The Classic Flashback 4.23.09: Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero

Posted by Ty Huston on 04.23.2009

One of the greatest game series during the golden years of Sierra Online is featured in the return of The Classic Flashback!

Greetings 411ites, and welcome back to The Classic Flashback. My last edition of this column was in October of last year and unfortunately the month after that last one was posted, I ended up being laid off from my employer. That little event ended up turning my life upside down and basically threw this column into a tailspin as I spent the four months that followed doing anything and everything to keep my family stable throughout the winter until finally regaining employment last month. Finally, things are settling down again and I once more have time for this – so let's reunite with the games of old.

A Classic Flashback is a return to older games that I personally have enjoyed and have shaped the way I play games. In my last column from October of 2008, I finished recalling the two original Fallout games just prior to the third games' release. When I ended that column, I hinted that my next five columns would be about a computer game series that was near and dear to my heart: Sierra Online's Quest for Glory. While probably not as well known as some of the other Sierra franchises; such as King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, the Quest for Glory series was an amazing quintuplet of games that really stood out from the others for a few reasons.

To begin with, Quest for Glory was a mix of the adventure and role-playing genres. Similar to standard role-playing fare that we are used to today, the gamer was allowed to name their character, choose a class, and build on attributes and skills. Considering that the first game in the series was released in 1989, it was a huge feat. Most other adventure games (such as King's Quest or Maniac Mansion) simply gave you a character upon which you acquired items and solved puzzles, whereas Quest for Glory through this design gave the gamer something that other games couldn't; it immersed the player in the game and tied in emotion. By providing the ability for one to create and build a character, it really stuck out from the pack and while the story was still incredibly linear, it provided the player with a variety of choices on how to play the game based on skills and class.

The second very important thing that the game provided was that while it was a series of games which continued the story of a character, you were also allowed the ability to import that character from one game to another. If you began the series with the very first installment, you could create your character, finish the game and at the end your character would be saved into a file where you could import him to the next game, and so on and so on. This continued that emotional attachment, as your character worked his way through the series all the while gaining in skills and attributes throughout the five pieces of the story. Heck, if you only had parts 1 and 5, you could import your character from the first game right into the fifth and, with some point adjustment; end up using your character still.

As you can see, these two key components are why this series is loved not only by me but by others as well. It is surely no coincidence that the building of skills and attributes are akin to that of Dungeons & Dragons. In 1989, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition was all the rage in the pen and paper gaming community. It shared these ideals with Quest for Glory.

Finally, something the series always provided were strange paradoxes between our world and the world in the game. While the world in the game; Glorianna, is a mirror of our world, the games all have different regions based on our world mixed with historical mythologies and contemporary humor. I'll detail these more for each game, but you'll see how these intertwine to make a very engaging and entertaining set of games.

So now that we've covered some of what the series made it stand out from the crowd and provided emotional attachment, let's get on to today's topic.





Game: Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero
System: DOS, Amiga, Macintosh, NEC PC-9801, Atari ST
Developer: Sierra Online
Publisher: Sierra Online
Release Date(s): March 1989 (EGA)
July 1992 (VGA)
April 1994 (VGA, CD-ROM)



The Story

The story of So You Want to be a Hero follows that of an aspiring adventurer (whom the player provides the name for, but in the Authorized Strategy Guide is known as Devon Aidendale) who completes his coursework in the Famous Adventurers Correspondence School. After reading a poster from the village of Spielberg, the adventurer decides to go there and become the hero that they are desperately searching for.

What our hero finds when he gets there, is an absolute mess. An evil ogress named Baba Yaga (a character from Slavic folklore) has laid a curse on the Baron von Spielburg. After the Baron sent a contingent of men to drive her out of his land, she cast a curse which then killed the Baroness and led to the disappearance of both of the Baron's children - a son and daughter, respectively. The land is now overrun by monsters and brigands and this is why they need a hero so desperately.

During the course of the game, the hero deals with Baba Yaga, the brigands and solves a variety of puzzles whilst slaying monsters and doing other hero-related tasks. Along the way, the hero meets a variety of other creatures such as a centaur (a half-man and half-horse creature from Greek mythology), a hermit, a dryad (a tree nymph from Indo-European mythologies), a feary named Erana and a hilarious wizard named Erasmus along with his wise-cracking pet familiar (an animal shaped spirit from European mythologies) rat, Fenrus.

All of this leads to a bunch of zany antics and humorous dialogue while still accomplishing the goals of fulfilling a prophecy and restoring the Spielberg Valley – rightfully earning the title of "Hero."



Gameplay

The games has several different sections of gameplay. First, the EGA (original using SCI0) version of the game featured movement and combat through the use of only the keyboard, while communication was done in the form of typing through the keyboard alone. Many times, this would lead to curious scenarios where if you were very stuck or frustrated, you'd simply begin typing in random things to see if you would receive a response. To be quite honest, this is where the game had a bit of a learning curve and could be annoying while getting used to the interface and commands, but such were the times when everything was run in DOS and the mouse really didn't see much use outside of Windows. However, once you mastered these commands (which were provided with the game), words like "use" or "ask" would be the precursor to all of your typed out actions.

Once the VGA (using SCI1.1) version of the game was released, the mouse was incorporated to use a "point and click" interface. A very sharp line has been drawn between fans as many preferred the original interface to the newer one, although the new interface did provide more streamlining for movement and dialogue. Gone was the trial and error method of asking questions and was replaced with a tree structure where it made things more simple and easy for the user. It really all comes down to personal preference. Before I get thrashed in the comments section, I'll state right now that I used the box-art and screenshots from the VGA version for the simple reason that from what I found they were of better quality and easier to find. Myself? I prefer the EGA version – it's what I grew up with and that's what I prefer.

The game itself was originally touted as a "three-in-one" game because you had three classes to choose from: the fighter, the thief, and the magic-user. Thinking back to its time, this kind of depth in a game was unheard of. Honestly, it was probably one of the top reasons that the game is so lauded; it simply gave you immense freedom to play. The classes of the game greatly affected how you played the game because it affected how you could solve puzzles and deal with combat situations. A fighter would use strength and hand-to-hand combat, a thief would use stealth and ranged combat and a magic-user would – obviously – use magic in these situations. However, and here is what made this game great, just because you chose one specific class did not limit you to handling situations in one particular way. I'll get to that in a minute.

Your hero had three primary areas: abilities, skills and attributes. The abilities were the core of your character. These were strength, intelligence, agility, vitality, luck, communication and honor. Like in other games (such as Dungeons and Dragons), these abilities had an effect on all of your skills as well as your attributes. The attributes; health, stamina and mana, were determined based on these abilities. Strength and vitality determined stamina, vitality determined health and intelligence determined your mana. These attributes were a pool of points used to accomplish certain goals. Health, obviously, is drained during scenarios and when you ran out you were dead. Stamina was used during situations when endurance came in to play. Mana points were critical for casting magic spells. The skills in the game were weapon use, parry, dodge, defense, magic, climbing, acrobatics, throwing, stealth, lock picking, pick pocketing, and swimming. Each skill was related to the ability it was based on, such as stealth and agility.

What I said before about your class not limiting you in the game comes from the skills. While choosing your class gave you a predisposition to certain skills, you could train any of them and realistically use some or all of the skills from another class. This gave you the ability to handle situations however you wanted and by using those skills, you could then train them to become stronger. Again, think back to 1989 and try to remember any other game that had this kind of flexibility. You'll be hard-pressed to do so.

The humor of the game many times came in to play as you could do just about anything you wanted, and at times if you did something so ridiculous, the game would react. The classic example of this would be picking your nose. Now, if you were a trained thief you'd simply find yourself a little golden nugget (catch the metaphor). If you had a low enough skill, unfortunately, you'd instead stick your finger into your brain and kill your character. How is that for teaching manners?




Audio

Long before the days of beautifully orchestrated soundtracks, we had MIDI. The sound effects were fun and the music was in pure synthesized glory. Honestly, there isn't much to say about the audio of a game like this except that for MIDI, it was excellent. One thing to note, however, is that the theme song is still very addicting and brings back fond memories every time I hear it.





Development

Quest for Flory I: So You Want to be a Hero was designed and written by Lori Ann Cole with help from her husband, Corey, who is a programmer. Together, the Coles have helped develop all five of the Quest for Glory games and Mixed Up Fairy Tales for Sierra Online as well as Shannara for Legend Entertainment, based on the novels. According to Cole, a lot of features that were planned for the game never made it in. These included things such as four different character races to choose from, a goblin maze and a familiar for the magic-user character. These were all cut due to scheduling, programming or animating issues. The game was originally titled Hero's Quest I: So You Want to be a Hero, however Sierra failed to trademark the name and was forced to give it up to a board game which ultimately failed. Today, Lori and Corey Cole have formed Transolar Games and have created a text adventure game called School For Heroes as well as designing websites.




Pop Culture

All of the Quest for Glory games feature tie-ins to pop culture. In one scene, you can trigger an Easter egg that will show Earl from the television show Dinosaurs on his way to work. Another scene features a gargoyle which provides you with a set of questions out of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Other references are related to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and even other Sierra games.


Conclusion

Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero was the start of a delightful series of games that challenged our minds and had us laughing at the tie-ins to real life. You can find this game, along with two of the sequels online at Gametap, as well as the series through sites such as Amazon.com and Ebay. Don't expect to find any unused copies this way, however, as unlike the King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry series, Sierra didn't re-release them in the past few years in a collection. I'm assuming it is because Lori Ann Cole worked on a commission basis while creating all but the final game, Dragon Fire.


Final Remarks

When I purchased by first PC back in 1992 (I was 12 years old), it was a Tandy 1000 that I purchased from a family friend who had upgraded to a newer PC. I spent $300 that I had scraped to earn and although I was able to purchase a handful of games back in those days, the number one series that tugged at my heart strings was Quest for Glory. When my mother found Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire in a bargain bin at the nearest mall (which was 50 miles from my hometown), it forever changed my life in regards to computer gaming. From that point on, I was not only a console gamer (I had an original NES), but I was also a PC gamer. Thanks to Lori and Corey Cole for their gift to the gaming community, and I wanted to include a reminder of something that many may have missed in this column - the original game, Hero's Quest: So You Want to be a Hero, was released in March of 1989. Last month was the 20 year anniversary. Wow, how time has flown.

Screenshots
All 6 Quest for Glory I: So You Want to be a Hero Screenshots