Original Release: QuestForGlory@hotmail.com, 2001, PC
Fun and ambitious fan-made Quest for Glory / Sierra / cultural parody that pretty much went unknown in its day but had its carcass dredged up in recent years when Woke Moralizing started to = clicks
Quest For Glory 4.5 (PC, ?, 2001)
Where to Buy: Freeware, download at Adventure Game Studio
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: Master-B
Quest For Glory 4.5, a free-ranging parody of both adventure games and pop culture circa the turn of the millennium, isn’t strictly an adult game. I feel it at least meets the Leisure Suit Larry bar for inclusion on this site, however, what with being full of bawdy and off-color humor and sprinkling in the occasional nudity and sex scene. Plus we need something fresh around here, and we haven’t had a point-and-click adventure in a while.
Anyway, QFG 4.5 has been a contentious fan game for some time now … arguably the most contentious ever in the world of adventure games, short perhaps of the Quest For Orgy series. This is due primarily to its repeated portrayals of poor and working-class whites as dumb, violent, redneck, homophobic worshippers of the Confederate flag who … hah no I’m kidding actually it’s because it has a few of the sort of gay jokes that were bog standard prior to about 2015.
A product of 2001, QFG 4.5 was made in a time when this sort of humor was generally not looked twice at (compare it to Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, which made it onto consoles three years later). Most of the “controversy” blew up over a decade later, when now-Woque columnists and social media clout-chasers exhumed it as a convenient source of virtue signaling.
The game has thus taken some unfair punches in terms of getting swept up in this generation’s silly excuse for a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by goofs scraping the bottom of the barrel for fresh content, but I’d say it also got an unfair reputation for being janky and unplayable. Built with a primitive version of Adventure Game Studio, QFG 4.5 basically uses the VGA remake of QFG1 as its base but subs in all sorts of assets from other Sierra SCI1-era games and even the occasional bit of decent original art. If you browse around online, you’ll find lots of complaints of constant crashing and it being held together by the programming equivalent of baling wire and duct tape. I didn’t find it (at least the DOS version) to be that exactly … the only time it ever crashed was when looking at character stats, which you don’t really need to do, and otherwise I had zero problems with it in DOSBox from start to finish.
Though it’s set in Spielburg, the “4.5” in the title indicates it is chronologically placed between QFGs 4 and 5. The Hero takes advantage of some downtime to attend an Adventurers Correspondence School reunion, only to learn that he has none too great a reputation for his work in Spielburg as the valley has apparently descended into a mess once again. Upon returning we find the now-ruling Baronet is doing a questionable job, the Sherriff has been murdered and some sort of social club of Italian gentlemen now appears to be de facto in charge of the town.
Though the QFG1 engine retains the fighting, there is a minimal amount and I don’t think any is completely necessary to finish the game with any character choice. Your character determines more how the game’s central economic challenges will be handled than anything else, and also sort of functions as a difficulty setting: the magic user comes across money and love spells that serve as major shortcuts and has the easiest time, the thief has the unique ability to fence stolen goods and thus also has an easier time with money (with a bit more work) … the fighter will be struggling to feed himself off of random monster battles and whatever money can be scraped up around the game environment and from quests (though investing at the town bank can help in this regard).
I found QFG 4.5 fairly well-made (considering the limitations of the time and the budget of apparent $0), fairly well-written, and fairly funny. There are a few great gags, like the squad of bum hippie squatters that have invaded Eranas Peace and are straining the magical fruit supply (leading a frustrated Dryad to ask you to just exterminate them for her). Characters are given lots of flavor text to describe the local goings-on and quest-related matters, and often even have distinct and amusing personalities. At first it feels a bit like you’re wandering around taking quests just because they’re there, but all the random do-gooding around the valley comes together nicely in a pretty well-done extended endgame sequence that sees the fruits of your efforts repeatedly get you out of danger and traps as you finally unravel the conspiracy plaguing the valley.
Unfortunately, we may never know any more about the creator other than that they used to solicit correspondence at the email address “QuestForGlory@hotmail.com” (now almost certainly defunct). Back in 2001 Sierra was still something of a juggernaut publisher and the QFG series was still a couple years off its last release and peddling collection packages, so in apparent fear of legal retaliation they utterly kept any identifying information away from the game and its website. These days we know game companies will just issue a C&D to get your fan game download site taken down, if they bother doing anything at all, but the early 00s were a more innocent and naïve time.
Links
The original game download page (downloads no longer work)
Videos