{"id":301,"date":"2008-02-24T19:02:52","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T00:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/301"},"modified":"2016-07-15T17:22:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:22:21","slug":"qfg5-goofiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/301","title":{"rendered":"QfG5: Goofiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I had to describe the overall style of the <em>Quest for Glory<\/em> series in one word, that word would be &#8220;goofy&#8221;.  It&#8217;s got a mixture of heavy-handed drama and a twelve-year-old&#8217;s idea of what&#8217;s cool, topped off with a love of puns.  Ye gods, the puns.  There are a few characters who seem to exist mainly as agents of pun delivery, and even if you avoid those characters, the <em>narrator<\/em> sometimes indulges in them (chiefly in descriptions of scenery objects).<\/p>\n<p>But the puns are just surface goofiness &#8212; Xanth it ain&#8217;t.  The chief goofiness is the world itself, populated by caricatures and anachronisms.  I said that each game is based on folklore from a different part of the world, but that&#8217;s only true on a very rough scale.  <em>QfG1<\/em> put a centaur and a minotaur in a fantasy-pseudo-medieval setting, as well as small dinosaurs and flying manta rays.  And consider the four NPCs vying for the throne of <em>QfG5<\/em>&#8216;s pseudo-Greece:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kokeeno Pookameeso, member of the city guard, always seen wearing one of those Grecian helmets with the brush-like crest.  The only local in the running.\n<li>Elsa von Spielburg, a baron&#8217;s daughter from <em>QfG1<\/em>.  When last we saw her, she was a damsel under a curse.  Now, she&#8217;s a duelist in thigh-high boots and revealing armor. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_301_1('footnote_plugin_reference_301_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_301_1('footnote_plugin_reference_301_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_301_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_301_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">Actually, it&#8217;s not any more revealing than the getup worn by Kokeeno Pookameeso or Magnum Opus.  But, y&#8217;know, double standard.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_301_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_301_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script>\n<li>Magnum Opus, a Roman gladiator with a very high opinion of himself.  Roman?  Well, he mentions &#8220;Nova Roma&#8221; at one point, so maybe it&#8217;s fantasy-pseudo-Rome.  But we&#8217;ve had intrusion of real history into the fantasy world before, as when Haroun al Rashid showed up in <em>QfG2<\/em>.  Anyway, Magnum Opus is an exaggeratedly one dimensional character, prone to saying things like &#8220;I, Magnum Opus, the valiant, peerless spearman of the Roman Empire, shall prove the superiority of my skills&#8221; regardless of the topic of discussion.\n<li>Gort, a Frankenstein-like construct created by mad-scientists (in 19th-century attire) on an artificial island.  Although Gort is probably the strongest fighter, it&#8217;s questionable how effective a king he&#8217;d be, seeing how he can&#8217;t talk.\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, not something you can take too seriously, despite aforementioned ham-fisted drama.  But while I call the style goofy, I will not call it cheesy.  The difference?  It&#8217;s really all down to the authorial voice.  When the author gives the impression of being stupid or incompetent, we naturally make a mockery of both the author and the work.   But however goofy <em>QfG<\/em> gets, I get the impression that the author is just having fun with it.  Things like Gort are so extremely out-of-place that they pull you out of the fiction for a moment, like Tezuka&#8217;s gourd.  And it isn&#8217;t ironic detachment, either: once the author and player have acknowledged the absurdity, the characters in the world have to take Gort seriously.  It&#8217;s their world, after all.  And since the player is controlling one of the characters, it is to some degree your world too.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_301_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_301_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_301_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_301_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_301_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_301_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_301_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">Actually, it&#8217;s not any more revealing than the getup worn by Kokeeno Pookameeso or Magnum Opus.  But, y&#8217;know, double standard.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_301_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_301_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_301_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_301_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_301_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_301_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_301_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_301_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_301_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_301_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_301_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_301_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_301_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_301_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I had to describe the overall style of the Quest for Glory series in one word, that word would be &#8220;goofy&#8221;. It&#8217;s got a mixture of heavy-handed drama and a twelve-year-old&#8217;s idea of what&#8217;s cool, topped off with a love of puns. Ye gods, the puns. There are a few characters who seem to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[197,198],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-rpg","tag-quest-for-glory","tag-quest-for-glory-v"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3720,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/3720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}