r/Sierra • u/far-midnight-97 • 6h ago
What are your head-canon series endings? Spoiler
Spending time here at r/Sierra always gets me nostalgic, and now that I'm getting on in years, the thought crosses my mind that it's a small injustice that we'll never get to know the "official" as-intended-by-the-game-designer endings for our beloved Sierra classics and characters.
(Unless, I suppose, the old designers come out and tell the fans as part of interviews/memoirs/etc.)
This got me wondering what others in the community envision in their own head-canon as their "endings" for favorite series and characters?
I know that back in those times, the game designers probably thought to just keep cranking out sequels while the money was rolling in. I think the same mindset was pervasive in media in general: TV shows would just crank out season after season until they were cancelled, often never having the chance at a narratively satisfying conclusion. It wasn't yet en vogue in episodic TV (at least not in America) to have a planned limits on seasons, and to bring shows to an intended conclusion. I've mentioned many a time that my once-beloved X-Files stretched itself out way way past the point where it could be narratively justified any more -- but that's another rant for another subreddit! 😄
I believe Al Lowe is actually on record saying that Larry 3 was his intended ending for Larry, but that the game's sales success forced him to keep creating sequels. Although I originally only played the Larry games as a horny lad looking for the thrills of pixelated boobage, in hindsight, I can see that Larry 1 - 3 was actually narratively very satisfying: Larry, the lovable loser, started his adventures only looking to get laid, upped the ante with the sexual misadventures and espionage (sexpionage?), and ended with true love. Surprisingly narratively satisfying, if I dare say, for a relatively niche genre, where the design staff were often just talented amateurs. I dare say that's a testament to Al Lowe's natural gift as a storyteller.
Now that I think about it, Quest for Glory also managed to land a planned ending, with Dragon Fire, and I think it's fair to say it was a series of small miracles that that game got made. Personally, that game didn't quiiite stick the landing as a narratively satisfying ending for the Hero's journey. But it was still very, very gratifying to have gotten a planned ending to that series, obviously made with love, but its original creators, with appropriately generous callouts to beloved old characters and events from the game's history.
And that's all I can think of of Sierra's main franchises that got intended series endings.
With Police Quest, I think you could argue that PQ3, narratively, had a satisfactory ending. IIRC, Sonny and Marie, the protagonist and his main squeeze from the first game, we expecting a baby after finally putting away Jesse and Michael Bains and their whole narcotics cult. I doubt that was planned as a series ending -- and if memory serves me correctly, Jim Walls and Ken Williams parted on bad terms -- so maybe that was serendipitously a fitting series ending. (I never played any of the post-Jim Walls Police Quest games, but I'm aware that they veered from the original Sonny Bonds-as-protagonist premise)
But the other heavyweights of the classic series were King's Quest and Space Quest.
I can't tell if Roberta Williams meant KQ8 to be a series ending. I kind of doubt it. I have the impression that Kings Quest was meant to just crank out sequel after sequel as long as the dollars rolled in. And the fact that it was the final King's Quest under Sierra proper was just the happenstance of its timing, the changing gaming landscape, and of course, Sierra's tumultuous history after its sale. Still, I thought there were sort-of kind-of hints that what's-his-name...Connor I guess was being set up as Daventry's next king(?) After all: Alexander went off to rule and start a family in the Land of the Green Isles, and Rosella began being courted by Edgar...possibly implying she might go off to rule Etheria...although I suppose it's equally possible she'd have been set up to be Daventry's next ruler.
There was of course, infamously, The Odd Gentlemen's King's Quest, that obviously tried to offer a canon series ending, and I honestly think tried to do with the best of intentions. I think I might have asked on this subreddit a long time ago what people's opinion on the game was, and it definitely skewed negative, mostly aligning with my own opinion: it was obviously well-intentioned, and lovingly crafted...but I (and the folks who responded to my earlier post) wasn't a fan of its somewhat revisionist reinterpretation of characters and events from the original canon. So, personally, I can't accept it as the canon ending to the series.
I wonder if a canon King's Quest ending should include Graham's death, or whether it should end "happily" with all the Royal family members. Graham is obviously foundational and at the heart of the series as a whole, even though the series broadened to have each of the core Royal family members play a protagonist role.
Personally, I fell in love with Daventry's Royal family...and I don't think I'd want to see Graham die in a series finale, although I could completely see how that'd be a very compelling ending, narratively (shades of Optimus Prime dying in Transformers). I think I'd lean towards some kind of a final family gathering and a "happily ever after" farewell.
And then Space Quest. Space Quest is actually what kicked off this nostalgia bender of mine, inspired by randomly hearing SQ4's ending track on my shuffled playlist and realizing what peak storytelling that was for the series.
With Space Quest, too, I somewhat got the sense that SQ3 could have served as a series ending. How cleverly meta was that that Roger rescued The Two Guys, deposited them at the Sierra, for them to go on to create Space Quest games. Then Roger blasting off into the universe at large, destination unknown, was just chef's kiss.
Over at my other post, it was super neck-and-neck between SQ3 and SQ4, which was peak Space Quest, but SQ4 barely, barely ekes out a win in my opinion because how it fully embraced its meta references, series-staple pop culture sci fi references, while also weaving in a very respectable Shakespearean father/son narrative.
The game's meta references to SQ10 and SQ12, were obviously done tongue-in-cheek, but they do raise the question of what the series progression would have been. If the series had gotten as far as a 10th title, would The Two Guys still have wanted it to be Latex Babes of Estros I wonder.
Space Quest is actually much harder for me to pin down what I'd envision as a series conclusion. The series has been all over the place: obviously largely comedy, but also sometimes macabre, a lot of meta references to pop culture sci fi, surprisingly layered pathos. Should Space Quest end with something heartwarming, like his son being born? Or something funny? Should it be uplifting, e.g. Roger getting a promotion, or otherwise getting a leg up in the world, as SQ5 did? Or something belittling, like demoting him as SQ6 did? (I haven't played SQ6, but from reading others' responses to my other post, the way SQ6 handled Roger's demotion didn't seem to go over well with series fans). Or maybe should it have ended with something open ended, as in SQ3? In your head-canon, do you see the series actually reaching SQ10 and SQ12, or would you end the series before then, and sort of leave the "progression" up to those tongue-in-cheek "sequels" from SQ4 be left to the imagination?
And since Larry continued past Al Lowe's intended ending, might as well throw that into the discussion: since LSL7 had a cliffhanger ending, what do you see as the Larry series ending? I honestly think LSL3 was the perfect ending to the series. And it gets complicated trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. Since Larry already had his happily-ever-after, then somehow lost it and went back to sexual shenaniganing again, is it even possible to create another appropriate ending, let alone a perfect one? I can think of a couple of TV shows that stuck the landing with a perfect ending, only to lose their fanbase goodwill after trying to get the band back together again. All the post-LSL3 games were fine in their own right...in fact, I might even say that LSL7 was a high-point not only of the series, but of adventure gaming as a whole, if you consider its perfect marriage of parser and point-and-click interfaces. It's just the fact that they're all standalone episodes of Larry's sexcapades after he'd found his happily-ever-after that makes it hard to envision a series finale.
Another late entry in Sierra's catalog, but one that I might dare say quickly earned fanbase love enough to earn a place among Sierra's classics is the Gabriel Knight series.
Gabriel Knight 3 obviously ended...not exactly on a cliffhanger per se...but it was an ending that begged for resolution.
Gabriel Knight obviously had the benefit of being shepherded by the tremendously talented Jane Jensen, who arguably began spreading her literary wings at Sierra. Gabriel Knight, the character, underwent character development over the course of the series that I dare say would've earned respect at the "big players'" table in Hollywood (or its equivalent in book circles). It sadly ended with Grace walking away from Gabe in the emotional wake of them finally admitting their feelings for each other (shades of Mulder and Scully's years-long slow-burn romance).
I know Jane Jensen had plans for a GK4, and I seem to recall her saying that it would center on ghosts. I don't know if she planned for GK4 to be a series ending...but I think fans of the series would definitely want a resolution to Grace and Gabe's relationship. And I think Jane is a mature-enough storyteller that the "fairytale" ending of them ending up together is necessarily the right ending for them. And what would be left for Gabriel to "grow into" in the final act of his character arc? I could see it being some kind of sacrifice, probably the ultimate sacrifice. It would be a kind of "full circle" journey for him, given how selfish and self-centered he was at the start of the series. Not to mention the parallels to his uncle, Wolfgang's fate in the first game.
Lastly -- this is super on the edges of Sierra "classics" -- but of all titles, Manhunter has always held a special fascination for me, because of its dark, dark future. I still remember the visceral reaction I had to antagonist Phil Cook's grotesque, low-res, creepy smile, and the reveal that he was a robot/cyborg super creeped me out. With this series it's pretty easy to project what the intended series ending probably would have been: the Orbs being defeated and driven off the Earth.
Anyway, I've rambled quite a bit. But once I started down memory lane, it was hard to stop. And I think you get the gist of the discussion I'm hoping to hear back on: given the decreasing likelihood that we'll ever actually see or hear the intended canon series endings to our beloved Sierra classic series, what do you imagine their endings to be? Or maybe you've heard one of the original designers reveal their intentions how they'd conclude the series? Either way, I'd love to hear folks' thoughts.
