King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, was released in 1998, it is the eighth and final official computer adventure game in the famous King's Quest series. It is the only game in the series where the main character is not King Graham or a member of his family (though Roberta previously had tried to trick people into thinking Gwydion was not a member of the family which worked too well, as she received letters from people that hadn't completed the game and were upset at her change in direction for the series).

It is also the only game to not be given roman numerals or a number in the title or the material packed in with it. Roberta Williams had said in interviews at the time that she no longer liked the idea of roman numerals or numbers designating sequels and wanted to distance the later sequels in the series from the use of them. She gave several reasons for her choice to remove the numbers, one being that numbers might give a bad impression to the fans that might think that the sequel wasn't nearly as good as the games coming before it, as is often the case with sequels to movies (some may argue she had a self fullfilling prophecy). The second reason was to not alienate new players that may never have even heard of the series, so that they wouldn't have to feel as if they had to play previous games in the series to understand the game's story.

The Story
Above the kingdom of Daventry is the Realm of the Sun, where magical beings called the Archons guard the Mask of Eternity. Their chief (Lucreto) turns evil and shatters the Mask into pieces. Daventry's inhabitants turn to stone and the land sickens.

Connor, a common tanner, is protected from the blight because a Mask shard fell on his feet. Connor is then appointed by a wizard to travel through different lands and collect all the Mask pieces, eventually arriving in the Realm of the Sun where he must repair the Mask and bring life back to his land.

A fan remake of King's Quest II shows a prophetic vision of the knighting of Connor by King Graham, but no reference to Connor appears in any of the official versions of the earlier King's Quest games.

Thorough Description


Popularly known as Mask of Eternity, or MoE, to the hard-core King's Quest fans, since this is far different from the other KQ games. Connor, a peasant, appears and is the main character. He travels through Daventry, the Dimension of Death, and about five other levels, killing all of the monsters who continually attack him, trying to find the missing pieces of the Mask of Eternity. Some bad guy (Lucreto) has destroyed the mask, which has turned everyone in Daventry (with the exception of Connor... because he was holding a piece of the mask at the time) into stone. Thus it's his job to restore the mask.

Long story short: he's successful and everyone in Daventry is thankful. And, if I remember correctly, Graham later knights him between MoE and KQ IX according to KQ2 (AGDI)...

Distance from the rest of the King's Quest series
King's Quest: Mask of Eternity as released to mixed reviews(majority 70% or higher) and poor sales, effectively bringing about the end of the King's Quest series. However, it sold comparitively well to other adventure games at the time, for example it outsold Grim Fandango two to one. Many fans did not consider it a "real" King's Quest because of its 3D graphics and emphasis on fighting. Many refer to it as King's Quest: Mask of Eternity(which is the actual title within the game itself, and the pack material) rather than King's Quest VIII(which is never listed with any of the game material itself).

This chapter of the series is apparently cosmologically inconsistent with the others. Connor visits Dimension of Death rather than the Land of the Dead shown in King's Quest VI. It should be noted however that Land of the Dead is specifically a Green Isles legend according to Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles and is the place where Green Islanders go when they die, where they journey to Samhain to be judged and end up in the Sea of Souls in preperation for the next stage of the aftelife. It is not a legend in Daventry, and Derek Karlavaegen was the first person from Daventry to learn or write about it when he visited the Green Isles.

In Daventry's legends the Dimension of Death is a kind of limbo ruled by Azriel where souls are judged before being moved to their rightful afterlife. The game implies that other afterlifes may include heaven-like places with angels (Sylph), and hell-like places(perhaps Hades).

They are intended to be considered seperate locations.

"'Roberta's point of view was that the “Dimension of Death” was not the under world(KQ6). It was a unique and different place."-Mark Seibert

Early Concepts
KQ8 will be set in Daventry -- at the beginning of the game, at least. YOU will be a brand new character -- a marble statue of a knight which has been brought to life through an accidental reversal of a spell which turned King Graham and his family into stone (by an evil sorcerer). 

Originally there was going to be a Leprechaun inside the Old Castlekeep of Daventry, that would give Connor more information about his plight, and give him a few more quests. But it was removed in the final release version.

A redcap goblin was to lurk around the world, and had to be battled in order to get by it.

The Swamp Witch's part originally was much larger, and she would have had the guise of a beautiful princess, luring Connor into the castle before showing her true form, forcing Conner to escape, and fight her for his life. This was removed from the final version of the game as well. But refrences to the witch's wiles are still mentioned if you examine the skeletons in her castle.

Fire beetles could be found in the barren region.

There was apparently going to be another zone set by the sea, and a town near the sea. In the ocean would have existed a fire breathing hydra.

The world would have been one large interconnected world, apparently allowing new areas to load on the fly. The zones apparently would have radiated out from Castle Daventry, which would have been located in a location seemingly closer to how it was shown in previous games. But due to limitations with the game engine's color palettes, and computer systems at the time, Sierra was forced to make it a linear world, with seperate zones.

Yes, this was the only KQ game that was not fully developed at one location. The idea was to leverage the 3D engine Dynamic was building in Eugene. We were to use their engine and focus mostly on content. The problem was that the engine work ended up WAY behind schedule and that had disastrous results on our content development. To make a long story short, we finally took what they had and finished it ourselves. Unfortunately, by the time we did this the project was way behind schedule, way over budget, and we still didn't have an engine. We scrambled to complete the project and it unfortunately showed. It saddens me to have had the King's Quest series end with a product that suffered so.

"Yes, the castle entered through the passageway behind the waterfall is Castle Daventry. The reason you don't see much of it is that it was damaged in the opening scene. That is why you can only go so far in before you find blocked passageways. We wanted to originally let you explore the entire castle, find the royal family turned to stone, etc, etc, but as you know, things had to be cut and this was one of the many things that was easy to have a story reason why not to do it."

So yes, many things were cut - the leprechaun, the Red Capped goblin, I think two complete levels, and then MANY major cutbacks on what is there. As you point out, a good example is the Swamp Witch. In the original script as it was developing, her part was much larger. But as we had to devote time to technical issues, the esthetic issues and the amount of detail and breadth of content continued to get chopped. Remember, this was also right at the time the industry was saying that "Adventure gaming is dead." It was not easy to convince marketing to invest more to develop an adventure game. The end result was that we shipped what we could, and it was a pretty sad showing for such a great series. -Mark Seibert, March 11, 2006.

Technical Support
The game can be played its its native Glide support with the use of a Glide Wrapper. There are still areas that lock up however, and require multiple attempts to get past often by lowering the graphics, or turning off certain effects.