A Sierra Retrospective: Part 5 – The Shoulders of Giants

Phoenix Online was hardly alone in keeping the spirit of Sierra alive. Frederik Olsen worked on two unofficial free Space Quest fan games, Incinerations and Vohaul Strikes Back, and he says that another reason for Sierra’s endurance is that the games sparked people’s imaginations with the potential of so many untold stories.

“Sierra crafted all these rich universes, always using cutting-edge technology to make them come alive, and they left us hungry for more. In comparison, most adventure game companies at the time had one flagship series. Depending on your disposition, Sierra had several. What happens to Sonny Bonds or John Carey when they’ve locked up the big baddie? Which supernatural phenomenon will Gabriel Knight brandish his Schattenjäger talisman against next time? Is Sludge Vohaul ever going to return to stain Roger Wilco’s golden mop?

“There are stories left to tell. There are questions left to be answered. There’s potential to be fulfilled. There are sequels to be made, commercial or otherwise. Ken and Roberta’s vision is now pushing 40. I’m sure it’ll continue to inspire fans the day it’s pushing 50 as well.”

Robert Holmes, composer and producer of Gabriel Knight, agrees that part of Sierra’s ongoing appeal is the variety in its catalog. “One of the things I think Sierra did really smartly was they didn’t just make one kind of game. The people who liked Gabriel Knight were very different from the people who might like Space Quest or very different from the people who might like Laura Bow. There was a lot of great diversity. I come out of the film industry, so it was a lot like the early days of MGM; you would have entire film units doing certain genres and creating really good stuff in that genre.”

Another of the earliest and most successful fan groups was a team who dedicated themselves to remaking what were then unavailable games from Sierra’s catalog, eventually releasing updated versions of the first three King’s Quest games as well as a remake of Quest for Glory II. Calling themselves Tierra at first, they soon changed their name to AGD Interactive (AGDI) and also negotiated an official fan licence for their games. Their free King’s Quest I remake was remarkably successful, accumulating more than 1.7 million downloads, with their other three games downloaded in the hundreds of thousands.

Chris Warren, co-founder of AGDI, believes Sierra left an indelible mark in adventure games but says that it’s both positive and negative. “I think in today’s smartphone/tablet era, the low-attention-span age, classic Sierra adventure game mechanics haven’t really aged well. Adventure games with simpler, intuitive interfaces seem to resonate better,” he says. “Yet, at the same time, very few new adventure games can match the classic Sierra titles in terms of depth of interactivity and immersion into the game universe.”

Chris goes on, claiming “I’m sure that without Sierra pioneering the genre, the modern crop of adventure games wouldn’t exist either, so there’s definitely something still in place from Sierra’s foundations, which all modern adventure developers have built on.”

Groups such as Warren’s AGDI and others have gone on to create their own original adventures since their fan game efforts, something former Sierra designer Josh Mandel says is a sure sign that the company left an enduring legacy.

“Those games are proof of that, aren’t they? So many people putting so much work into fan games and fan fictions and remakes and here it’s 20 or 25 years later, longer I guess. You don’t get that level of attention decades down the road unless you’ve done something tremendously right and struck a chord with so many people.

“I meet people who tell me they don’t personally remember playing Sierra games but they remember sneaking into the living room and seeing their father play Leisure Suit Larry or something like that. It’s going to be a long time before Sierra’s legacy fades, and with the current uptick in the popularity of adventure games in general, I think you’re going to see a renewed interest.”

Nowhere is that renewed interest more apparent than in the relaunch of the Sierra brand label and the surprising return of King’s Quest in 2016. Though designed by The Odd Gentlemen, the five-part episodic series was given a rousing endorsement from Ken and Roberta Williams and proved quite popular with longtime series fans who finally got an authentic final adventure with King Graham in Daventry. But will it really be the final one after all? The last episode left the door open for future games in the beloved franchise, and Sierra fans have proven themselves to be remarkably passionate about keeping the flame alive. So we shall see what the future holds.

Returning to those Gaming Industry Awards in 2014, another game honored at the time was DOOM, the benchmark first-person shooter that has been (unfairly) criticised by some adventure fans for killing their favorite genre. Even John Romero, co-founder of id Software and designer of the original DOOM as well as other classics like Wolfenstein 3D and Quake, acknowledges the pioneering work and legacy of Ken and Roberta Williams and Sierra. “[They] built a great company we all admired for a long time. He and Roberta are legends, even back then.”

“Graphical adventure games are still around! Starting with Mystery House there have been thousands of graphical adventures and they are still being produced all over the world. Not a bad legacy!” John says.

Whatever your defining measure of that legacy, one thing is certain: Sierra produced a prolific catalog of games that continue to inspire people and bring players joy several decades later.

Impressive legacy indeed.