What is Quest Quest: The Quest For Quests? (or Qu’Est-ce Que C’est Quest Quest?)
Young or old, big or small, barbarian or archer or cleric, every member of Italic Pig has earned battle scars from many an RPG. While many can say they’ve swung their broadswords at the latest - Witcher, Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls & Warcraft, to name a few - these are only the most recent iterations of a well-trodden and well-loved staple genre. But don’t forget the Diablos, the Ultimas, the King’s Quests, the Zeldas… some of us even go far enough back to remember the Zorks.
It has been a dream here to develop an RPG for some time, but, being Italic Pig, we always look for the narrative twist... is it possible to conquer a well-loved genre in a way that’s never been done before?
Quest Quest: The Quest for Quests is our answer: the story of a legendary Hero searching for quite possibly the most elusive final boss of his hack-&-slash career – his own sense of self-worth in an enlightened world that no longer requires his talents.
Quest Quest environment concepts by Jakub Bojanowski
The story goes a little something like this:
Legend tells of a Hero. A Hero from another time. Another age. Five other ages, actually.
You know this Hero; his details may change but his story is generally the same. He has slaughtered sorcerers, vanquished vampires, trounced trolls, and orc-viscerated orcs. His armour is black with the dried blood of the slain, his sword is longer than his shoulders are wide, and his helm is encrusted with so many amulets and ability enhancers that the only thing keeping his head upright is his complete absence of a neck. He’s got 600 potions in his bag of holding, but he’s saving them all for a rainy day.
At the end of the Fifth Age, the Hero faced his most colossal enemy yet - the Ultimate Source of All Evil. Through Rankrot Forest, deep under Mount Angst, close to the cold cold heart of the planet, Hero raised his mighty sword and brought it down upon the neck of the enemy. Evil was eradicated, but had one last trick up its sneaky sleeve: our unstoppable Hero was encased in enchanted crystal formed of obsidian, dark matter and nightmares, and lost to time.
Meanwhile, the surrounding lands flourished.
Aeons later (or perhaps only a week or two) the crystal shattered. Our Hero stepped out into a new age. It’s an age without conflict, without violence, without hate. Worst of all, it’s a world without quests.
It would seem that by annihilating evil itself, our Hero has worked himself right out of a job.
Quest Quest ‘Hero’ concepts by Jakub Bojanowski
Aaaaand that’s where Quest Quest: The Quest For Quests begins… An olde-tyme hack-&-slash Hero sporting the ultimate armour, brandishing the ultimate weapon and embodying the ultimate magic, winding his way back through the fertile and peaceful lands he once ravaged, in an effort to rediscover his humble beginnings, not to mention his own purpose.
In a sentence: It’s an over-the-top deconstruction of the entire RPG genre as you’ve never seen it before
But wait, you say… If it’s the Quest for Quests, will there be Quests? Well of course there will be quests. It wouldn’t be an RPG if there weren’t any quests, would it? You may have to look a little harder for them than usual, but they’re there for you. Trust us.
But hold on, you say… Will there be battles? An RPG without battles is just a narrative adventure, isn’t it? Listen: before you start smashing stuff, YES, there’s battle mechanics in this non-violent landscape, but not exactly in the way you’d expect. Just like our Hero needs to reinvent himself to fit into this new enlightened world, you’ll need to reorient your traditional knowledge of the genre and remap familiar bits of gameplay into unfamiliar bits that sorta work the same way, but then again, not the same at all.
But back up, you say… I can’t even really process that last paragraph. How can you offer fighting without fighting? Answer: Look, sorry, but we’ve really got to crack on with making this game right now. You’ll just have to wait for a future devblog to discover more about it.