King’s Quest - Chapter 1: A Knight to Remember review

King’s Quest is back in a charismatic new game that suits the 30-year-old series to a royal tee. The marvellous first chapter in an original tale, ‘A Knight to Remember,’ succeeds not because it exhumes a classic ever so delicately, but because it breathes the spirit and visual storytelling that carried King’s Quest into the history books. You need no familiarity with the kingdom of Daventry to enjoy this funny jaunt - just a craving for conundrums and a proven tolerance for puns.
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember is framed as the vibrant recollection of King Graham, a greying ruler now nestling beneath blankets and a food-catching beard. His granddaughter, Gwendolyn, listens with adoration while Graham (voiced by a breathy Christopher Lloyd) recounts his steps: from awkward beginnings, through traps and dragon’s teeth, all the way to Daventry’s throne. This chapter in particular takes us back to Graham before he was a handsome knight, a skilled archer, or even a halfway-decent hero. The first thing he does is fall off a cliff, so you know he has a long way to go.

The lanky teen Graham is just so darn likeable, though, marching like a spindly marionette trying to shake off its red cape. Graham moves forward in the way that one usually does in adventure games - by exploring, meeting odd folks and sussing out the exact kind of puzzle logic that governs the world. While he discovers Daventry and attempts to unravel its recent problem with vanishing bridges, Graham also learns there’s more than one way to attain greatness, be it through empathy, deception, or (with alarming regularity) the use of actual bees.

The clever construction of King’s Quest dodges the overdone quandaries of good and evil. What you get, instead of WHO LIVES and WHO DIES, is a sense of texture and believable flourishes on characters as they grow. It’s especially apt for a game bursting with watercolors and whimsical flair, as if Daventry was planted deep in The Middle Ages Presented by Don Bluth. The deliberately staccato movements of the kingdom’s citizens, who make bold gestures and slip into dramatic poses as they speak, communicate a lot in a short time. Even the brief bits of push-button action are pulled off with so much giggling and panache that you’ll trail off before muttering “how DARE they put a QTE in my adventure game.” Oh, they dared.
Though it isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember does create a wonderful air of humor with inescapable wordplay and curious character tics. Think: bridge trolls who explicitly warn you not to cross them, archers who make others quiver in excitement, or a battle of wits inspired by The Princess Bride. Actually, scratch that - the game sometimes just plain IS The Princess Bride. I submit a more genuine highlight in Graham’s pairing with a foreign knight called Achaka. The partnership they form while escaping a gauntlet of puzzles is beautifully drawn and developed, perfectly capturing adventure gaming’s own partnering of storytelling and problem solving.

You could say it goes with the territory, but King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember doesn’t otherwise feel slavishly devoted to the adventure ideal or to recreating every little bit of King’s Quest. It curates, it considers and it loves the spirit of the old games more than it seeks to summon nostalgia. Graham’s new tale is light of heart and foot, clever and a sincere nod to anyone who likes a good story.
This game was reviewed on Xbox One.