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King's Quest V

From Alfawiki
Sierra On-Line
IndustryVideo game development and publishing
Founded1980
Headquarters
United States
ProductsKing's Quest series, including King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!

King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (commonly referred to as King's Quest V) is a 1990 graphic adventure game crafted by Sierra On-Line. Launched in November 1990, it marked a major leap in visual quality by adopting VGA technology and was the inaugural entry in the King's Quest franchise to transition from a text parser to a point-and-click interface. The title cleverly references the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

The game achieved sales exceeding 500,000 units and earned several accolades. Subsequently, a fully voiced "talkie" version was issued on CD-ROM, featuring voice performances by Sierra staff members. Although a port for the Sega CD system was announced during the summer of 1992, it ultimately never reached release.

Plot

The narrative opens with Castle Daventry being magically abducted by the sinister wizard Mordack, leaving King Graham stranded behind. Graham encounters Cedric, a talking owl who witnessed the abduction and leads him to Serenia, where the kindly wizard Crispin dwells. Crispin offers Graham guidance, returns his old wand, and gifts him a magical white snake that enables communication with animals.

Graham discovers that Mordack seeks vengeance for his brother Manannan—who was transformed into a cat by Graham’s son Prince Alexander in King's Quest III—and has captured the royal family, threatening to feed them to Manannan unless Alexander reverses the curse. Throughout Serenia, Graham gathers essential items and information before confronting Mordack on his island fortress.

Cedric remains Graham’s companion throughout the journey, providing advice and occasionally requiring rescue himself. Near the story’s climax, Cedric rescues Graham from a lethal spell.

With aid from Princess Cassima, another captive of Mordack, Graham engages in a magical duel using spells learned from Mordack’s own spellbook. When Mordack morphs into a ring of fire, Graham summons a rainstorm to extinguish him. Following this, Crispin restores both the castle and the royal family. At Graham’s request, Cassima is returned to her homeland while the royal family is teleported back to Daventry.

Connections to other King's Quest games

King's Quest V stands out for its direct narrative ties to characters and events from prior and subsequent titles in the series. Set in Serenia—first explored in Wizard and the Princess—the game reveals the skeleton of the Wanderer, that earlier game’s protagonist. The storyline involving Manannan’s transformation into a cat connects back to King's Quest III and serves as Mordack’s motivation.

The conclusion links directly to King's Quest VI, introducing Cassima as Mordack’s captive. Alexander’s plan to visit her in the Land of the Green Isles sets up events in KQVI. Cassima’s mention of her Vizier—associated with the Society of the Black Cloak—hints at Mordack’s affiliation with this secretive organization. Additionally, the music accompanying Cassima within Mordack's castle is later reworked as the romantic theme for Alexander and Cassima in KQVI.

Versions

King's Quest V was the final installment in the series compatible with EGA and Tandy graphics at a resolution of 320×200 pixels. The EGA edition displayed 16-color graphics, whereas the VGA version enhanced visuals with 256 colors. Unlike later entries using SCI, it lacked support for 16-color rendering at 640×350 resolution on EGA cards.

Floppy disk

The diskette editions (EGA and VGA) required players to use a manual-based copy protection system for spellcasting, which was not included in the CD-ROM version. The floppy disk interface had slight variations, closely resembling the later NES release and featuring an extra walk command. Several animated creatures, including the rat, ant, and bee, displayed large close-up views with fully animated upper bodies and intricate details such as antennae or raised limbs. These detailed animations were scaled back or eliminated in the CD-ROM edition, where close-ups were limited to facial views only.

CD-ROM

Launched in 1991, the CD-ROM edition introduced voice acting alongside numerous script revisions from the floppy disk release. Descriptive text was updated, and characters that previously had no spoken dialogue—such as the snake and some villagers—were given vocal lines. Character portraits were upgraded with colored backgrounds and decorative frames, although this sometimes resulted in cropped details. A new close-up image was created specifically for the snake to accompany its speech, and several characters received expanded dialogue to enhance their roles.

NES

Konami published a version for the Nintendo Entertainment System in June 1992, which was ported by Novotrade.

Atari ST

Although an Atari ST version was announced for Spring 1991 in Sierra Online’s magazine, it was ultimately canceled. Despite attempts by Sierra’s Srini Vasan and the UK division of Sierra to continue development, support for the Atari ST platform was discontinued shortly thereafter by Sierra Online.

Development

The project had an estimated budget near one million dollars. Sierra utilized rotoscoping techniques akin to those used by Disney on The Little Mermaid, employing live actors to craft character sprites and animations. Background artwork was created through hand drawing, painting, and scanning processes. The CD-ROM edition incorporated voice samples and reduced reliance on text boxes to better suit the disc format.

Reception

By February 1993, King's Quest V had sold approximately 250,000 copies, eventually exceeding half a million units sold. As of March 1996, total sales across the King's Quest franchise surpassed 3.8 million copies. By November 2000, sales within the United States alone ranged between 300,000 and 400,000 units.

Scorpia of Computer Gaming World lauded the game’s impressive VGA graphics, sound card audio support, non-typing parser system, and user-friendly interface but criticized the expansive desert map as largely superfluous. She recommended it especially for newcomers due to its relatively simple puzzles. In 1991, Dragon awarded the game four out of five stars.

In April 1993, Charles Ardai from Computer Gaming World described the CD-ROM voice acting as somewhat "wooden," though the magazine favored this version for its overall improvements despite mixed opinions on voice quality in 1994. Adventure Gamers gave it three stars out of five in 2007; Allgame rated the original PC release four stars while assigning two-and-a-half stars to the NES port.

The title received the 1991 Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Fantasy Role-Playing/Adventure Program and was honored as Computer Gaming World’’’s Adventure Game of the Year in 1991. In 1992, it was inducted into the magazine’s Hall of Fame based on reader votes and earned recognition as "Best Multimedia Fantasy/Adventure Game" from MPC World readers. In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 94th greatest game ever released, noting Roberta Williams’ decision to replace the parser with advanced graphical elements.

External links

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