Game 163: Goblins Quest 3 (1994) – Introduction

 By Ilmari

Is Crash Bandicoot making a cameo?

It is again time for that inevitable question that necessarily raises its head…

…is this a Lemmings clone?

I kid you, of course. As the discussions under the intro posts of the previous Goblins games have shown, a goblin is different enough animal from a lemming to discredit the comparison. Besides, as attested by the Goblin Law of Diminishing Eyes (the number of is in the name of the game equals the number of goblins, and if the game number n has m amount of is, game number n + 1 has m – 1 amount of is), in this game we should have only one goblin to control, making it even less like population spanning Lemmings. Heck, by that standard, Goblins 3 resembles Boulder Dash more than Lemmings!

We should probably cover this game at some point. Maybe even a marathon going through all the sequels and the clones – surely there cannot be that many of them

As you can observe from this very introduction, the probability – nay, even a certainty – of an author going self-referential and recycling their old jokes increases exponentially as a series just keeps going on. This does not bode well for the game itself: what more could the producers do anymore, when there's less and less new directions to take the concept?

Good thing about covering a new game in a series I'm so familiar with is that I can be very quick about the people responsible for the game. Again, Pierre Gilhodes gets the lion share of the credit for the design, with Muriel Tramis as a project manager, and other Coktel Vision workers in the team. Well, I guess there’s something novel in the game, which seems like a contribution by the parent company, Sierra: the inevitable Quest on the title.

Enough with the chitchat and on to the game!

Launching the game does not really explain what it is all about, since the intro animation doesn’t tell you very much. I seem to be on a ship, but that's about all I can say about it.

Reading the manual clarifies the story more. In fact, it seems to be full of spoilers for the whole game, which seems a peculiar choice. What I can safely glean from it is that I am playing as Blount, a journalist sent to interview Queen Xina and King Bodd, rulers of rival monarchies who contest for a labyrinth in the caves of Mount Foliandre. The labyrinth is some kind of test, the first winner of which shall receive eternal benefit for their people. The guardian of the labyrinth has died recently of old age, and his daughter Winona has vanished, together with the key to the labyrinth. Blount is on board a flying vessel travelling to Mount Foliandre, but the vessel is being bombarded with big rocks, while the crew has decided to abandon the ship.

Getting to the first actual game screen, I find that the interface has couple of interesting aspects that explain the game a bit. Firstly, I can access Goblins News, which is apparently an account of the story so far, written by Blount himself. For now, it tells nothing beyond what was told in manual, but I expect this will change when I progress further.

Secondly, I can access a screen showing all the locations of the game, my current position in relation to them and the particular goal of this location. Remembering the difficulty I had in finding out what my goals were at times in the earliers Goblins games, this is a feature I am glad to see. Now, my goal is, pretty obviously, to find my way away from the ship: not by using the obvious parachute lying around, but with the help of a barrel. We’ll see next time how successful this suicidal seeming route is. In the meantime, feel free to guess the score!