| King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder (Multimedia) | |
|---|---|
| |
| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Director(s) | Bill Davis |
| Producer(s) | Ken Williams |
| Designer(s) | Roberta Williams |
| Writer(s) | Roberta Williams |
| Lead Programmer(s) | Chris Iden |
| Lead Artist(s) | Andy Hoyos |
| Composer(s) | Ken Allen, Mark Seibert |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Windows |
| Release(s) | December 1991: MS-DOS (CD-ROM) 1992: Windows 3.x |
| Genre(s) | RPG Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder Multimedia (from Multimedia PC (aka MPC) in reference to a set of standards for IBM based PC CD-ROM based technology) is a CD-ROM adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in December 1991, and it serves as the fifth game in the King's Quest series. It was Sierra's second MPC CD-ROM game (after Mixed-Up Mother Goose Multimedia) that added new windows support and included a EGA640 driver which converted VGA to 16 color EGA.
Background[]
Sierra's most richly cinemagraphic animated adventure ever. The royal family of Daventry is missing, along with the whole castle! Join King Graham on a perilous journey to rescue your loved ones. Aided only by a talking owl named Cedric, you'll face the mysteries of the Dark Forest, scale precipitous mountains, cross a scorching desert and an ominous ocean as you try to find the royal family. It's a contest of strength, wits, and magic between you and the evil wizard Mordack.
Close your eyes and hear the screech of a harpy, a wizard's incantation, the battle cry of a king. Imagine your faithful companion Cedric calling out a warning in the nick of time.
King's Quest V multimedia is an amazing experience. In the CD ROM version of King's Quest V, the characters come to life like never before! With the talents of over 50 voice actors, Daventry will seem as real as the world outside your front door, and just as close. Every character has depth and individuality. The stereo soundtrack and realistic sound effects pull you into the heart of Daventry. Live this latest King's Quest adventure to the fullest.
King's Quest V Multimedia is the benchmark for computer gaming. It has all of the plot and action of the original game, and the character enhancement is incredible. More dialog has been added, but the text boxes have been deleted. When you talk with a character, you get more than just a closeup. The character's face has more expression and animation, and his speech is fully lip-synched. He could be sitting across the table from you.
Content[]
The major change was the addition of a fully voiced cast, starring Sierra's own employees or relatives. It added in new digitally-recorded sound effects in places as well (or adapted them from earlier international or Amiga releases).
Adapting some of the changes introduced in international floppy releases (see French version) and Amiga version the CD-Rom streamlined the interface removing the extra walk icon, and moving the save features, and stop/exit button into a separate menu.
The magic wand copy protection was removed as it was considered unneeded at the time as Sierra believed the size of CD-ROMs would make piracy more difficult.
The larger character models for the ant, rat, and bee were cropped along with all the other characters, and given brown wooden borders. Each character has its own colored background for their character portrait. The cropped characters lack incidental animations they had in the floppy version such as their hands or antenna in the case of the insects. Some new character portraits appear for some new characters.
The subtitles have been removed, and characters only talk through their character portraits. Recorded orchestral digital music replaces some of the synth music from the earlier releases. This appears to be lower quality recording of the MT-32 music. It's an upgrade for those who only had access to a sound blaster, but a bit of a down grade to those with MT-32 available.
The CD-Rom version also has new larger animated full-color cursors for on screen action.
New content includes the Weeping Willow's song, and the Ant's song, talking towns people, the snake has a few lines.
The script was also rewritten somewhat giving various characters accents, or other additional lines. See KQ5CD transcript.
A few details were added to the CD-ROM version of the game, and a few details were removed.
The various townsfolk talk, whereas they ignored him in the disk version, "The people are too busy to spend much time talking to Graham".
The snake talks, saying "Ssstay away, thissss isss my path", in the original, it just said, "This snake has a menacing look which Graham should heed".
The ants sing "March of the Ants" and Willow sings the "Weeping Willow's Song".
There are a few minor changes to other dialogue for example, the cow is described as a "pretty cow" in the floppy version, and a "spotted cow" in the CD-ROM.
The snake death is different. In the original, it just said something like, "Watch out for those critters, Graham." but in the CD-ROM version, it says, "That wasn't wise, Graham. He who speaks with forked tongues should never be trusted." There may be other expanded or changed death narrations.
Some of the Easter Eggs from the floppy version do not work in the CD-ROM version.
The music for the Windows version was re-orchestrated. Some of the instruments/tempo are different than dos version in many of the songs.
Versions[]
- April 1992 CD-ROM, added voice acting, changed UI and some of the script, as detailed above
- SierraOriginals Release (1995) part of the Sierra Originals line of discounted, re-released old games. Unique because it has audio that's slightly improved in quality, and has a different structure in the resource file, so it can be used to induce the "King's Quit" bug.[1]
Manuals and Guides[]
- King's Quest V Manual
- King's Quest V Hint Book
- The King's Quest Companion
- The Official Book of King's Quest (Second Edition)
- The Official Book of King's Quest VI
- The Official Book of King's Quest VI Artwork
See also[]
- King's Quest V FM-Towns
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder (EGA) (floppy)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder (VGA) (floppy)
Behind the scenes[]
Credits[]
See KQ5 development
Patches[]
- King's Quest V Patch (KQ5FIX): This patch fixes the extremely rare restore problem in King's Quest V.
- King's Quest V CD XP Files (KQ5_BAT): Batch file to help run the Windows version of King's Quest V in Windows 2000/XP. Please see the King's Quest V XP Help Page for instructions.
- King's Quest V Save Game (KQ5SG): This Save Game is a work around for the "Out of heap" error. It will restore the game to just after the short movie that occurs when the cheese is placed in the machine. Mordack turns into a giant Dragonfly, and is hovering directly in front of Graham. You will have about two seconds to go into the inventory and click on the wand.
- King's Quest Collection DOSBox Update (KQCollectionDBUpdate): This patch will allow the use of greatly improved latest DOSBox over the version 0.63 that shipped with the Collection. It will upgrade King's Quest 7 to version 2.00b DOS. Also includes the NewRisingSun patch for King's Quest 1 SCI. The patch also restores the missing install files to configure the games' settings. After running the update, you will find new shortcuts in the "Sierra\King's Quest Collection" folder in the Start Menu. The launcher will no longer be needed. NOTE: If you do not have the latest DOSBox installed in "Program Files\DOSBox" for 32-bit Windows or "Program Files (x86)\DOSBox" for 64-bit Windows allow this updater to download and install the DOSBox for you.
External Links[]
Standard Links[]
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder at The Daventry Chronicles
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder Help at Sierra Help
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder at The Sierra Chest
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder at MobyGames
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder at Hardcore Gaming 101
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder at The Cutting Room Floor