Game 77: Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero

Note: Hero's Quest is the original name of the game that came to be known as Quest for Glory in subsequent editions, including a VGA remake in 1992. Since I'm playing the original game, I'm using the original name for this one. I wrote a preview last week that's worth reading before you get into this posting. As I play, don't forget to read Trickster's take on the game from an adventure game perspective.

Hero's Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero
United States
Sierra On-Line (developer and publisher)
Released 1989 for DOS, 1990 for Amiga and Atari ST
Re-released in 1992 as Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero
Date Started: 20 November 2012

Hero's Quest, the first full RPG/adventure game hybrid, is also the first game I can think of in which which the choice of character class really makes a solid difference in gameplay. I'm not saying that it's the first game in which it makes any difference at all, but most of the difference has come down to combat tactics. I can think of only two earlier games in which the character class has made a plot difference: Ultima IV, where it affected the Avatar's starting town; and Demon's Winter, where it changed the nature of the quests in one dungeon plus the end-game wrap-ups.

A player who goes through Hero's Quest as a mage faces a very different game than a player who goes through as a fighter or thief. Some of it comes down to combat, but a lot of it has to do with how you solve puzzles. Every class can succeed in the game, and solve all the puzzles along the main quest, but each has a different tool set. There are entire areas which only certain classes can explore, and mini-games which only certain classes can play. This makes the game very replayable.

Making the key opening choice.

 
My recollection, though, is that a player can get the full breadth of the game by choosing a thief character and starting with a few magic points. If you don't assign anything to magic during the character creation process, you'll never be able to cast a spell, but if you assign even a little, you can build up the skill and play the game as if you were a mage. The fighter (again, this is to the best of my recollection) doesn't have any unique attributes that the thief (or, for that matter, the mage) can't access. The thief is the only character whose very class (and not his equipment or attributes) allows him access to a unique area: the thieves' guild. [Later edit: I was wrong about this. Anyone can make the thieves' sign and get into the guild. But the thief is still a unique character: he's the only one who can start with all of the skills. There aren't enough bonus points for a fighter to get all of the thief skills plus magic, nor for the mage to get all of the thief skills plus parrying.] [Still later edit: as an anonymous commenter points out, you can exploit the game's method of adding and subtracting skill points to give a fighter all possible skills, too.]

I think it's much more interesting to choose one class, dedicate yourself to it, and solve the puzzles with that class's strengths than to try to be a "generalist," and what I planned to do was play this version as a thief and the VGA remake as a mage (Trickster, my colleague at The Adventure Gamer, is playing as a fighter). I am going to assign a few points to magic, though, just so I can cover its basics for the purpose of this review. My primary role-playing choices, and my overall perspective, will all be thief-related.

Creating Chester the Thief

The character creation process is fairly flexible. Based on the chosen character class, you start with certain attribute values and certain skill values, and you have a pool of 50 points that you can assign to either attributes or skills. The key is that if the skill is not one that the class usually employs (e.g., "pick locks" for fighters or mages), you have to invest 15 points to get 5 points in the skill.

All attributes and skills are trainable during the game: they increase as you use them. But if you don't elevate the skill above 0 during the creation process, you can never use it at all. My thief started with 0 in both "parry" (a fighter skill) and "magic" (a mage skill), so to get both of these to 5, and thus ensure I can do everything in the game, I'd have to spend 30 of my 50 bonus points. I did it for magic, for the reasons I stated, but I'm not going to waste 15 points on parrying. My thief will dodge if he wants to avoid an attack. Some players like to try to play a "complete game," getting all of their attributes and skills to 100 before the end (Andy_Panthro announced that he's doing this), but I'm going to try to play the game completely in-character.

The back story to Hero's Quest is a simple one: you've just graduated from the Famous Adventurers' Correspondence School for Heroes, and have walked many a weary mile to the town of Spielburg, in response to an advertisement seeking a hero. You arrive just ahead of a snowfall that closes the only pass out of town, and are greeted by the mayor upon entering the town's front gate.

The game uses an interesting hybrid between mouse control and a text parser. You can left-click to move to a location and right-click to look at things, and there are various keyboard commands for common actions like saving, casting spells, and looking at the inventory. But most of the main action is completed by hitting the SPACE bar and typing in verb-object commands as in a classic adventure game. Common examples include ASK, PUSH, SEARCH, USE, and GET.

Examples of interacting with the world.

It's through this interface that you talk to NPCs in the game, giving conversation a very Ultima-esque feel. You have to watch for certain keywords in NPC dialogue and then ask about them.

"ASK ABOUT DRINKS" got me a list of drinks the bartender offers; "ASK ABOUT DRAGON'S BREATH" got me this.

Combat, when it comes, is action-oriented. You're taken to a special combat screen in which you can use the arrow keys to thrust, dodge, duck, parry (if you put points into it), or cast spells (if you have them). You have to watch your enemy's movement's carefully, attack when he's open, and dodge when he attacks.

This enemy is called a "saurus."

I did poorly in this particular combat (I think I need to adjust the DOSBox CPU settings, plus get some practice). When you die, it's game over. There's no rescue. Fortunately, the game does allow fairly liberal saving.

As you can see, the game makes reasonably good use of EGA graphics, but perhaps more importantly, it makes good use of the sound cards available at the time. There's a background soundtrack that's good enough not to turn off, with the music changing based on circumstances and location. The sound effects are a little more sparse than the music, but they appear when they matter.

As I indicated previously, doing things in the game slowly increases your attributes and skills. For instance, climbing a tree a few times got my "climbing" skill from 5 to 18, my strength from 15 to 18, and my agility from 30 to 32. Every time you visit your character sheet, you can see what skills and attributes have increased since the last time you checked.

The changed attributes are green or red or brown or something.

You may also have noticed the "Score" at the top of the screen, indicating progression on a scale of 500 points. This is an old adventure game staple, of course. My score has gone up from visiting new areas, talking to key NPCs, looking at key items, and solving quests. I don't remember how easy or hard it is to finish the game with a perfect score, so we'll see.

The game has a basic economy. You start with 4 gold pieces and 10 silver pieces (10 silvers=1 gold), and you can spend them at several merchants, including a general equipment shop, a farmer's market (you have to eat occasionally in the game), a magic shop, and a bar. I think money accompanies some quest rewards, but you get a lot of it from fighting enemies in the forest.

Looks like I'm going to be doing some grinding.

The screen shots above are replete with the kind of dry wit and tongue-in-cheek humor that made the Quest for Glory series rightfully famous. As she was the chief writer and designer of the game, I expect it comes primarily from Lori Ann Cole. The dialogue and manuals are full of jokes and obscure references. Some examples:

• "A fighter is one who, when faced with a foe, takes arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, ends them." (It's a play on Hamlet's soliloquy if you don't get it right away.)
• "Magic users have a reputation for being mysterious, and much of their time is taken up maintaining this illusion. To this end, mirrors are useful for practicing facial expressions, and a repertoire of moods ranging from 'haughty disdain for fools who ask stupid questions' (ideal for when you don't know the correct answer) to 'complete and utter concentration so don't you dare disturb me' (perfect for catching winks, particularly if you can master sleep with your eyes open), will come in handy."
• Thieves' guild motto: "Thou shalt not steal here."
• "Monsters are the stuff heroes are made of. After all, it is very difficult to rescue damsels unless they are distressed."
• "[Ogres] tend to carry around their prized possessions in chests. It is not clear where the chests come from, why ogres get them, or how ogres even open the chests. These are topics of heated debate among scholars."

The game also likes to give you the occasional humorous message when you click on a random part of the screen with nothing special to look at:

A few months ago, I posted about humor in CRPGs, and I talked about how I hate it when goofiness shows up in an otherwise serious game. I do like a certain amount of wit, however, as well as humor that grows naturally from the characters and settings. Hero's Quest walks the razor's edge sometimes, but in general, I think it's pretty funny--partly because in the game's very title, it establishes an air of whimsy, and it maintains a consistent tone throughout.

Now that I've covered the background and basic game mechanics, I'm going to try to write subsequent postings in-character. Chester, my thief, is a sly, intelligent young man who was kicked out of law school when he was caught breaking into the headmaster's office. Bereft of other possibilities, he decided to take the adventurer's correspondence course and ply his skills as a professional rogue. He's not a bad guy, and he'd rather earn his rewards, but the most important things are those rewards, so if he can't find a way to earn them, he'll just take them. Having arrived in Spielburg, he's not sure if the city is "in need of saving" or "ripe for the plucking." Perhaps a little of both.