King's Quest VIII: The Mask of Eternity

King's Quest VIII is a 1998 computer adventure game of the famous King's Quest series. It was the only part of the series where the player is not King Graham or one of his blood relations.

Story

The Realm of the Sun is a place above Daventry where the Archons, magical beings, guard the Mask of Eternity. Their chief turns evil and shatters the Mask into pieces. Daventry's inhabitants turn into stone and the land sickens. Connor is the only person to remain alive because a Mask shard fell on his feet. Connor then is appointed by a wizard to travel through different lands and collect all the Mask pieces, eventually arrive to the Realm of the Sun and fix it, bringing life back to his land.

The fan remake of King's Quest II, shows (in a form of prophetic flash back), the knighting of Connor by King Gaham, and his anointment as his heir. Although this is not canonical, it is the only moment when the two characters establish some relationship.

Distance from the rest of KQ

It was released to very poor reviews and poor sales. It was considered by many fans to not be a "real" King's Quest because of its Quake-like violence and 3D graphics. To indicate its differentiation, they peferred to refer to it as KQ:MOE rather than KQ8.

This chapter of the series is cosmologically inconsistent to the others. Here the Dimension of Death replaces the Realm of the Dead of KQ VI. Also, KQ VII showed that above Daventry is Etheria, ruled by Oberon and Titania, while here this is replaced by the Realm of the Sun and the Archons (some believe that there is no inconsistency since Etheria is above Eldritch, not Daventry. On the other hand, the intro of KQ VII indicates that Etheria can be seen from Daventry).

External link

• MobyGames' entry on King's Quest VIII