King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human

Story

In King's Quest III, the game has moved away from Daventry and King Graham to the land of Llewdor, where a boy named Gwydion is being kept by the wicked magician Manannan. Gwydion was kidnapped from Daventry by the magician when he was young, and this adventure tells the story of his journey back to that land.

The player plays Gwydion in King’s Quest III. The major events of the story include breaking free of Gwydion’s captor wizard by turning him into a cat and escaping Llewdor, returning to Daventry where he frees Princess Rosella (Gwydion’s twin sister and daughter of King Graham and Queen Valanice), and finally discovering that Gwydion is actually the royal couple's lost boy, Alexander.

Because King’s Quest III initially shows no connection to the previous installments of the series – some fans initially criticized the third installment of King’s Quest for not tying into the previous games. Only after playing to near the end of the game did players find a connection to King’s Quest I and II.

Technology and Development

This was allegedly the first adventure game featuring auto-mapping, with a 'magic map' found in the game that can be used to teleport to most locations that the player has visited before. This feature was unpopular among some fans who claim it made the game too easy, hence magic maps in future Sierra games were more limited in their teleporting ability.

Copy Protection

King’s Quest III was the first game in which Sierra used a manual-based copy protection scheme. Nearly all AGI games (including King’s Quest III) have a disk-based copy protection, requiring the original game disk to be present in order to play the game. This wasn't entirely effective and unofficial versions were widespread. (This key-disk check was removed from the later released "King's Quest Collection" versions.) However, to complete King’s Quest III, the player needs to create a number of magic spells, through alchemical formulae that are only available in the game’s manual. Many considered the process slightly overdone – 140 of the 210 possible points in the game are obtained through simply doing what the manual says, leaving less room for real puzzles. Starting with KQIV, later Sierra games would open with a dialog requesting that the player enter word X from page Y of the manual.