King's Quest Fan Remakes
After talking about them a bit recently, I felt compelled to play through the old KQ fan remakes (1-3 from AGDI and 3 from IA), and I wanted to share my more in depth thoughts for anyone interested in these love letters to the original games.
King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown Remake from AGD Interactive
A lovely update to the original! While clearly the least polished of AGDI's offerings, it's nice to be able to play KQ1 with KQ5-style graphics and voice acting (the original voice of Graham, Josh Mandel, voices him in all four of the games in this post, ftr). There is an option to turn off any chance of softlocking yourself before you even start the game, which is a welcome feature. Puzzle-wise, this one stays the most faithful to the original out of the three from AGDI with a few updates here and there (like that stupid name puzzle! lol). The vocal performances and sound effects can be a bit fuzzy, but I found them enjoyable nonetheless.
Overall a solid fan remake with limited extra bells and whistles!
King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones from AGDI
Easily the most ambitious of the three from AGDI. Pretty much all of the core elements from KQ1 are further polished here - artwork, acting, music, and sound effects. The story and puzzles, however, have been changed enough that the end product is sizably different from the original. In some cases, this is fun and interesting (more lore and character interactions! new and unique puzzles!), but not everyone will enjoy all the changes. I, for example, find the underwater section kind of fun, but the new content around the count... not so much (for reasons I'll avoid due to spoilers, but know they're more mechanical than anything). There's less freedom in when you can do things, the added story making the game far more linear than it originally was. But then I'm sure many would agree that if any KQ game could do with extra content, it'd be 2, so I can't fault them swinging for the fences, even if not every hit was a home run.
All in all, this version of KQ2 doesn't really work if you're simply looking to experience the original game with updated graphics, but it's a fun playthrough nonetheless, and newcomers might enjoy the added lore/story bits. Just be aware that I could probably sum up the original game's story in about two sentences while this one would take far longer. XD
King's Quest III: To Heir is Human Redux from AGDI
If KQ1 wasn't fully polished and KQ2 was a little overworked, then KQ3 is juuuuuust right! (For anyone who knows the game, yes, this is a purposeful pun. XD) The graphics, sounds, music, vocal performances - all are the best yet (though still with some minor hiccups as any fan game is wont to have - the music was sadly cutting out during the climactic sequence for me). It even has a neat little feature where the timer changes color depending on how close you are to being zapped into oblivion that is not only useful but adds a sense of urgency in it's own way (especially if you forgot the item that makes travel a lot easier for like 2 meals I mean what lol). While it does carry over some of the story threads from AGDI's second entry, this game still works well enough on it's own, with the majority of the new content being added in naturally rather than supplanting whole sections of the original. In fact, personally speaking, I think the added content only enhances the game, your encounters with Medusa and the yeti especially getting a nice boost. And the extra lore only helps you feel for the protagonists plight all the more. The ending is a bit drawn out, perhaps, and I may not agree with the order you're supposed to choose the four items in to get the treasure (insert rant here XD), but those are minor nitpicks at best.
This is easily the best of the three, AGDI having perfected their KQ formula at this point. It works as a remake of the original while still adding in a bit of new content that doesn't feel unwelcome. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in giving the King's Quest series a try.
King's Quest III: To Heir is Human Remake from Infamous Adventures
Look. I know that it's not as impressive as AGDI's version. The time limit is laughably long, the spells are impossible to mess up, and some of the clickable areas can be a bit wonky. But I really like this version, ok?? I like the design and voice of Gwydion, I like the storybook quality that the cutscene art has, I like that it feels lonely when it should. And as much as some of the changes in AGDI's version were really nice, I like that it's basically just the original game without extra stuff added in.
This is like AGDI's KQ1 - a really solid remake of a game that gives you the feel of the original but with an updated interface and graphics. It's not as impressive as the one above, but it doesn't have to be. The original KQ3 is an awesome game, so an update of just that can't be bad. It can easily be played as a standalone game, and I will continue recommending this version 'til I die, lol.
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I was going to put this in a reply but I thought it might be too personal for that, so if you could, please respond privately!
(for clarification I don't mean this in a rebutting or critical way, just genuinely curious) I know pieces of media shouldn't be expected to capture the full range of experiences, but do you think the Elemental movie would also apply to poc who have only been in interracial relationships with other poc? in my personal experience while I can appreciate media that portray poc/white person interracial relationships, I don't connect to them personally
speaking entirely as the son of immigrants in a committed relationship with a white person who enjoyed the movie thoroughly but also just saw it once not even an hour ago:
the romance between Ember and Wade is definitely there and I loved them together but it was nowhere near the main plot of the story
definitely the reading of the movie is supposed to be "Wade = white person" and even myself made the joke and connection, but I think overall, the more important reading is the cultural difference that comes from being a naturalized citizen or direct child of a naturalized citizen vs. living or being far removed from that
this may be a little spoilery so stop here if you want to avoid that:
the movie starts with Embers parents immigrating to Element City and all the other elementals (there are no other fire elementals at this point) othering them; they're immediately given new names (their language being too complicated for the immigration officer) and are denied multiple rooms for rent by virtue of being fire elementals. it's pretty obvious (and supported by word of god) that fire elementals in Element City are from overt Asian cultures and the Fire Town they establish is a Chinatown.
there's definitely a few ways to read it, the most obvious, like I said up there, being that Fire elementals are PoC and every other elemental is "white." there also a scene in the beginning that establishes Fire Elementals as the "newest" type of immigrant – there's murals in the immigration office establishing that the other 3 were the first to populate Element City, so you could definitely read it as I tend to: diasporic people who are more removed from a culture interacting with immigrants who only had their culture. There's also the 3rd argument that Fire elementals had such an obvious cultural link and the other elementals didn't because Earth, Air and Water were just supposed to represent the idea of individualism vs. the familial collectivism that Asian cultures have (this is interesting because Wade is the only other Elemental besides Ember whose family we meet, and its a very extended family)
again, this is all my reading and maybe others will disagree or something, but th tl;Dr is Elemental is not a "star crossed romance" movie and is really the story of a child of immigrants caught in the VERY real-world dilemma of honoring her families sacrifice and pursuing her own path
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so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”
but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.
ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.
if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?
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