah. um This is a theme in every ah so many of these cotton game games is taking off in a rocket ship. um I love a good consistent theme.
00:24:28
Speaker
Every time you sort of solve everything having to do with a ah character, which is somewhere between like one and three puzzles, right? Something... One to three things that they need.
00:24:40
Speaker
yeah um They die a violent death and then they appear as stuffed animals in the rocket ship.
00:24:47
Speaker
And cute there's a reason that they do that you will find out much later. That's awesome. I really do like the aesthetic of this game.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, again, its aesthetic is very similar. Like, it's a very, very similar art style in, like, its um cartooniness. Its big big eyes, big bold lines, a lot of... reminds me of Prim, just a little bit. just this sim I get a similar vibe. Okay, yeah. That kind of black and white, big-eyed cartoony. This one is sure less detailed, I'll say.
00:25:22
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. It's got a similar look to all the like Isoland games and the Mr. Pumpkin games, all the other cotton game games. It's it's if you've played.
00:25:33
Speaker
I hate to say if you played one, you've played them all because it's not that's not true. I think they they're worth. They're all different from each other. Yeah. But they're all so similar in aesthetics.
00:25:44
Speaker
The difference between like Isoland and Dad's Monster House. and Besides having a. a character on screen is again, this black and white and this sort of, we say Edward Gorey inspired. It doesn't look anything like Edward. No, no, no. just It's just, it's just more of a vibe. You know what I mean? It's more of like a little gothy, little spooky black and white. Yeah.
00:26:09
Speaker
And there were some puzzles in this game that actually were kind of a little more diegetic than I'm used to from these games. Um, There was one puzzle where I sort of, you sort of have to, like a lot of these games, you, the solution to puzzles are like written on walls, right? Like you'll come across a thing where you need to follow a certain pattern and that pattern is written on the wall in a different room.
00:26:35
Speaker
um and so you just have to kind of copy the pattern. And this game has a good note-taking system where you can... You have four screens of overlays and a marker.
00:26:51
Speaker
And you can open the overlays and just draw right on the screen. And then close the overlay. Yeah. You can be in one room that has a pattern and you can just trace the pattern. Nice. Close the overlay, go to where you need to use it, yeah open the overlay again, and the pattern's right there for you.
00:27:08
Speaker
Nice. That is nice. Yes. We need more mechanics like that in Adventure Game. So that's... um so that ah and other thing that's nice about it, it's got a map that you can fast travel.
00:27:23
Speaker
Thank fucking God. I think all adventure games get that at this point. Right, right. Unless there's a very specific reason not to. it's yeah Yeah. Yes.
00:27:34
Speaker
and And we'll be, i think, maybe touching on that when we talk about Cust for Glory because there is no quite an expansive map and we'll be talking about the mechanic of that map.
00:27:45
Speaker
Well, on that tip oh also hey i'm still playing holla night silksong i just got to act two oh shit nice it is just a magical game it's just a magical game you're just playing it and i get to certain areas or i see a certain cutscene or something opens up in a way that i'm just like this game is just wow that's great i need a game like that maybe i'll find a new game like that soon
00:28:15
Speaker
Well, you mentioned Quest for Glory again. I did. um Because I'm always talking. about and This is what we talk about off recording. Basically all the time.
00:28:27
Speaker
Rose is going on about Quest for Glory again. So what if you played.
00:28:42
Speaker
Leshy. ah huh. And
00:28:48
Speaker
and we come back and we talk about Quest for Glory 4 Shadows of Darkness.
00:29:08
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Ugh. to save your game.
00:29:19
Speaker
i'm losing I'm losing it already. Save your ah game. Save your game. No, mine's Scottish. um mines mine become Mine's become Scottish. ah Welcome back to Save Your Game.
00:29:31
Speaker
I'm one of your co-hosts, the malevolent Mad Aukamp. And with me is the putrescent pushing up roses. That's definitely me. yeah but Putrescent?
00:29:48
Speaker
Was bad. I couldn't think of, I couldn't, quit what's a quick P word that means evil? That means evil. Oh man. Or or even just spooky.
00:29:58
Speaker
Like what's a spooky word? Putrescent's a spooky word, but it also just means gross. I mean, I was going to say just just shorter, it would be putrid, but it's not great either. pearlescent.
00:30:10
Speaker
the ah ah perescent What's pulchritudinous mean? Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. Pulchritudinous, right? Yeah, but it sounds little I'll take it! but it sounds a little like crypt, because it's kind of got crypt in it. pull Right, I'll take it.
00:30:29
Speaker
Pulchritudinous pushing up roses. right Wait, we should look this up. okay I looked it up. It'd be awful if it meant something just like terrible.
00:30:39
Speaker
Uh... ah What are we talking about today roses? We are talking about the classic and very well-loved within this franchise, Quest for Glory 4 Shadows of Darkness, which is be spooky ah the spooky entry into the franchise. Mm-hmm.
00:31:03
Speaker
Let me set the scene real quick. And then you... Do you want to then tell them... And then you tell them... The overview of this game. Sure. Sure. ahead. Because... ah a Quest for Glory...
00:31:15
Speaker
was a it's by laurie and cory cole it was a sierra series it wasn't the first one was called hero quest but they got sued by milton bradley it was stupid and they had to change them they had to change it to quest for glory which i think is a better name than hero quest to be honest it is a better name and they are these rpg point and click adventure game well i guess they originally had um text parser but these classic adventure game classic rpg hybrids where you are solving traditional point and click style puzzles yeah they are also based around like skills and stats you have right um and so you know you can be a fighter you can be a wizard or you can be a thief and
00:32:08
Speaker
Each path is slightly different, has different solutions to the to its major puzzles. a lot of the smaller puzzles are Different character interactions, too, because if you play a thief, you're going to run into other thieves that you probably wouldn't normally talk to if you were a different class. Yeah.
00:32:25
Speaker
And if you're a fighter, you can become a fourth type of character called a paladin. But you have to do that by following certain paths in game.
00:32:38
Speaker
And then you get special magical powers that you that only paladins get. And in pretty much every game, you get special story beats and options that only paladins get.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah. so So you cannot be thief and a paladin in these early iterations. that like I think we kind of talked about this before and and we're not going to go into it. I think there's a way in five you can be a paladin and a thief because of the import system that they had. But yes, ah paladin in general is you're doing, you know, you're being an honest moral type.
00:33:12
Speaker
If you're thief, you're probably, you know, lockpicking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the the game was originally conceived of as four games. So where the series was conceived of as four games. And the first was supposed to be like this Germanic medieval story. Yeah. they It was very heady. It was like, excuse me.
00:33:39
Speaker
Each of the four games was based around a cardinal direction, and element, a season, and a mythological canon, right? Yeah. um So the first game was North Earth, Spring, and you know Germanic mythology. So yeah a lot of the things you encountered in that game were...
00:33:59
Speaker
ah
00:34:02
Speaker
the Like, way in that you're in the town of Spielberg. Yes. One of your friends is named Elsa. Like, that's, you know, think of think about it like almost like a Germanic fairy tale.
00:34:13
Speaker
That's kind of like what it is. Exactly. Yeah, the first one is very fairy tale related. i think there's like, there's, you know, it's not that dissimilar from King's Quest in that way. Yes.
00:34:24
Speaker
Like, the first one has a lot of, yeah, fairy tale, fable. ah you know, Germanic mythology.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah. I think there's a unicorn. There's like, whatever, probably, I can't remember. It's been a while, but I'm guessing gnomes and elves and like all that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker
Where the second one, South fire, summer and ah Middle Eastern mythology. Right. It's called trial by fire. And it takes place in, you remember the name of it? Yeah. Resir.
00:34:58
Speaker
It takes place in Resir. And it's like, um, Sort of this Arabian setting and there's, you know. ah That's very Aladdin, you know. Right. There's like magic carpets and yeah and there's genies and, you know yeah all that you know, all that sort of ah Arabian mythology. Then the third game was supposed to be.
00:35:24
Speaker
Shadows of Darkness. Right. Which supposed to be based in the East. Slavic mythology. And Central Elements Air, Seasons Fall.
00:35:35
Speaker
But when they got around to Shadows of Darkness, they felt like there were some ah plot gaps.
00:35:46
Speaker
And that it was too jarring of a transition. And also I read this somewhere. i can't... I haven't been able to find it before, like, in the preparation preparation for this episode. But I read somewhere that they had ideas for the game that they just didn't have the technology to create yet.
00:36:05
Speaker
Sure, sure. So... There's a third game that kind of got jammed in there that is ah a like African mythology.
00:36:15
Speaker
Yes. And I really hate that game. That map, I just, I'm traumatized. Like I, ah the backtracking in that game was not good.
00:36:27
Speaker
And I just didn't, I just didn't like that game. I didn't like the third one. I think a lot of this is culturally insensitive. I think the third one might might be the worst. I think it might be the worst. In terms of that, there's... I mean, it's not...
00:36:41
Speaker
It's not utterly horrible, right? Like you're not playing It's trying. It's trying, yeah. It tried. I think we made a good – we were kind of discussing this a little bit off recording in that there was a time, especially in the 90s, and especially in video games, to be honest, where people were trying to be anti-racist, anti-discriminatory by ah showcasing culture.
00:37:04
Speaker
The problem is we didn't really know how to do that yet. you know Keep in mind, this is this is these are times before you're researching things very ah heavily on the internet or you're talking to social groups on the internet and you're able to, to get that information.
00:37:20
Speaker
So it, the most we can say is like it, it tried, I see what it's doing. I see what it's trying. It's not the best try. It's also like an African story with very few black people.
00:37:35
Speaker
and Right. Right. with, uh, at what at times and yeah yeah egypt is in africa yes but they are they conflate the two in a way that it's like sub-saharan and and northern africa sort of meshed together in an uncomfortable way sure um yeah and there's also like some South American stuff jammed in there that feels awkward. And again, for an African setting with a limited number of black characters, two of them are Sanford and son.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yes, that's correct. It's very strange. And it it is interesting that the, the I mean, Laurie and Corey Cole, they have a very specific type of humor. It's very goofy. It's very reference, referential.
00:38:33
Speaker
Even in four, there are characters in this game that are definitely referencing pop character or pop ah culture characters. Yes. ah which And then so are the voices and and things like that.
00:38:45
Speaker
old shit yeah old old old pop culture shit that i don't even i'm like i this sounds familiar to me but mostly because bugs bunny did these voices not because not because i know who these people actually i mean i like it because 80 but yeah maybe you can teach me No, I like old references and stuff like that. But ah if i'd like if I can piggyback a little bit off of what you're saying, um you know, they made this game three in between.
00:39:13
Speaker
They did it because you're saying that it was too jarring. But to me, the more jarring thing was to have this game in between two games that are linked. So your time in Rasir is linked to Shadows of Darkness. there are It's kind of a continuation of what happened in Rasir. So to me, it's jarring to wake up in shadow as your character in Shadows of Darkness...
00:39:40
Speaker
from the previous game that you were just in that had nothing to do with Rasir. So I don't know if liked it. I think it would have been better without that third game in there and just continued it on.
00:39:53
Speaker
And the the in Tarna is the place that you live in, um or the place that you are Being a hero, yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, in um the third game. And there's almost... there's no mention of your time in Tarna in until quest for glory five. Like there's almost no mention of it at all. I think there's like a little bit in four, like, but it's, it's, it's very brief. It's more like you tell so-and-so about Tarna. Yes.
00:40:25
Speaker
You know? But really shadows of darkness is meant to be, here's what happened after what happened in quest for glory two. Right. Right. And And before you get into describing four, I'll just say three wraps up with you are celebrating your victories in Tarna. and you start convulsing and sparkling.
00:40:57
Speaker
And then they say, somebody's like, this is dark magic. And then you see the enemy. The bad guy from Quest for Glory 2, Adavis?
00:41:09
Speaker
Adavis, yeah. Adavis. um You see him looking at you through like a crystal ball. Yeah. And then, roses.
00:41:23
Speaker
what Tell me about... The worst named game in the series, Shadows of Darkness. Well, after convulsing in this bubbly thing in three, ah you wake up, you the hero. You're always playing the same guy, just by the way. You are the hero.
00:41:43
Speaker
You can name him if you really want to. I always name my hero Rico. I don't know why. That's just his name. i had ah It always has to be a but a dude, by the way. um Well, yeah, yeah. and he, mine was a thief and in this playthrough.
00:42:00
Speaker
Mine was a thief named Piss Puppy. Oh, good old Piss Puppy, the hero. Puppy. You know, that hero. Piss Puppy, the hero of Silmaria. Yep. yep the yeah Wonderful.
00:42:15
Speaker
So, yeah, you wake up in this completely different setting. I'm talking about you look like you woke up in an HR geek or design. There are kind of these squelchy doors everywhere. There's bones everywhere. There's corps skeletons everywhere and a little rib cage.
00:42:34
Speaker
And you're just in a place ah of darkness, essentially. ah You're also greeted by the narration of John Rhys-Davies. He is the narrator for this game. It's fully voiced.
00:42:44
Speaker
And it's it's a good narration. It's one of the better narrations that came out of this era of adventure games. It's great. it's ah There's a story about this in Sean Mills' book about how a normal...
00:42:59
Speaker
video game script is ah whatever it was. I don't remember the numbers, but say a normal video game script is 80 pages and they handed him a 200 page script and they had very little time to get it done. They booked apparently a voiceover sessions about four hours.
00:43:21
Speaker
And for a standard video game at the time, it was like you booked two sessions. So that eight hours was, And they handed him this script and he was like, we are not going to get this done in eight hours. So they had to like work through an entire weekend and he was like, I am not going to be able to give you multiple takes on this.
00:43:41
Speaker
I'm just going to go. And yeah so almost all of this game is first take. Yeah, and you will notice this game was notoriously buggy when it came out.
00:43:52
Speaker
um It still is today just in the way that clearly there been text box that were written wrong. It goes off script. Sometimes the animations pause. Sometimes the the voice acting doesn't go at all.
00:44:05
Speaker
yeah Sometimes characters will like there's there's this part where you go into a house to loot it if you're playing the thief, um which I always do. And part of playing a thief across all the Quests for Glorious is you're going to need to break into people's houses to get money money's very important in these games there's always a money system there's a a house i went into and every time every time i went out the window to leave the character sprang up oh i thought that was on purpose i don't know if it is or not i can't like i just can't tell if that's on purpose or not yeah
00:44:40
Speaker
Because, like, I went back in there and then they're just back to sleep. I'm like, okay. ah Right. Yeah, the same thing happened to me with that character. I had a bug, though, where there's there's a bush that's a monster.
00:44:58
Speaker
And though you are supposed to throw rocks at the bush. Yeah. And knock one of its branches off. And then give him a, this is a Sierra adventure game, guys. You give him a rubber chicken. And it distracts him.
00:45:15
Speaker
Seems like he eats it. I don't know. And then you go pick up the branch. Right. Because he'll sting you if you get close to him. Yeah. Right. um But also, there is a similar bush with the same kind of berries that you need behind him.
00:45:31
Speaker
So you can drop the rubber chicken. He goes to get it. You can go behind him and and you can click on the bush of berries. And the narrator says, you strip the berries and put them in a pocket on your backpack.
00:45:45
Speaker
And then there's no berries in your backpack. That's weird. You're clicking the bush over and over and it'll keep saying it over and over. And there's no berries in your backpack. Also, the music is not leveled.
00:45:58
Speaker
Oh, that gets very loud sometimes. It's insane. Like, it it's just absolutely jarring, especially in... We'll talk about the setting in a little bit, but there's a ah ah mad scientist setting where, you know, there's like an organ playing, like mad scientist organ music. It drowns at them out.
00:46:16
Speaker
It drowns out the characters. It's absolutely crazy. And unfortunately, in this kind of older game, there's only a volume control for music. It is not separate like we have today, like dialogue and music, you know, sound effects or music. It's all in one track.
00:46:34
Speaker
um So, that yeah, the game can be a little buggy, a little annoying. um Luckily, the ah one released, at least on Steam, has an auto save option, which is kind of nice.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of nice. But it has limited save slots still. Yeah. Which is weird. It's still a Sierra adventure game, I guess, but... the uh the other thing about the bugginess is they were trying to get it out for um or this game was released in 93 they were trying to get it out for the christmas season yeah and uh the coles repeatedly told like management this is not ready yeah
00:47:18
Speaker
And they were like, you have to get it out. Sorry, you have to get it out. And so they they entered crunch time. They knew that it was too buggy to release and they released it anyway. Yeah, that sucks.
00:47:30
Speaker
That sucks. But then later they released it on CD-ROM with a lot of the bugs fixed, as you're saying, not all of them. And that was the ah release that had voice acting.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, um it's ah let me. Yeah. So let's let's get back into. OK, yes. and i'm Sorry. Yeah. go ahead So you wake up in this weird squelchy kind of place of darkness, this H.R. Giger setting. And you, you know, you puzzle your way out of it and you meet upon exiting this this weird cave.
00:48:03
Speaker
You meet a woman named Katrina. Bay. yeah huh Katrina's bae. She's bae. Katrina's like the goth. You know what I mean? Like, I want to be Katrina. That was that was my goal as a little girl.
00:48:19
Speaker
So um you meet Katrina and you learn that you are in the land of Mordavia, which is kind of a um ah kind of a take on Transylvania or... um Or Romania.
00:48:31
Speaker
um it's It's that, like I think you said that Slavic type. Slavic, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's called Mordavia. And it's a very dangerous place. She tells you, be careful. Don't go out at night. I'm a thief. I'm going to go out at night.
00:48:44
Speaker
And you have to. That's silly. don't know why they game is like don't do it you have to do it yeah um and you know she says we'll meet again later she's this very mysterious type she's uh this very sexy woman with a you know um a slavic accent and in a cloak and she's just great she's uh if you've if you've played skyrim if you played the dawn guard dlc for skyrim she's like she's almost exactly like serrana I don't know who that is, but I'll take your word for it.
00:49:17
Speaker
So at this point now, you're kind of you're in the the town of Mordavia. You're in this world now. um At least you're in the world of Mordavia. The first thing I always do is I try to, you know, you're plopped onto this map, which is fairly expansive, and there are enemies on it. That's kind of the action-y RPG element is you can be attacked.
00:49:37
Speaker
um As a thief, I usually don't fight. You can fight them and loot things and collect things and and get strength that way. But i as a as a thief, you know what I do? i just sneak everywhere.
00:49:49
Speaker
Everywhere. And just don't fight anyone? Correct. yeah i but So you get to this town. It's the town of Mordavia. You're greeted. ah Just to kind of set the scene, it looks like this very like there's like this brownstone brick wall there. Everything is very earthy tone. There are jack-o'-lanterns out ah because it is like we said, it is fall. There's a scarecrow and a little corn husks.
00:50:15
Speaker
And you go in and you're greeted by Burglmeister, who is very salty and very suspicious of you because Mordavia has been a very dangerous, dark place for a long time. So he's like, where did you come from? We don't trust you, stranger.
00:50:31
Speaker
And by the way, Burglmeister always reminds me of the Burglmeister Meisterburger from Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and i just couldn't stop thinking about it. is it just because there's only two characters in all of fiction?
00:50:44
Speaker
That refer to themselves as the Burgermeister. Yeah. excuse and sleepy It's so great. um And so, yeah, he, that's kind of the first character you come across and then you're kind of free to ah roam around and kind of the way that I want to explain quest for glory works, if that's okay. um Yeah.
00:51:05
Speaker
Cause you had mentioned it is more of an art, ah you know, an adventure RPG. So here, here's how this works. Yeah. First of all, you are being timed. Your days are going by as you're doing stuff. It takes – what do you think? It takes around like 13 days to ah complete, maybe more?
00:51:23
Speaker
yeah ah Yes. And the days the days can feel – if you, say, are following a walkthrough or you know what you're doing, it can feel very – the days feel very long, too long. If you – if you are start it if youre If you're exploring, like if you're not using a walkthrough, if you've never played it before and you are um just trying to figure things out as you go, the days feel so short.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yes. Like wildly way too short. The time constraint is tough because this is definitely a type of game. and It's one of the things, by the way, that I love about Quest for Glory is that certain things happen on certain days.
00:52:08
Speaker
You meet certain characters at certain times. There's a day to night mechanic. So you can explore during the day. You can explore during the night and different things happen depending on whether it's, you know, darker light outside.
00:52:20
Speaker
it It does mean you can miss things though. Yes, absolutely. and That's just the nature of the Quest for Glory games is upon a first playthrough, you're probably not going to see hardly anything. Let's be honest. right I think it does take some practice to to really play these games. But again, it's also one of the things I love about these games.
00:52:41
Speaker
A few things that are you know across the board is there's always an inn that you can stay at. Resting is an important part because there's an action element to this game. There's always an inn.
00:52:52
Speaker
There's always free food at that inn, which is kind of cool. Well, you say free. You do have to pay. oh You pay room and board. You pay room and board. But a meal is included. Yeah, yeah. You do have to sleep and you do have to eat.
00:53:06
Speaker
You do. you These are things you have to do. um Even sometimes you have to rest because you can, yes even if you're not sleepy, you can actually tire out your muscles. Yeah. You have health and energy meter. Your energy meter goes down when you do anything that involves a skill.
00:53:23
Speaker
If you're just solving a puzzle or whatever, generally your energy meter is fine. But if you use a skill, and i i should say this is very D&D based. This is clearly inspired by D&D and you have a character sheet. And your character sheet has, you know, the standard strength, intelligence, a ability agility, constitution.
00:53:44
Speaker
constitution is called vitality. Then there's luck. And then there's magic. Yeah. And then you have a bunch of skills. Like, I'm not going to go through all of them. Yeah. But like for me, for the thief, lock picking locking is a skill that you might want to practice at.
00:54:00
Speaker
yeah Weapon use. Yeah. Throwing. Climbing. Climbing is a big one. Yeah. And then you have um honor. Which I'm a thief. I don't care about that, really.
00:54:11
Speaker
Which is honor. Yeah. honor yeah You have communication too. So Honor is... Communication important for having certain dialogue options. not It doesn't change very much, to be honest.
00:54:27
Speaker
um But it's mostly about getting those Sierra points. Yes. This is also a game that there's a point system. There's always a point system. It's the 90s.
00:54:38
Speaker
ah But... Honor is important for getting certain endings. Sure. I think especially if you're trying to be a paladin, right?
00:54:49
Speaker
It is very important for being a paladin. You can't be a paladin if your honor goes below a certain thing. There are certain endings, I think, in each game. Your ending's worse if your honor's lower. Isn't that true?
00:55:01
Speaker
Maybe. yeah maybe I think it also depends on how many quests you do and how many people you you help. And that I think is, that's also part of kind of the D&D aspect of it.
00:55:13
Speaker
But yeah, there's also, there's a Thieves Guild you can find if you are a thief. There's usually an Adventurer's Guild. um In this game, the Adventurer's Guild, you can find and you can like work out and upgrade your stats. Like you can use the quote, it's it's a I don't know. It's a strength a machine, a strength training machine. and um And you can get stronger that way.
00:55:33
Speaker
Yeah. So let's talk about that for just a second. This game, you can increase and improve your skills. And it is all done by repetition.
00:55:44
Speaker
It is all done by using those skills. so It's unfortunate because you kind of want to feel like it's more fluid than that. Like you're... I don't know.
00:55:55
Speaker
But yeah, absolutely. The way I up the the way i upgraded my lockpicking skill was to find a lock that was too hard and just click it over and over and over and watch the point go up.
00:56:07
Speaker
And unfortunately, you do that for all of them. Exactly. So your stamina drains and then you go to sleep yeah and then come back either after you rest or the next day.
00:56:18
Speaker
You just come back and you do it again and you're just clicking the same thing over and over. If you want your throwing skills to get better, you pick up a thousand rocks and you throw them. and Any direction, add anything, doesn't matter.
00:56:30
Speaker
You just throw them. yeah um You want to climb your climbing skill to get better? You find a climbable surface and you click it over and over and over. and ah and things like weapon use and parry and dodge and stuff like that. Like those, you can only improve by...
00:56:49
Speaker
just fighting characters there's not experience points there's just increasing these skills and there are things that are necessary for the game that require certain stat levels so for example the house that you break into that you were talking about earlier roses i spent i think three days climbing into that window mm-hmm Every time it turned to night, clicking on that chest over and over and over and over and over until I was exhausted, resting, clicking it over and over and over and over.
00:57:24
Speaker
And then when my when it was either started like close to morning or I was my you can also if your stamina is gone, you can keep doing a skill and it takes away from your health.
00:57:36
Speaker
Right, right. So when my health was down, like, then I just go to sleep, do as much as I could the next day. And then it's nighttime again. I'm going and I'm clicking on that chest another 700 times.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yeah, it it it really is unfortunate that it's, again, it's not more fluidly placed within the game, within the gameplay. um But this is how the Quest for Glories are across the board. So it is it's not a perfect, like, RPG game. I love the idea of having a character sheet and, like, maxing out certain skills. Again, I played as Thief, so I wanted good lockpicking and stealth and and things like that.
00:58:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm. No, sorry. You tell the – I just realized a very important thing we left out. but Yes, yes. But you keep telling me what you're saying. Or do you want me to – I – Oh, no, I was just reiterating that, you know, like, I like the idea of the character sheet.
00:58:29
Speaker
But again, because it's just not very, ah it's just clunkily put in is what what I'm trying to say. Like, yeah, if you need to climb, you're doing 200 backflips in a row on screen to get it there. Yeah, exactly. You were also, you were also, so we left out a big thing and this was a huge appeal and a, a,
00:58:53
Speaker
uh this this is one of the sort of revolutionary nary things about this game this is one of the things this game is remembered most fondly for um and one of the most fun things about this game is you can carry your characters from game to game yes so you so every yeah every game, you can reach up to a the multiple of 100 that that number of game is in each skill. So you can get you you can get your skills up to 100 in the first game. you can get them up to 200 in the second game, 300 in third game, 400 in the fourth game, but five out of the fifth game, right? Yeah, yeah. um
00:59:36
Speaker
So depending on how much you gri grinded in the previous game is going to affect how much you have to grind in the current game. Yeah. And you are always at a disadvantage.
00:59:46
Speaker
If you didn't carry your character over. Yes. So in this scenario. Because. Okay. no but So in this scenario. I started a new character.
00:59:59
Speaker
ah For this. the sort of The. You know. Playing this. This. This time. yeah I've played all these games before. I should say that. Yeah. um And in this.
01:00:13
Speaker
playthrough of of four, I had to make a new character specifically for this game. And man, I had to grind my skills for so long. Like, that's one of the reasons I had to grind that lockpicking skill for so long is because, yeah like, if I'd started at 200, I caught probably could have got it done that first night.
01:00:34
Speaker
Right. Yep. But again, that's the benefit of carrying over your characters. If you don't, it assumes that that it doesn't assume that you would be at the absolute top of your of your skill levels um yeah so yeah when i the first time i played all of these through beginning to end um I carried over to the same character and ah basically I started each game.
01:01:06
Speaker
Yeah. With an advantage. And if you're, if you're any kind of magic user, you start with an even bigger advantage because you have spells that you level up by casting over and over. Right. um Yeah.
01:01:17
Speaker
And there's certain spells that you can only get in certain games. Yeah. None of the ones that are absolutely necessary. Yeah. But ones that make things easier or just a little more fun. Yeah.
01:01:32
Speaker
My very favorite way to play this game is to choose the thief class. Okay. Give them magic. I think that's a really fun way to play because as a thief, you don't necessarily have the the strength of like a fighter would have.
01:01:46
Speaker
So um I just give my thief magic. If I did want to fight, I have magic to do it. just opens my options up a little bit. So yeah, I mean, and that's that's kind of well the mechanic of this game.
01:02:00
Speaker
That's also, that also is dependent, right? Because you can't give your thief magic in every, like in four, your thief can't learn any spells.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yes, I can. I gave it. I gave my thief magic and I can learn. I just, you have an allotted amount of stats that you can give. Oh, if you put, okay. If you put points into magic, I see what you're saying. Yeah. i I give, yeah. I give my thief magic. I see what you're saying. The ability to learn it and then you can learn it. Yeah. Okay.
01:02:33
Speaker
Right. um So that makes sense. Okay. But there are, yeah, there are, there are also, every game has a couple ways to break character classes and in certain ways like that.
01:02:48
Speaker
Um, So, again, you are just at such a greater advantage if you play from the first game forward. Yeah. Otherwise, you're going be grinding clicking.
01:03:00
Speaker
and missing stuff, right? And there's stuff that that you you miss. Like, there's even inventory items that carry from game to game. And if you don't have, ah you know, if you don't have that inventory, there are, I'll say this, there are things you can download, programs you can download.
01:03:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. That build a character for you to import. Of course. yeah Into each game. And with that, there are checklists of like, did you romance this character? Did you complete this quest? Did you whatever? And then there'll be references to you doing those things.
01:03:40
Speaker
Yeah. In the next game. just to you know It was to make the thing seem like it had continuity. But again, when you use these programs, you can just click them like a checkbox. But yeah it's more rewarding if you do it earnestly, obviously.
01:03:58
Speaker
Absolutely. And i don't think there is there's certain ah remakes of these games that are better than the originals.
01:04:10
Speaker
Yeah. And so if you want to play the best versions of each of these games, and also I think the import on five is broken. Right. Cause it was such a different technology, but on five, they actually give you a Paladin import that you can just do right away to make up for that.
01:04:30
Speaker
but Right. Cause generally you can't, you can't have a Paladin. Right. you yeah Unless you have built them over multiple games. Right. So, um, Yeah, if you want to do the full thing now, you have to use one of those character generator things. And you can just, you know, copy the stats of your last character exactly if you want.
01:04:53
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, sorry. Yeah, no problem. um So those the mechanics. And it it sounds like a lot because it is. There is a lot going on in these games.
01:05:05
Speaker
But it's it's made the world building of this game beautiful and intriguing because... you know, characters move around, things change. People have different dialogue depending on what day. that Like these are characters that are, they have their kind of daily lives.
01:05:23
Speaker
You know, you meet, ah for example, you meet a mad scientist and he's busy working on, you know, resurrecting human tissue, you know, making a Frankenstein monster. Making a Frankenstein, yeah.
01:05:35
Speaker
A Frankenstein lady. And then when he does, he does make her, he's like, I might be unavailable for a few days and it's gross. Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely fucking that monster. Anyway. in the He's fucking the – it's a fucking Stein.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's weird. ah But but he you can it's just so interesting that you can go to these places and get different updates almost every day. you know Almost different dialogue, different updates, different quests to be doing. And those quests that you can do, those are updated daily too. These are typically not adventure quests that you can do in like a day. you know For example, there's a ghost in the forest that you run into sometimes and she's lost.
01:06:19
Speaker
And that's not exactly a question that you can beat in a day. um You kind of need to figure out... mean, maybe. Maybe you can't. You understand what I'm trying to say, though, right? like they These are like ongoing quests that might take a few days.
01:06:34
Speaker
yeah You're working on multiple quests at all times. There's some things that can only be done in the day, and there's some things that can only be done in the night. um There's some things that... Yeah, there's some things that take multiple days.
01:06:45
Speaker
There's... Unless...
01:06:49
Speaker
because the game's buggy every now and then you'll just like luck into it there's a yeah there's a one of the main quests you you have in this game you have to save a little girl from vampires basically yeah and um
01:07:06
Speaker
You're supposed to meet, like, a a friendly little domovoi. There's a type of, like... it's like it's I think it's a Russian... It's like a house troll.
01:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's like a little house monster. They kind of bring you good luck. brings good luck, yeah. yeah Kind of like the... If you if you think about, like, the... um Elves in the ah the story of the the cobbler.
01:07:32
Speaker
what what What's your name the The shoemaker and the elves help him make his shoes. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. ah Yeah. Kind of like like that culturally. It's like this idea of this these monsters, but they bring you good fortune.
01:07:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And you're supposed to talk to him and he is like, I'm not ready to open up to you. Yeah. Come talk to me tomorrow. Yeah. And then you come and talk to him tomorrow, and he tells you he needs help with something.
01:08:02
Speaker
And then you go help him, you come back to him the next night, and then he tells you... He gives you, like, a hint about this thing, right? Because of... Because I...
01:08:15
Speaker
It's just some glitch of the timing. I did all of this in one night. Holy cow. That's impressive because I know what you're you were doing. And that's interesting. Yeah. It all happened in one night. And like it was like if he was like, come talk to me tomorrow night.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. And then I went and rested for an hour and talked to him again. he. he acted like it was the following night, and then he gave me the quest, and because it was still nighttime... Yeah, you were able to do it I went and did the quest, went back to my room, went to sleep. He woke me up as if it was a brand new night.
01:08:51
Speaker
Oh, wow. and So it was just... It just kind of kept... It it was... Yeah, again, it was just like yeah a series of lucky...
01:09:04
Speaker
glitches. That is lucky because another another thing kind of making it a little more challenging is it's it's not just a day-night mechanic. There are certain things that you can only see, like, let's say in the early evening.
01:09:19
Speaker
yeah You know what I mean? It's not just here's the daytime, here's the nighttime. Nope, we have dusk, we have sunrise. like yeah So the Damavoy, I think, is one of those characters that it's pretty specific on when you can, yeah, it's very specific on when you can actually see him and get his quests and get his dialogue.
01:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, again, I think it was literally just a glitch. And i ah and again, he's supposed to, oh you know what? it It happened to be the night that you are woken up by the mother, Tanya's mother crying.
01:09:52
Speaker
That's why. That's why it happened. So I went back. That is why, yes. So I met the Domavoy. He said he'll talk to me another night. I went to sleep and I was woken up by the woman crying. and Went downstairs and was able to talk to the Domavoy again as if it was a brand new night. crazy Then I ran over and again, it's still the game, I guess, must have still just assumed like It was still midnight.
01:10:22
Speaker
Yeah. Time hadn't passed because both the triggers for all of these things are supposed to like occur at midnight. Yeah. it just kind of kept resetting my clock, I guess. And then I went to you complete his quest, which was pretty quick because I had everything I needed.
01:10:38
Speaker
And... came back, went to sleep. And again, he's programmed to wake you up the night that you go to sleep after you complete that quest, which is supposed to take you at least a day because you're not, it doesn't expect you to have all the things you need.
01:10:54
Speaker
yeah Anyway, like I'm getting very deep into it, but it was just like a weird thing that happened. was like, was like really weird that it just all happened immediately.
01:11:07
Speaker
to talk about like kind of what does make this game spookier than the others kind of what what are we what are we dealing with here because again each game has specific things it follows almost like a theme right it has its own yeah own character ah so this one you know being in this land of morbdavia there is they there is the the rumor that there are vampires and And I mean, obviously, we're going to we don't I'm not, you know, precious about spoilers in the in the classic games. So we can just kind of talk about it.
01:11:42
Speaker
um Since we already even alluded of these plays a role in this game. It's also I don't if you've know, I'm sure you did notice it's also got a very. cthulhu-esque um theme going on with you know it's about getting power from the dark somebody called the dark one you know which eluded is is a god of some kind or just a very all-powerful being um and the characters that want this power are vampire character, undead vampire characters.
01:12:14
Speaker
Right. And then the rest of Mordavia is just like full of weirdos and monsters. And because it takes place in fall, it looks, it looks like Halloween. It's so nice.
01:12:26
Speaker
There's a graveyard. That's a big part of it. Well, huge was part of it. Yeah. One of the things ah about these quest for glory games is that they are meant to be these big, sprawling, beautiful, beautiful,
01:12:40
Speaker
ah worlds that you're traveling in and usually they are lush and green this game has that but it's a lot of it is very dark and um like fall themed right yeah yeah um and people talk about how winter's coming there's a lot of you know there's like ah Again, some major stuff happens in a graveyard. and You start the game in this, like you said, this Cthulhu kind of like...
01:13:18
Speaker
weird like you're in the skeleton of some ancient creature or something yeah it looks what it feels like it looks ancient it looks like it's that cthulhu-esque ancient god type of thing yeah and there's and there's a bunch of you know ah like slavic The Slavic folktales are all kind of dark. Yeah.
01:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of them are. And if they're not dark, they're at least um in that spooky vein. Even the Damavoy, though helpful, It isn't a happy-go-lucky creature or anything. He's sad. yeah yeah it's um of a more serious nature. ah Baba Yaga is back, by the way. Baba Yaga was in one of the early games.
01:14:01
Speaker
but The first one, I i believe. Yes. ah She was in the first one, and now she's extremely punny. Like, it's just it's just over and over and over again. Yeah, we didn't say that.
01:14:13
Speaker
The Kohl's, they just write in puns. I do like to the game's credit. I do think it is smartly written. I do i think it's clever and it's written cleverly in this, in this writerly way.
01:14:27
Speaker
That being said, it's very dialogue heavy. And again, if you don't like puns, yeah you're going to be annoyed. Yeah. Yes, but i do I do think it's smart and I do think they're, it's not like laugh out loud funny, but it's like, oh, that's clever.
01:14:41
Speaker
That's amusing. Like I'm amused and entertained by this dialogue. Although I will say some of the voice acting is a little obnoxious. Just a little bit.
01:14:53
Speaker
ah like so So, yeah, okay, so there's, like, townsfolk. Oh, God. There's a trio of townsfolk, and they are all based on some comedy celebrities of the past. Do you know who these people are based on?
01:15:05
Speaker
Rodney Dangerfield, I think, is one of them. I think Jack Nicholson is one of them, and I'm not sure on the other. I don't think it's Jack. I think it's, like, think somebody I think it's somebody older than that.
01:15:17
Speaker
Okay, it's possible. And I know um ah in ah the Thieves Guild, ah um you run into Ugarte again, who again, he is from Rasir, and he is based on a celebrity. And I don't know why I'm blanking on it. I'm just totally blanking. Somebody's going to get it.
01:15:35
Speaker
ah But that character is based on a celebrity down to the voice. Yeah. But yeah, i don't but yeah those the voices that they do are supposed to be those characters. So like yeah, i mean imagine did Rodney Dangerfield just being a character.
01:15:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's annoying. ah um and It's so weird because so much of the voice acting is is okay. like Narrated by John Rhys-Davies, that sounds very nice. I like Katrina's voice acting. Katrina's voice acting is great. there's Yeah, there's some incredible voice acting.
01:16:08
Speaker
for For what's being asked of them, i'm not I don't necessarily think the voice acting's bad. I think they're being asked to do the...
01:16:20
Speaker
they Yeah, they're doing what they're being asked to do. There's a lot of Slavic... folk creatures in this game that you you meet the Leshy?
01:16:32
Speaker
leshy I think it's pronounced Leeshy. Leeshy? Okay. I think so. You meet the Leeshy, which is known as like a, in this game, like a kind of a cute little trickster guy who's in love with riddles and playing pranks, but He's like a mischievous little forest spirit.
01:16:52
Speaker
Yes. In traditional folklore, though, it is a um Like a forest god who abducts children. Oh, good. um Then there's the Rasulka.
01:17:07
Speaker
I love the Rasulka. Yeah. This, if you don't know the myth here, it is a it is like a ah spirit of a usually of a murdered woman. Yeah. Yeah.
01:17:23
Speaker
who lives in a lake and seduces men to come close to her. Like she usually appears as again like a beautiful nude woman, right? Like that's, that's what the Resulca is in this game. Yeah. um And then when the men get close, pulls them down and drowns them.
01:17:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. In this game, ah if you are a paladin, you can... there's There's a Rasulka. If you are a paladin, you can kind of like liberate her spirit.
01:17:53
Speaker
Yes. But if you're not a paladin, you can't do that. um She's just she's useful for a single quest. And then gay I still gave her flowers. I gave her flowers, too.
01:18:07
Speaker
I love, i just want to say, I love the nonchalant nature of the Resulka. Because we ask her about like drowning the men. And she's just like, yeah, that's just my job as a Resulka. It's what I do.
01:18:19
Speaker
i don't know why I do it. I'm now, I'm lonely. And now I'm even more lonely because I drowned the men. Yeah. yeah
01:18:26
Speaker
um ah There's also Baba Yaga is also obviously ah yeah ah scary slob. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's a hanging body outside her hut. Like, yeah.
01:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The hangman's tree. And then there's, you know, a group of, you know, Romani people. They call them gypsies in this game. They refer to it as specifically a gypsy camp.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yes. um And they are all werewolves. Is that a type of lore? i'm i'm yeah Am I just uncultured or is that a type of lore that exists? Is that connection between the werewolves and the Romani people?
01:19:10
Speaker
This is something I don't know. I actually don't know the answer to that, but I do know – you know um Werewolves... Being accused of being a werewolf, like being accused of being a vampire, was a thing that was done to outsiders in a lot of...
01:19:25
Speaker
right um ah Like a lot of cultural outsiders were accused of these things and the Romani people have been kind of perpetual cultural outsiders in Europe um and especially at this time.
01:19:40
Speaker
So there very well could be like it it would make sense. Sure. Historically. In game, they do have the magical ability to to be changelings, essentially, to change into a werewolf.
01:19:54
Speaker
They specifically tell you we are not werewolves. We change into wolves to hunt, but we are just changelings. We can change into all sorts of stuff. yeah Yeah. yeah i and That's so interesting that a lot even a lot of the kind of the creatures that you come across in this game are very classic horror, classic Halloween where will ideas of werewolves and vampires and witches.
01:20:17
Speaker
and And things of that nature. Like everywhere. It's clear that in Mordavia. Everybody is terrified. That there could be vampires. Because there's garlic everywhere. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:20:29
Speaker
Even like every dish. That the innkeeper makes you. garlic in it. Has garlic in it. The inn is just decorated. In strands of garlic. There's like strands of garlic. Hanging from the ceiling of your room. It's very funny. Yeah.
01:20:45
Speaker
So there's even that kind of superstitious type of spooky Halloween thing. soy Superstition, I think, is always something you would find in Halloween themed anything, you know, black cats, broken mirrors, ah stuff of that nature.
01:20:59
Speaker
of you But yeah, it does have that great vibe, these kind of classic creatures and characters. The fact that it does take place in autumn. ah The fact that there are there are ghosts in this game.
01:21:10
Speaker
Yes. There are ghosts and wraiths and things like that who can harm you. um There's even the, you know, the big haunted castle, yeah Dracula's castle. Right. You can kind of envision it like that, you know? It's a castle full of vampires, too. Yeah, yeah.
01:21:27
Speaker
So, you know, yeah, I mean, this and zombies come out of the ground at night. Like this is a this game is, I think, meant to be the scary one. And it's it's honestly, i man, I was impressed when i run I replayed this because it really does set the world of Mordavia. I ended up really liking these weird these weirdo characters. And I think if you like just in general spooky things like me, it just kind of feels like home.
01:21:56
Speaker
It's like, oh. This is in my realm of interest. And it's done well. You know, it's done with all these things that I have a vested interest in, you know, ah Slavic fairy tales and classic horror and creature feature and and yeah and things of that nature. um And I love it. This is small detail, but I really like it.
01:22:16
Speaker
At night, the pumpkins outside the town turn into jack-o'-lanterns. Yeah, it's very cute. Yeah, it's very cute. When I first played through all these games, when I played through all five in a row, this was the game that really stuck out to me. And, like, I like i liked them all.
01:22:32
Speaker
I know you really don't like two or three. mean, I like two better than three. But, yeah, I found some... It's not
Game Mechanics and Challenges
01:22:42
Speaker
a matter of disliking the entire thing. It's more of a mechanic issue for me.
01:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. I enjoy all of them. and Yeah. But... This was the one that like stuck out in my head after I played after I played them all. This is this is I think maybe the most memorable of them.
01:23:01
Speaker
It's very unique even in the franchise because we if you think about the other quote themes, they are somewhat kind of related to each other. It's just when you put a spooky theme to something, it changes the whole the whole tone, you know.
01:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, um that I also do want to say like the another thing about the Cthulhu theme that is spread throughout this game is you do in the town. There is like a a monastery that everybody is terrified of.
01:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, it belonged to and so this is a Lovecraftian thing. It belongs to the Mad Monk. ah See, I knew it had to be on purpose that some of the Cthulhu stuff was.
01:23:50
Speaker
Yes. So the neck in Lovecraftian lore, the Necronomicon was written by the mad monk Abdul Alhazred.
01:24:01
Speaker
ab abdul al-hazre That is so insane. That's the name of the Vizier in King's Quest VI. Oh, yeah?
01:24:11
Speaker
Yeah. well Anyway, go on. That's weird. yeah, yeah. yeah I mean, I'm sure it is. it I'm sure they did that on purpose. That's the most jarring thing I've ever heard. But they often call him, in in a lot of the stories, he's just called the Mad Monk or the Mad Arab.
01:24:27
Speaker
Sure. So that is who is being referenced here in Mordavia, too. Mm-hmm. um Because, you know, you go into, so you break into this monastery.
01:24:38
Speaker
There's all sorts of weird, spooky stuff all throughout it. ah you
01:24:44
Speaker
Why do I steal the Blackbird statue, by the way? ah It's a Thieves Guild thing. It's more it's prominent in ah Quest for Glory 5. Doing the Blackbird ah missions in 5 is more like you want to become Chief Thief.
01:24:59
Speaker
Right. But you can't do that in this game. So you end up stealing stuff for basically no reason. Well, you can sell it. You can get money. You can?
01:25:10
Speaker
think so. Isn't that what the Thieves Guild is generally for? That's how I remember using the Thieves Guild is selling things that I found to get extra money. I think I tried to sell the treasure that I got from all the wraiths.
01:25:24
Speaker
Okay. it will like I couldn't figure out how to do it. He also won't take the initial Blackbird because there's ah there's always an imposter Blackbird. It's Maltese Falcon type of a thing. gotcha Again, it's way more involved in Quest for Glory 5. There's a whole so whole thing. Yes, that I know. So but in so in trying to get the yeah the trying to get the ah Blackbird, i remember just clicking it.
01:25:49
Speaker
Like this playthrough, clicking it over and over. This is one of those things where it was like, click, click, click, click click click rest. click yeah click yeah Click, click, click, click, rest. And it's just like watching him half climb up a wall and then climb back down and like not strong enough or whatever.
01:26:04
Speaker
um Yeah. But there's all sorts of, you know, weird errata in the... in the monastery. And then if you find, then you can find your way to the basement and he has experiments and evil things and notes on spells.
01:26:23
Speaker
ah And this is how you get, what is the main thrust of this game? Well, there's two. First is there's a hill in the center of town in which a,
01:26:38
Speaker
Staff has been placed. You can find the story. it relates to the story of the town and the goddess Irana. ah Do you want to explain that a little bit?
01:26:51
Speaker
I kind of am not remembering the story of Arana. And I think it's because the the Quest for Glory games I've played the most don't really feature her. And when they do feature her, it's like you're already supposed to know what's going on. So like five is my is my most played.
01:27:08
Speaker
I know it's not a good game. I get it. I love that game. And Irana's place in that game is like you already are supposed to know. But I think the gist of it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, from just playing Quest for Glory, is that she was a ah healer slash protector that was...
01:27:29
Speaker
Don't know how she was killed or and or captured. and her And now her staff, her like magical staff, is still like in this rock that's in the town of Mordavia. Is that sort of close?
01:27:42
Speaker
There was a paladin named Piotr. Oh, right. Piotr. Yes. Go on. who was Who she helped to fight this ah kind of Cthulhu god, Avuzil, the Dark One. Avuzil.
01:27:57
Speaker
Who you are trying to stop his revival in this game as well. um And this story played out once before with Piotr. There was... So in her final battle with Avuzel, they both... sort She banished him from this world and then she banished herself to like a ah different... like ah Like another plane of reality.
01:28:23
Speaker
And Piotr put her staff in the town center... Like as a monument to her? Yeah. Like and and on the top of this hill?
01:28:34
Speaker
And then... So you are trying to... so partly one of the things you're sort of doing is trying to revive Arana. Another thing that you're trying to do is stop Avuzil.
01:28:48
Speaker
In pursuit of that, however... you get mixed up with katrina this vampire woman ah this is when you you free the little girl who was kidnapped this causes you to get mixed up with katrina and she uses you to get gather together a bunch of rituals yeah to free a voozle and then there's some there's some plot stuff that i don't quite understand there's some Conflict between her and, what's his name?
01:29:21
Speaker
Adavis. Adavis. Again, he was from ah Quest for Glory 2, the bad guy. Yeah, there's some cross-purposes between her and Adavis that I'm not entirely... I think it's just they're trying to be each be the one who controls...
01:29:35
Speaker
They each want to be the most powerful master. Yeah. And right according to Katrina, she just wants everything. She is a vampire. So she just wants darkness all the time, everywhere. she doesn't want to be, you know, ah endangered herself as a vampire.
01:29:53
Speaker
But it's I do i love, don't think it's fleshed out enough personally, but I do love that our character is definitely interested in Katrina. you can We don't know she's a vampire until the end. We just think she's kind of this mysterious, you know beautiful, intriguing woman who we meet up with sometimes in Mordavia.
01:30:12
Speaker
You can find it wandering around, if you're wandering around the woods at night. you can sometimes find her just outside the town. Yeah, outside the town. And later, you know, she has to meet you.
01:30:24
Speaker
So the um the implication is that she is actually also becoming attracted to you. I don't think there's enough like dialogue and story to really believe that, but I like the idea of it.
01:30:35
Speaker
Well, with a lot of this stuff, it's like we're bringing up a lot of things that you kind of have to in this game. And I think... The fact that this game got so big and so complicated and the fact that they had to rush it to print.
01:30:56
Speaker
I think there's some things that they started working on some quests and some storylines that just never got finished. Yeah, i think I think that's true.
01:31:07
Speaker
Yeah. And so, you know, like you' you've said, this game has a really fleshed out world. Like, there's a lot yeah in this world. but yeah At the same time, a lot ah a bit of it feels... there feels like It feels like there's a lot of space between all these elements.
01:31:25
Speaker
I think that space is because of... Yeah, because of certain things that were unfinished. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what you think about that. I don't know if you feel like...
01:31:36
Speaker
ah i do think I do think there are some things that were rushed. There's a lot of cool stuff, but there's also it's also not like the most jam-packed world.
01:31:48
Speaker
Right. It just feels so grand because of the way... i I think because of the way things are continually moving. Yeah. And because there is such an emphasis and detail to all of the spooky stuff.
01:32:01
Speaker
It really reads as almost like this kind of... celebration of horror in a way, you know, down to the, the details of the Cthulhu stuff and the, the vampiric storyline. It's yeah.
01:32:14
Speaker
But I do agree that there are things that are not fleshed out enough that were maybe rushed and unfinished. And I do feel like if they're the implication of this kind of relationship between you, the hero and Katrina, uh,
01:32:30
Speaker
is just not fully realized, I guess. I wish it was. So the first two games in the series are ah text parser.
01:32:43
Speaker
Yes. um Though I think there is either a point and click version of Quest for Glory 2 or it's like a hybrid. I think there is. Yeah.
01:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. And
01:32:56
Speaker
and So it had only been a few years that Sierra was doing point and click instead of text parser. Yeah. And you really feel that in this game too.
01:33:08
Speaker
A little clunky, huh? but Well, clunky and pixel hunty, right? Because the Kohl's were still designing like D&D where you say...
01:33:19
Speaker
You know, and and where you would tell your DM, like, I look around the room and they tell you everything that's in the room. And then it's up to you to focus on details. And they're still designing this game in the same way.
01:33:32
Speaker
They want you to look at every room and read the full description of the room. and Yeah. And... and
01:33:43
Speaker
So in the you know in the first two games, if it would if it said there are you know skeletons laying over on the left-hand side of the room, you would say, look at skeletons or search skeletons or something. Right.
01:33:55
Speaker
so But in this, sometimes that just seems like part of the background. Right. It feels very pixel-hunting, right? it really It really is, yeah. It's where yeah so jarring to go from all these modern adventure games that are a little more accessible and easier to sort out to, you know, I boot this up.
01:34:16
Speaker
Everything on the screen looks the same. There's not really anything that stands out. Yes. You know, the cursor doesn't change if I'm looking at it at a hotspot, and it's tough. And this was, and again, this would have been fine. This was fine when it was...
01:34:30
Speaker
Text parser. Yeah. Because you, you know, you're, you're, you're again going on descriptions. So if the thing that you need to pick up looks at the exact same yeah as the surface it's sitting on, that's fine because, know,
01:34:47
Speaker
you are reading in the description. ah Oh, and you see, you know, something sparkling on the desk. And so you say, check out, you know, look at desk, look at sparkle. Right. Right. um But in this, you don't, there's not, that's not,
01:35:03
Speaker
An element that's present. They just expect you to know where to click and know how to click. And i also wonder if that's what gets into some of the moon logic of this game.
01:35:15
Speaker
Because like why, like where on earth are we supposed to learn that using a rubber chicken will lure a bush that was ah crazy i didn't even do that matt i didn't know you could do that i let myself get stung instead because i don't know what to do with this bush i don't know how to yeah i just got stung didn't how on earth are we supposed to know that the ingredients of an elderberry pie are slime bone meal and elderberries and then cooked by skeletons eye beams
01:35:47
Speaker
does ah Does the skull help you? the snarky... I think maybe the skull does help you if you talk to him a bunch of times. No, there's a lot. not You're right. Beyond just the the pixel hunting, some of these some of these puzzles are tough.
01:36:03
Speaker
Right. Because... I always always bristle at like, oh, these puzzles are hard. yeah Because that to me implies that there is a sense to them that you have to just really pay attention or think really hard to get.
01:36:22
Speaker
But some of these puzzles are just nonsensical. Yeah, they're just nonsensical. Like like King's Quest. Like putting the cheese in the machine. That's exactly what it is. Why? why are we giving this rubber chicken to a bush?
01:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a bunch of stuff in that in this game that it that is like that. that i just don't If I wasn't looking at a walkthrough, i don't know how I would possibly know yeah this is what this is what I'm expected to do.
01:36:54
Speaker
Yeah. you know, some, some of the really bizarre things in the game, there's hints towards, right? Um,
01:37:04
Speaker
it'll like you need to at some point feed garlic to a weird creature hanging above a mantle place you can find that out by there's in the in the wizard the the scientist's lab there's a machine that traps monsters and you can describe monsters to it with yes or no questions yeah and by By doing that, it'll give you hints about certain monsters that you face.
01:37:33
Speaker
So, like, there's no reason to think feeding garlic to this thing would do anything. But there's a hint somewhere else in the game. Yeah. And there's other stuff there are hints in the dialogue, too. Like, I feel like um interrogating characters is such an important, whether you like their voices or not, man, you're gonna have to talk a lot to some of these characters, and they will give you hints and try to push you in the right direction.
01:38:00
Speaker
Right. That, yes, and that that happens a lot. But again, there's there's stuff that i maybe it's there and I didn't see it, but there's stuff in this game that I just, i have no idea how any person would ever figure it out.
01:38:14
Speaker
No, it's it's definitely that moon logic. Stuff that's just bizarre. yeah Yeah, just bizarre, just bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. Like I said, it's it's around that same time that, um well, King's Quest was 91, but...
01:38:29
Speaker
How do you know to give candy to the... Oh, the Will-O-Wisps? Will-O-Wisps. I don't know, but there's another thing that happens with the Will-O-Wisps, and I think there must be information on it somewhere, because after you capture the Will-O-Wisps, they can expire.
01:38:44
Speaker
and and the narrator makes a quip. He says, if only if only you knew more about Will-O-Wisps, we could have prevented this loss, this tragic loss. I'm like, oh, there must be... Oh, so that must mean...
01:38:56
Speaker
There's got to be somewhere you learn more about the Will-O-Wisps. Okay. there Yeah, there must be. i didn't find it. i didn't either. A lot of this, some of these, and not all of it, but some of these puzzles are like, click the does this work?
01:39:13
Speaker
No? All right. This? yeah No? Do I put this on the ground? I don't know. but And because it's Sierra game, some stuff that you try kills you.
01:39:23
Speaker
And some stuff that you try... you lose a inventory item that you would need later. Like, yeah, just anyway, it's, it can be really frustrating.
01:39:35
Speaker
i I think if you're going to play any of the quest for glory games, my suggestion would be either by um
01:39:48
Speaker
either play them with a walkthrough handy and no don't, don't just, follow the walkthrough the entire time. Like that, yeah that's not going to be super fun. Um, but play him with a walkthrough handy and glance at it every now and then, especially for schedule stuff.
01:40:06
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and save your game a lot, a lot as much as you can within the save slots, at least. And slash, or, and, or,
01:40:20
Speaker
ah
01:40:23
Speaker
play it when you have a lot of patience and a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah. So that you can try a bunch of stuff, bang your head against a bunch of, bunch of stuff, start the game over a bunch of times, you know, uh,
01:40:39
Speaker
Play when you have a lot of time and patience. Yeah.
Replay Value and Hidden Content
01:40:42
Speaker
And you're so right. Like normally, you know, i would be like, I just use a walkthrough for certain games. I think if you want to enjoy them, you might need a walkthrough.
01:40:50
Speaker
This one's tough because some of the some of the joy from it is ah experiencing these things you didn't know were going to happen. That's kind of where the joy comes from, right? Is figuring these things out, getting the day right, getting...
01:41:07
Speaker
ah getting getting your timing right on a lot of these puzzles. And for that to happen, it has to be through trial and error. But again, that's frustrating too. So yeah, I think I agree with you is maybe have something handy.
01:41:21
Speaker
And one of the things about getting the day right, as you say, is there might be stuff you don't even know because you just didn't happen to be in the right place at the right time on the right day, right? Sure, yeah. So on some level, even saying like,
01:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, you got to give it, you know, you got to try over and over again to try and like figure out what the, you know, get get the timing right the day right. You might not even know there's something you should try over and over, right? yeah might not so You might not know you're missing something. So I think actually the ideal way to play this game is to which would be to play it through again when you had a lot of patience and time. Try and get try and make your way through it just to get endy any ending that you can. Yeah. and then then look at a walkthrough.
01:42:05
Speaker
Yeah, i agree And see all the stuff you missed and then go through again. That's honestly, that's a if i i I think this is generally how I played the Sierra games years ago when I first played them, you know, yeah like somewhere between five and six years ago now.
01:42:24
Speaker
Yeah. Is I would play most of them twice or play them like one and a half times. I'd get about halfway through the game and And then be like, something's wrong here. And then I'd pull up a walkthrough and be like, okay, this is all the stuff I missed.
01:42:36
Speaker
Yeah. And then I'd try to play, you know, play the rest of the game without the walkthrough. Fail a lot. Then go through. Yeah. Anyway. That's how I got good at Dagger of Amon Ra is...
01:42:48
Speaker
i mean i just I mean, honestly, I just played that game over and over again. and i And I still find stuff I didn't know. It's another one of those games where you can miss stuff and you don't even really know it's there.
01:42:59
Speaker
Sometimes you stumble upon it. Right. You know, they're there are like special characters in Shadows of Darkness that you might miss. You might not get to them. You know, you might not even see them.
01:43:12
Speaker
ah Like the Damavoy. You could miss that completely. Yeah.
01:43:17
Speaker
Yes. Which is so frustrating. Very frustrating. Okay. So what else do we have to say about this game? I don't know. I think we hit on all shit. to Honestly, I think we did a really good job discussing this game. i just, I'm just so impressed by it. Honestly, I know that it has problems. I know that some of the the inventory isn't inventory puzzles. Aren't great.
01:43:46
Speaker
But there's just something about the the town of Mordavia. There's something about this world with like the Dracula castle and the Romani camp and Baba Yaga's hut being there now, living there, you know, temporarily.
01:44:02
Speaker
There's something about it. The characters too. And it's also one of the more unique looking Sierra games, right? the The character portraits are extremely exaggerated and and bizarre, to say the least. um And they are not in their own little portrait boxes like they can be a lot of the time. I'm thinking about King's Quest 5, 6, where, you know, you're in a little portrait.
01:44:27
Speaker
ah These are just these kind of intense, very hyperbolic portraits on the screen and the rest of the screen is black and you just are listening or you know interrogating them with this little text box.
01:44:39
Speaker
I have not seen another you know Sierra game quite in that vein. What comes close is maybe Gabriel Knight. came ah It came out around the same time, but even then it was more like floating heads with Gabriel Knight.
01:44:53
Speaker
um It's just, and they weren't exaggerating. Gabriel Knight had more grounded looking characters. the The characters are definitely stylized in a very unique way. Not always attractive way.
01:45:08
Speaker
yeah and Do you have anything else to say about Quest for Glory? I don't think so. I think it's it's a very good way to start out spooky month because it is, you know, it is spooky without being scary.
01:45:21
Speaker
Yes. It is very autumnal. Very, yeah. um And it's a lot it's just a lot of fun. It's just a lot of fun. It's a it's really fun game.
01:45:33
Speaker
Yeah, I had a lot of fun with it. I'm glad we replayed it and I kind of want to do it again. See, this is the problem. When I play these more involved games, I'm like, well, now I got to play the fighter class, and I don't have to Nobody's asking me to do that.
01:45:48
Speaker
Plus, you got a whole spooky month's worth of games to play. I know, and I got to work on the X-Files, and spooky art, probably. ah So i think this wraps up our first spooky month um my episode. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.
01:46:03
Speaker
Thank
Community Engagement and Final Thoughts
01:46:04
Speaker
you guys so much for listening and for being here and for, hey, join our Discord. That's right.
01:46:13
Speaker
Good news. Good news, everybody. We started at Discord. Matt came to me one beautiful sunny day and was like, we're getting requests. to start a discord and i was like yes we should do that it's gonna be fun yeah so i was getting requests for this show and also my other show mutant menace both for both um from fans to start a discord and so i was like i don't want to start two discords And so i i went and I went to Pat and i went to Rose's and I said to each of them, hey, what if we started a discord, like a joint discord?
01:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good idea. Honestly, it works. Both of them were down. So we started a discord. So ah there will be a link in the show notes to Yeah, go go check it out. Go join us. It's already been a fucking load of fun in there.
01:47:11
Speaker
It's great. These are your people. Just trust me. Yes. Just trust me on this, okay? Talk adventure games. Talk X-Men. Talk about podcasts. Or just talk about normal nerdy shit. They were talking about Warhammer figures. Yeah, they were talking about Warhammer. They're talking about X-Men.
01:47:28
Speaker
Fucking nerds. I know some stuff about X-Men. so I know Wolverine. Yes, you know one stuff about X-Men.
01:47:41
Speaker
So where else should they go if they want to engage with us, Roses? If you would like to ah get updates, a good way to get updates on our show is to go to our Instagram page. That's Save Your Game Podcast on Instagram. Sometimes we post clips. Sometimes we post art.
01:47:58
Speaker
Mostly they're updates, but we do read all the comments. We really appreciate that. Or you want to give us some suggestions or questions. ah We have an email account. MattandRoses at gmail.com.
01:48:12
Speaker
You email us. Email us. we You can submit questions on our Discord now, but we still like getting emails. Hey, guess what? What's up?
01:48:23
Speaker
Nobody said they disliked my voice. Oh, yeah. even though I so unwisely polled people in the last episode.
01:48:34
Speaker
be be fair... That episode just came out today and I didn't check YouTube comments, which is the place I would be the most scared. I'm not going to I don't care.
01:48:49
Speaker
I hate that woman's voice. huh Well, ma mac Matt, Matt, Matt, my sweet, my sweet summer child, Matt, who has been raptured. um I only really have one lingering thought. I've been thinking it the whole time, actually, but I needed to wait until the right time to say it.
01:49:07
Speaker
Okay, can you tell me about make it spooky? Yes. Okay. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. Podcasts is art.
01:49:20
Speaker
And art is suffer. but and i I can only keep it going for like the beginning of a sentence. It fucks me up.