Game 149: Police Quest: Open Season (1993/1996) - Introduction

by Alex

Here I go again on my own . . .
. . . playing another Jim Walls game! That’s right! It’s Police Quest IV: Open Season. Also billed as just Police Quest: Open Season, or Daryl F. Gates Police Quest: Open Season, like it says on the box.

Whatever you call it, this game is the fourth installment in Sierra’s long-running—

Wait. Daryl F. Gates? As in, former LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates, the guy in charge of the force during the Rodney King fiasco in the 1990s? That guy, and not Jim Walls? Things just got real around here. Who’s going to write all the bad jokes and design all the bad puzzles?

And isn’t Daryl F. Gates a racist?

Daryl F. Gates

Well, as with most things, its complicated. And controversial.

You see, there’s a lot of—

Ha ha, psych! If you think I’m touching this toxic pile of radioactive goo with or without the proverbial ten-foot pole, you’re dreaming. No, we’re going to stay on topic here, and that topic is adventure gaming. Haven’t I gotten into enough hot water on some of the posts I’ve written for this site? Do I want to throw any more gasoline on these dumpster fires? Isn’t it better for me to just chicken out and refuse to address any of this?

Yes it is. But that is cowardly, and it isn’t giving you, the reader, the full picture, the story behind the game, which I think is necessary for you to have the most accurate lens with which to view this playthrough. I’m not going to get into the blow-by-blow behind Gates’ history or how he came to work for Sierra, because others such as George Starostin, The Digital Antiquarian, and VICE Magazine have already done this. For the purposes of this introduction, I relied heavily on these sources as well as MobyGames, the Police Quest Omnipedia (take this with a grain of salt; one author really likes to throw politically incendiary bombs all over the place), and everyone’s favorite, Wikipedia (take this with a grain of salt as well). In fact, take all of these sources with a grain of salt. The Digital Antiquarian does great research, but tends to throw in his own rather inflammatory political opinions quite liberally, and VICE Magazine is, well, VICE Magazine.

Some ground rules before we begin:

1. These are touchy issues involving race, class, and politics, and I am going to keep things as neutral and objective/unbiased as possible. In other words, I want you to learn enough about this game to get a clear picture about the history and controversy behind it, and not learn about me.
2. I am going to be civil. I ask that all commenters do the same. If anyone begins hurling baseless accusations and insults, I will be asking the site administrators to delete such comments. It’s gauche and low class and needlessly inflammatory to name call and cast aspersions upon anyone for the mere act of disagreement. Be civil. Be smart. And be kind. And when in doubt, just ask yourself-what would Jim Walls do?

He’d stick himself in the game, of course!

No such luck with Mr. Gates, however: his role in Police Quest IV, it seems, was more that of consultant than anything else. One Ms. Tammy Dargan produced and directed the game, as well as designed and wrote it, apparently bouncing certain story ideas off of Gates. The rest of the game’s crew was headed by composer Neal Grandstaff, Darrin Fuller serving as lead artist, and Doug Oldfield programming the whole thing.

One quick clarification and spoiler alert: My comment about there being no Daryl F. Gates self-insert in Police Quest IV: isn’t entirely accurate—he does appear as himself in the game’s ending, but we’ll get there in time. For now, it’s enough to note that you won’t be seeing Gates’ pixelated visage every time you die in this game.

Without getting too far afield, here’s a brief rundown of Police Quest IV’s key players:

• Tammy Dargan: Ms. Dargan apparently had prior work experience on the American TV Show America’s Most Wanted. Did this make her uniquely qualified to helm the creation of a Police Quest game? Who knows. Hired by Sierra in 1991, she worked on multiple games, including Quest for Glory III: Wages of War, The Dagger of Amon Ra, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, and the remake of Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel. She would later work heavily on the Police Quest: SWAT games when the series moved away from its adventure game roots into a more tactical direction. Gates, incidentally, was instrumental in the creation of the SWAT team, but we’ll get to that.
• Neal Grandstaff: In addition to having an excellent last name for a musician, Mr. Grandstaff has a long career as a musician and music educator which you can read about at his website. He got into video game composition in the early 1990s, providing music and sound design for games like Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier, Quest for Glory III, Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, Phantasmagoria, Pepper’s Adventures in Time, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, and Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out. Later, held work with Dynamix after its purchase by Sierra on games including Red Baron, Earth Siege, and Trophy Bass.
• Darrin Fuller: Mr. Fuller has a venerable pedigree as an artist or art designer on several Sierra games, including King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Lost Secret of the Rainforest, Quest for Glory III, and The Dagger of Amon Ra. He’d later work on the PlayStation games Twisted Metal III and Twisted Metal 4, as well as NFL GameDay 2003.
• Doug Oldfield: Mr. Oldfield’s name is likely familiar to any fan of Sierra’s games, being involved in the programming of games such as Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon, Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder, King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, King’s Quest VII, Conquests of Camelot, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Lost Secret of the Rainforest, Phantasmagoria, Police Quest III: The Kindred, and Codename: Iceman. We won’t hold those last two against him.

Clearly, this was no B-team assigned to Police Quest IV. And my goodness I’ve played a lot of these games for this blog, five of them by my count (the Police Quest I remake, Police Quest III, Leisure Suit Larry 6, Quest for Glory III, and Freddy Pharkas). And to this group who had previously worked on quite a few games together, Sierra co-founder and all-around head honcho Ken Williams swapped out Officer Walls for Chief Gates.

“So what happened to Jim Walls?” astute readers might be asking. Good question! Unfortunately, there’s a paucity of details, but at some point during the production of Police Quest III, Walls had a falling out with Sierra and left the company, along with some other Sierra employees, to start Tsunami Games/Tsunami Media, Inc. Walls himself, on his personal website, merely states that “after PQ 3, circumstances developed causing me to decide it was time that I leave.” This is interesting, because other sources indicate that Walls left late in the game’s development, but prior to its release; this abrupt personnel change may explain why Police Quest III totally falls apart near the end—for more, read my playthrough of that game linked above.

Regardless, this is a minor point: Walls left Sierra and made one more police-themed game with Tsunami: Blue Force.

Blue Force is not good-read my play through of it linked above. All I’ll say about that game is: male bonding... it’s great!

So perhaps Sierra dodged a bullet by parting ways with Walls, but they sure ran into another one by partnering with Gates. One final note about Jim Walls: according to The Digital Antiquarian’s write-up, there was a feeling among many Sierra employees that what happened to Walls was unfair. If TAG commentor, former Sierra employee, and all-around great game designer Corey Cole feels like sharing any insights, that would be most welcome.

All right, it seems like I’m avoiding the subject, doesn’t it? I’m not, but I think this background helps explain how Gates got involved with Sierra in the first place.

Gates joined the LAPD in 1949 and by all accounts was a good cop and a hard worker, becoming Seargent, then Lieutenant, then Captain, then Inspector, before being named chief in 1978, a position he would hold until his retirement on June 27, 1992. Some notable cases he worked on include the Manson Family murders, the Hillside Stranger, and an investigation into the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. He was also there for the Watts riots. The Rodney King beating and subsequent riots also happened on his watch.

Like with a lot of people, Mr. Gates is a complex individual. So let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: Did Daryl F. Gates hate black people? Based on what I’ve researched, I’m going to say “No.” No, I do not think he hated black people and wished them harm. But I do not think he particularly liked them. Gates certainly said some offensive things about blacks over the years, in addition to instituting and implementing policing practices which were very controversial and very unpopular in the black community. Was his heart filled with hatred? I don’t know. Gates seemed to want to reduce crime, and it appears that some of his measures were effective. But at what cost?

As discussed earlier, Gates helped develop the SWAT team concept, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) Program most American readers will be familiar with (and hilariously parodied in the cartoon Big City Greens with the program C.U.S.S.; Can’t U Speak Sweetly?, the anti-swearing campaign brought to school when Cricket Green learns the (fake) curse word “blort” from his grandma), the Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID, (later disbanded after allegations of abuse), and CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) units, established to fight rising gang Violence.

This last was perhaps most controversial. Gang violence in LA during Gates’ tenure was bad, and getting worse, and at the risk of upsetting readers, was perpetrated heavily by, and heavily against, black and Latino Los Angelenos. So there’s a racial component which got real ugly real fast: mostly white officers utilizing heavy handed, violent policing techniques in non-white neighborhoods against non-whites is never a good look. It also didn’t help that many officers were reported to hold bigoted views and acted upon them, spurred by Gates’ violent anti-crime rhetoric. Worst, Gates, as the leader, didn’t seem to do anything to rein in his more zealous officers’ excesses, and in fact blamed subordinates for things like police brutality. Passing the buck is also never a good look. There was, of course, the controversial “chokehold” thing. It got ugly. The aftermath of the Rodney King incident was just the icing on the cake and, despite a late-career push towards police reform, Gates was forced to resign in 1992. He would later pass away in 2010.

Gates was and remains a divisive figure in modern American history. His apparent indifference to police brutality and the collateral damage of his crime-fighting techniques and police militarization worried and angered many. In the interests of fairness, as the gangs escalated in numbers, armaments and criminality, police had to respond; police have a duty to protect law-abiding citizens from harm. But it is possible to go too far, and that is one of the biggest criticisms of Gates. That and the alleged racism. But I am not here to bury Gates or to praise him. I am but here to provide context to Police Quest IV. Read the sources I cited for more and draw your own conclusions. The purpose of this exercise is to provide some background to the controversy surrounding this game.

Back to Sierra: when looking to replace Walls for Police Quest’s next installment, Sierra kahuna Ken Williams aimed big and, through a quirk of fate, piqued the recently retired Gates’ interest in working on one of these computer game thingies . . . a fact that was most certainly not popular at free-wheeling, California liberal Sierra On-Line. According to many Sierra employees at the time, Gates’ presence was at Sierra was most certainly not welcome, and many were aghast that their boss, who from what I can tell shared their values, was cozying up to Gates. Again, if Mr. Cole would like to provide more insight, I’m sure all of us adventure-gaming historians would love to hear it.

Interestingly, one area of Criticism in Police Quest IV is the dialect of its black characters, which heavily use African American vernacular English (AAVE; what used to be called Ebonics when I was a kid). Funnily enough, it was the very liberal Tammy Dargan who wrote it, with the help of a book, in order to add authenticity. Offensive? You be the judge. In my opinion, having met many black Americans who speak in AAVE, and many who don’t, it doesn’t stick out as a “thing” in this game, and I’m not going to get offended on behalf of black Americans. I mean, AAVE is an actual American accent or dialect, no different from New Yorke or Southern or Midwestern or Appalachian. However, your mileage may vary, but of all the criticisms of Police Quest IV, this seems the silliest to this writer.

Tammy Dargan and Daryl Gates

So was Williams aware of Gates’ controversial reputation? Reports differ, but one thing that is clear is that Williams openly courted controversy, because controversy equals eyeballs, and eyeballs equal sales. I haven’t found any sales numbers, but reading between the lines, I glean that Police Quest IV sold merely okay. Perhaps sales is a reason the series morphed into a tactical squad-based simulation shortly thereafter.

Oh yeah, I have failed to mention an obvious, but important point. No more Sonny Bonds! No more sunny Lytton! No more Jesse Baines and/or his family messing everything up! We are firmly in real-world Los Angeles, stepping into the footsteps of one Detective John Cary.

What a long introduction! Let’s get on to the game itself.

Police Quest IV was released in 1993 or DOS, Windows, and Mac, with a CD-ROM version with all the attendant bells and whistles coming out in 1996. The 1996 version is what I played 30 years ago, and honestly aside from the very first scene and a few isolated portions I recall not liking, I don’t remember much. I’ll be playing the 1996 “talkie” version of Police Quest IV for these write-ups, downloaded from GOG.com.

First, the manual. It’s an actual, abridged version of the LAPD officers’ manual with no game play relevance whatsoever. Or maybe there are puzzle solutions contained inside. I don’t know—it’s over 100 pages. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Reading is for nerds. On to the game.

We start out in medias res. On the title screen, as a helicopter flies over L. A. by night, we hear a voice over the intercom alerting that there is an officer down . . . and then we’re plopped into the game. It’s an effective intro that does a great job of setting the scene. So far, so good.

It’s 3:30 a.m. on a Monday in South Central L.A. Detective Carey is informed that the mutilated body of LAPD officer Bob Hickman has been found in an alley. As Carey informs the coroner, Hickman was not only Carey’s classmate at the police academy, but his best friend—Carey is even Hickman’s daughter’s goddaughter. So this is personal.

We gain control over Carey after this initial conversation, so that means it’s time to go over the interface. It’s your basic Sierra point-and-click fare of the era, with one key difference being a persistent menu bar at the bottom of the screen. This has all of the typical action icons: “Walk,” “Look,” “Action,” “Speak,” the selected item, the inventory, the options menu, and a help feature. Note that there is no option to have speech and text; it’s one or the other. As I want to experience the majesty of 1990s Sierra voice acting, I’ll be playing with speech and taking copious notes.

And of course, there’s the graphics: since Sierra was going for gritty and realistic, it’s all digitized actors and photo-realistic backgrounds. It’s actually not horrible, but it’s definitely a product of its time.

The inventory screen is what you’d expect, and simple enough. You can select objects, examine them, manipulate them, the works. Carey begins the game with his wallet, his gun, fully loaded (the game makes a point of telling you it’s a Beretta 92F, which was the actual sidearm used by the LAPD at the time), an extra ammo clip, Carey’s badge, some spare change, keys (to Carey’s home, office, and car), handcuffs, a notepad and pen, and his Parker Center ID (the Parker Center was the LAPD’s headquarters from 1959 to 2009).

I look at every item, and get points for looking at Carey’s badge (3 points, 3 total).

I take some time to look at everyone in the area. There is a civilian leaning against a fence who seems curiously interested in what is going on, as well as three other police officers: Julie Chester, the criminalist from SID (Scientific Investigation Division), Deputy Coroner Sam Nobles who filled Carey in as the game begins, Officer Malcolm Allen standing in the lower left, and Officer Bruce “Woody” Woodbury standing in the lower right.

I’ve played enough Jim Walls-designed games to know that there’s always important stuff in the player character’s trunk, and Police Quest IV is no exception. I use the keys on the car in the foreground—there in the lower left corner (2 points, 5 total), and get taken to a separate screen showing the interior of Carey’s trunk in gripping, photorealistic, hi-res detail:

Why, you can almost reach out and feel the delicate faux-woodgrain top of the detective kit! I take the kit (2 points, 7 total) and poke around the rest of the trunk. There’s some police tape and an Ithaca 12-gague shotgun that Carey can’t take at this time.

Let’s talk a little bit about the voice acting. It’s all right. Doug Boyd voices Carey, and he sounds like a perfectly ordinary guy. Fun fact: Boyd did the voice of someone named Specs in the Telltale Games Sam & Max series. The other voice of note is actor and comedian Bob Sarlatte as the narrator, and goodness why is he such a jerk? It’s not like he wrote the lines like “It’s your car, Carey” or “You can’t take the shotgun” or whatever, it’s the sneering condescension with which he delivers the lines that makes me want to bring him down to the Parker Center for some enhanced interrogation. Why was this such a thing in the 90s, making fun of the players? “You’re dead, idiot. Nice going moron, you’re such a clown. Thanks to your incompetence, the entire universe is ending, all your friends are dead, and your girlfriend and your mom and sister are banging the evil dark lord. Way to go, loser. Want to play again?”

Damn bro.

The kit has evidence baggies, a 24-inch prybar, a jar for collecting evidence samples for when plastic baggies just won’t do, rubber gloves for not leaving fingerprints/performing full body cavity searches, a flashlight also for performing full body cavity searches, chalk for making notes during full body cavity searches, and a putty knife for unspeakable uses during full body cavity searches. Just wait until we get to the full body cavity search mini-game!

(That’s a joke, people).

The next thing to do, of course, is to speak with everyone, observe, and take notes, in real-life and in game—you get a lot of points in Police Quest IV for performing proper police procedure (the four Ps!) by clicking your notebook on nearly everything under the sun.

• Officer Allen: Officer Allen says he and Woodbury found Hickman’s body while on patrol, and nobody else in the alley. Hickman was an undercover officer working this neighborhood. Until discovering the body, Officer Allen had never met Officer Hickman before.
• Officer Woodbury: Officer Woodbury gives Carey the crime scene log (3 points, 10 total). He was first on the scene with Officer Allen. They found the body while on patrol, radioed in backup, and set the perimeter. Officer Woodbury apparently knew Hickman and was, quote, “shocked” to see him there. No one was in the alley when they arrived on the scene; people from the neighborhood came to see what was going on later.
• Raymond Jones III: The witness, Raymond Jones III, will talk after Carey shows him his badge (2 points, 12 total). He states he is from the neighborhood and claims he was “just hangin’” and was just out for some fresh air, and didn’t see anything. He won’t tell Carey anything. I click Carey’s notebook on Mr. Jones (2 points, 14 total), and Carey notes that something seems a bit off about him.
• Deputy Coroner Nobles: Nobles talks like a Mr. Spock wannabe. He tells Carey that Hickman’s cause of death was “cervical contusions, possible asphyxia,” and that there was no poison found in his system. Weirdly, the index finger on Hickman’s right hand had been removed. Lastly, Nobles tells Carey that he won’t know much more until he conducts an autopsy. I note—in real life, not in the game—to visit Nobles if I get a chance later in the game.

There’s also some graffiti on the wall of the convenience store, but Carey doesn’t seem to think it’s anything special. Oh boy. Time to take a deep breath and take a gander at Hickman’s mutilated corpse.

Yikes. First things first, I don’t have to use the rubber gloves because the narrator tells me not to touch anything and contaminate the evidence. I notice something on the ground between Hickman’s right arm and torso—it’s a lipstick-stained cigarette. I use the notebook on it (3 points, 17 total), and then outline it with some chalk (4 points, 21 total). Carey notes the contusion and burn marks on the body, and I note those with the notepad as well (3 points, 24 total). Moving on, Carey sees that Hickman’s holster is empty, which means “another gun on the street.” Lastly, I outline the body with chalk (4 points, 28 total).

Carey finishes up and speaks with Officer Chester, who tells Carey to let her know when she wants crime scene photos.

I keep poking around, opening the green dumpster against the convenience store’s wall (5 points, 33 total) and good God, there’s a dead child inside!

I’d forgotten about this, and it’s legitimately shocking. Horrible. The discordant music that plays heightens the unsettling effect. The boy’s body is covered in bullet holes. He looks to be about six or seven. There’s nothing else around. I use the notepad on the body (2 points, 35 total) and exit the scene. Man, if Sierra was out to highlight the horrors of gang violence, they really did a good job with that here.

When I get back to the main screen, Mr. Jones is gone, so I can’t question him further. I wonder if I did something wrong here, but decide to press on. Nobles asks what Carey found, and Carey tells him they’ll need another ambulance. Officer Allen pipes in about the graffiti, noting that it looks like a gang symbol he’s run across before. Carey makes a note of that (3 points, 38 total) before ordering Officer Allen to call HQ about the dead boy and to run a search on missing children in the area, Officer Woodbury to canvas the neighborhood for information about a missing child, and Chester to snap some pics of Hickman, the dead boy, and the graffiti as another coroner comes to shroud Hickman’s body and take it away.

What a morning.

We then smash-cut to 5:30 later the same day at the Parker Center, where Lieutenant Donald Block, a “career man” and Carey’s boss, tells Carey that he’s been assigned lead investigator on this case, admonishing Carey to try and put his personal feelings aside and conduct the investigation in a professional manner. His orders: comb the neighborhood for any clues. There are some leads already: the dead boy has been identified as Bobby Washington. Lastly, Lt. Block tells Carey that Hickman had been having some troubles at home, potentially related to the stresses of the job and working undercover. Lastly, the lieutenant asks Carey to extend his condolences to Hickman’s wife Katherine.

There’s a jaunty, Dragnet-esque tune playing in the background as Carey, resolute, stands up and prepares to get to work. My to-do list:

• See the Coroner
• Visit Bobby Washington’s family
• Visit Hickman’s family
• Comb the neighborhood where Hickman and Washington were found
• Track down Raymond Jones III

Session Time: 50 minutes.
Total Time: 50 minutes.

Score: 38

Inventory: Wallet, gun, clip, badge, spare change, keys, handcuffs, notepad and pen, Parker Center ID, crime scene log