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Haha, I'm glad it arrived so quickly, Aperama!! Thanks for letting us know

My bad, actually. I sent for it on Wednesday the week prior, and lost 4 days in my own creative little way.

Still quite a fast delivery for a fair ol' hike (well, or whatever you like to call it, anyway.)

You guys scare me a little.

I placed my order for Al Emmo on Sunday. It was shipped from Arizona to Melbourne, Australia by Wednesday. That thing has went through no less than 3 postal services to get here, and only took 3 business days to get here.

I mean, that's not prompt service. That's scary prompt service. Thanks a bunch, guys!

Ironically, I didn't like the narrator in GK1. But that was mainly because she read the descriptions so slowly, and by the time she'd finished speaking, I could have read what she was saying three times over.  I've never tried playing GK1 with the narrator left on, but I'm sure if I did then it would grow on me.

I first played GK1 without voices, and it took quite a while for me to get used to Tim Curry's voice as Gabriel. I'd imagined Gabe's voice not to be as deep. And at first, I kept picturing the guy from Rocky Horror Picture Show or the concierge in Home Alone 2.    It didn't take me too long to get used to the voice though, and now I can't picture it any other way.

Many people also tend to be confused about the definition of bad voice acting. You could get a person with the clearest diction on the planet and have them read, but their pronunciation may be completely monotone and sound very wooden. To me, that's bad voice acting because the actor hasn't convinced you that they're playing a believable character and they still sound like an actor reading from a script. (QFG5 had quite a few voices like this.)

On the other hand, voices that are 'unappealing' in some way are not necessarily badly acted. For example, the GK1 narrator wasn't a bad actor at all. It was simply the slowness at which her lines were read that caused some people to grow impatient with waiting for her to finish. But if a character's voice, regardless of its appeal, can still convince you that they're a believable character and not just an actor reading from a script, then in my opinion, that's still the single most important factor when selecting voices.

Personal opinions on the pitch, tone, delivery, speed etc. of a voice are always going to vary. But everyone can tell when an actor's performance sounds forced or like they're reading lines. So as long as that's avoided, everything else just comes down to character traits and a player's personal preferences.

Bingo. The delay on the narrator was craaaaazy long. I read rather fast. I didn't have any troubles with Al (or from the same perspective, the GK1 narrator) because I felt that the sound quality was poor, or the sound actor was just pathetic. Instead, the voice that was intentionally chosen irritated me. It was less a "Wow, how whiny" and more a "I don't think I can sit through that for too long" at first. My first playthrough may have been text only, but I decided I'd have to take it to continue and feel good about myself.

But to find Curry's Gabe Knight off? It was perfect! Could that accent have been more facetious or Southern? I think not!

Yeah, I think that the voice of Al could have been a little less grating. I've referred the demo etc to several friends (all adventure game afficionados) and the title character's voice was enough to drive a lot of them off of it. They might come back some time in the distant future; I expect them to, in fact. After a fair bit of time to grow accustomed to it, I had practically no problem with it. At the same time, I was among those screaming "ARGH CAN I KILL YOU DAMMIT" to begin with, and may have taken the same route had I not committed myself.

If you think about it, Gabriel Knight (1) was a great game with an unbelievably irritating narrator, though. Most people were willing to sit through the narrator there - but again, a different era, not to mention the fact that the narrator could be disabled without disabling Tim Curry's lovely Southern accent. (I'll admit it; I was amongst those who did it. I know that it fit the whole "voodoo" scheme of things, but goddamn was that voice irritating.) Long story short - you may have gotten a few more customers offa the voice, but would have had to change the storyline entirely. I'm aware that the voice was (at least partially) used to make Al even less likable (much like Larry Laffer, he's the man you love to see get snubbed in the face, because he really does deserve it - although, in this case, it's for being such an irritating weakling) - and I'm willing to accept that. Besides, while playing through, I found myself hoping that Al would get beaten up more - that's the great thing about a character like that.

I'll admit, though - I felt kinda sorry for Larry. At least his demands were reasonable.

no worries, i expected as much, but it can never hurt to ask. thanks

I know what you mean JustLuke but if for example Sierra stopped at 4 or even 5 of the "Quest" games then we would of never had KQ6, LSL6, LSL7, SQ5, SQ6 etc etc which are arguably the best in the series.  

KQ6: Eeeh. Not the biggest fan of the King's Quest genre regardless, but if I was to go with any one game as the "definitive best" it'd probably be KQ3. It just felt a little off to me.
LSL6/7: Okay, this is just WRONG. These were the worst in the series. LSL 2/3 really hammered in the surreal humour without making nigh-impossible situations for Larry to get stuck into ("Hmm... world's (i think, sexiest) girl pageant judge? Nah, not off the wall enough. Let's have him win another game show - and give him a free ride to an exclusive resort. Filled with women. But we should probably calm it down from there, and just give him a luxury cruise...")

... My point made, I think.
SQ5: I preferred SQ4, but they were two very different games, and I feel much the better for the existence of this little gem. (SQ6 never managed to spark fancy with me; it just... didn't have that oomph, you know?)

Long story short: It comes down to who you ask. If I was to pick a 'worst' of each of the multi-multi sequel'd Sierra games, they'd be:
SQ6 (just wasn't Space Quest, sorry)
KQ8 (again... I half expected Connor to be accidentally called Lara at some point mid-game. And where's the royalty, eh? KING'S quest. )
PQ4 (This thing wasn't Police Quest. It was more like an episode of CSI.)
QFG3 (Notice how serious this game is? Gurrrg. QFG5 had more comedy to it than this did, but not by much. QFG was always supposed to be a respectably funny action/adventure, not an action adventure with the occasional pink elephant.)

The problem with sequels, in my opinion, is the onus placed upon them to somehow replace, or fortify, the position of their predecessors; some have done this beautifully (QFG4... well, this game was a perfect fit, I've gotta say. It had lots of comedy, a touch of adventure and believable drama, turning itself into something I really liked) - others do this pitifully (Police Quest 4 changed the onus upon interpersonal relationships between assorted members of the police, to, uhh, some deranged killer and an angry... oh, I don't even want to get into it.) This all said, I enjoyed KQ8, I enjoyed QFG3; they just felt as though they should be a different franchise or something, and this doesn't help in the "sequel" department, if you're with me.

Mmmh, no one has posted anything in weeks. I really hope this is the calm that precedes the storm, and all of a sudden I'll open the site tomorrow and I'll find Al Emmo has finished beta testing and is ready for shipment!    Yeah, right...

Seriously, how is beta testing doing? And BTW, you know, Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine is a name that triggers the idea that there'll be different adventures for Al, like Al Emmo and the Canadian Vampire or so (who was it, btw, I kind of recall somebody was obsessed with you turning Al into a vampire from Canada or something like that. Go figure. ). I mean, are you planning to make Al Emmo a saga like Sierra did with most of their characters?

I know it may sound stupid to ask if you have already planned the future when you haven't  even released your first game, and that many things will depend on how it sells and all of that, but hey, we need to discuss SOMETHING in these forums, right?  

So, after years working in Al Emmo...Would you go for a second chapter in Al Emmo's saga or would you prefer to start fresh with another type of game?

That's just silly!

... Everyone knows, Chinese vampires, not Canadian. Chinese vampires are those ones who just keep jumping up and down; Canadian vampires are just people who enjoy the cold, sheesh.

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?la ... an+vampire

The results don't lie!