Introduction

The King's Quest Wiki tells many sad stories concerning the eighth entry in the series, including the reason for the lack of a Roman numeral - Roberta Williams didn't want people to associate this travesty with the earlier, good games in the series. Okay, I paraphrase, but the fact remains that this game isn't very good, and Sierra knew it. It abandons everything that the King's Quest series had - interesting stories, challenging puzzles, and the beloved main characters of the royal family of Daventry. (Not that the women were particularly beloved anymore after King's Quest VII.) Instead, Sierra decided that, since adventure games were on their way out (just ask Lucasarts, right?), they would tap into a genre that was growing in popularity - the first-person shooter.

No, I'm not kidding. Mask of Eternity features a brand new main character, who can run, jump, and fight with melee and projectile weapons, and a first-person perspective that's about the only way to use a crossbow reliably. The engine was developed separately by a company that ultimately failed to produce the actual engine, and they finally rushed it to the street without any QA, making it the first game I ever played that required a downloaded patch to be completed. Not that I blame the testers for not wanting to play the game - it was huge by 1998 standards, requiring so much hard drive space for each area that the game had to uninstall and reinstall itself each time the player moved to a different place. And even now that we have terabyte hard drives, there's no way I know of to get around that. (I'm sure there's some sort of patch out there for it, but that would ruin the experience and cheapen the LP.)


This is the hero of our game, Connor something. This is probably his least goofy grin.

I beat this game so long ago that I've forgotten almost everything about it, so except for what I've learned through my dozens of attempts to get a good recording, I'm playing this game more or less blind. Don't worry: if it comes to searching for stuff, I'll edit out the boring parts where I don't know what I'm doing. All you'll ever see are the boring parts where I do know what I'm doing. Speaking of which, here are the videos:

Part 1: How to level up without actually killing anything.

Part 2: The Last Unicorn Got REAL Ugly

Part 3: We're sorry, but the good part of the game is in another castle

Part 4: Taking everything but the axe to the grindstone

Part 5: Learning the rope

Part 6: The second biggest fetch quest in the game... I hope

Part 7: Dimension of Death? Doesn't ring any bells

Intermission with silentbrains:

Daventry bonus vid 1
-Conversation cancel with "Pathetic Beast"
-Death by Water Wheel, Grinding Stone, and Waterfall
-Extra descriptions
-Scripted sequences for getting the crossbow with various weapons
-Easter eggs- Wedding photo, painting, nude mode [SFW...sorta]

Daventry bonus vid 2
-Daventry weapons- regular and alternate attacks [last one is "SFW...sorta" also]
-Footrace- Running vs Jumping
-Alchemist's hut w/ silly comments

Daventry 3DFX demo
Using Zeckensack's Glide Wrapper to translate Glide API calls to OpenGL. This vid shows off some of the major cutscenes and areas to be affected by Glide and there is some side-by-side comparing.
(Also, the Castle of Daventry is almost the same in Software. Too bad, they could have made it really moving.)

Part 8: It's like American Gladiators, but less American.

Part 9: I wanted in on that betting pool... I have gold!

Part 10: The most females we'll probably ever see in one video

Part 11: You know what we haven't done enough of lately? Fight skeletons.

Part 12: All portals lead to nowhere

Part 13: Every puzzle has an answer. So why can't I figure any of them out?

Part 14: Everything makes sense now except the stuff I care about

Part 15: I still have no idea what happened, but no more Dimension of Death

Part 16: Exploring the health benefits of swamp food and drink

Part 17: A giant cockblock for all the tentacle hentai fans out there

Part 18: When retreating, don't bother pulling your bowstring, it's wasted effort

Part 19: The potion of invisibility was meant for the swamp witch... so I didn't have to look at her

Bonus video: On the proper separation of hazards found in the swamp

Part 20: The game finally rips off something that came out earlier.

Part 21: The first thing in the game to cost more than one gold coin

Part 22: That bridge puzzle that's in lots of games

Part 23: Is what you're doing at all different from what every other gnome I've talked to is doing? No? Then shut up already!

Part 24: I wash this game down with Rolling Rock

Intermission 2, now with more silentbrains!

DoD, Swamp, Gnomes bonus video

-Easter eggs, including "There is a curious slot in this pedestal"
-Some 3DFX stuff
-Some other bonus stuff

Part 25: We made up that story about a chosen hero because we're too lazy to go on quests

Part 26: White men can't jump, or at least that's going to be my excuse for this entire video

Part 27: I don't think even Jumping Flash had this much jumping in it

Part 28: No, really, this is basically Bump 'N Jump without any bumping. And Connor loves bumping

Part 29: I'd make a Gong Show joke, but I'd get gonged for it

Part 30: Never take a dead hero's sword - if it were any good, he wouldn't be dead, would he?

Part 31: Dwarves have apparently never heard of safety railings

Part 32: I'm pretty sure he's flirting with those snow women

Part 33: Just a bit late to make a Winter Olympics joke about all the ice skating

Part 34: In which I find everything except what I need to find

Part 35: The tower is a lie

Part 36: There are three boss fights in this video, but only two count

Part 37: Connor completes all of his worldly tasks and earns his allowance

Part 38: The Realm of the Sun - home of the Mask of Eternity, a bunch of nagas, and Satan

Part 39: A locked door! My one weakness!

Part 40: I get it, I have to fix a fake mask before I can fix the real one

Part 41: April Fool's Day bonus joke ending

Finale: Good thing I saved all those potions and crystals

And we'll finish with some silentbrains:

Barren Region, Frozen Reaches, Realm of the Sun bonus video 1
Barren Region, Frozen Reaches, Realm of the Sun bonus video 2

-Ice Queen Freeza's stupid LSL7 Easter Egg
-Some 3DFX stuff
-Some other bonus stuff
-King's Quest 2 (vga) by AGD Interactive- "The Madness of King Graham"

And my final word:

Bonus video 2: I really think it's better this way

FANART!

Cheese Bread always produces the best comics:



silentbrains shows us how Errol Flynn would deal with the enemies in this game:



HexiDave gives us a graphical representation of the music in Daventry:



Grimbo found an alternate solution to a puzzle that gave me some trouble:



Space Bird pays tribute to the best word ever:



Lurking Haro figures out how Connor drinks from so far away:



Myron offers a different method:



JossiRossi notices that, while Connor can pick things up from quite a distance, there are still some things too far away: