Forums > Game Forums > Police Quest Collection > Jim Walls vs Darryl F. Gates
The Fabulous King (1332) on 5/18/2007 5:41 PM · Permalink · Report
Does anyone remember these games? Typical Sierra adventure games with horrible gameplay (I forgot to walk around my car = game over). But that is not what I wanted to talk about here. No, what interests me more is what those games tell about the policemen behind them. Jim Walls was the influence on the first three games, Darryl F. Gates on PQ 4. And judging by on those vibes I got while playing the games, it seems that Darryl has a much more angrier, cynical view of humankind. PQ 4 basically consisted of one gruesome perversity after another, while the first three games were much more friendlier in their attitude. So, I was thinking that we could analyze them by their games and see what we can conclude.
Let the discussion begin.
Unicorn Lynx (181664) on 5/21/2007 3:52 AM · Permalink · Report
PQ are the only classic Sierra adventures I haven't played. So I can't enter the discussion... but I have a question: how would you rate PQ compared to SQ and Larry?
The Fabulous King (1332) on 5/21/2007 4:31 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I think they are on the same level of quality/dreadfulness. Space Quest games are the ones that I hold the most love for amongst the Quest series that are not Quest for Glory. Police Quests suffer from "Walker the Texas Ranger"-ish writing and some dry repetitive police procedures. In my opinion, Space Quest 5 (I havent played the sixth) and LSL 2 and 3 are better than the first three PQ games. The rest of them belong into the same box (although Space Quest is definitely funnier). PQ 4 interests me because I think that it gives us some insight into the soul of Daryl F.Gates (the way he felt about things) - of course he didnt write it, but still. I find it that PQ 4, thanks to Daryl F.Gates involvement, has gained some greater historical value.
Zovni (10502) on 5/21/2007 3:29 PM · Permalink · Report
The thing with the Jim Walls police quests is that the idea behind them was to simulate real-life police procedures instead of showcasing a police drama storyline. And the gimmick goes way beyond the usual stuff one associates with a tv show and thus that is why you get penalized for not doing seemingly stupid stuff like performing proper signals, using cones on a highway crash-site, walking around your cruiser, filing paper-work, etc...
The third one is when things start to get interesting as they moved a bit away from the gimmick and threw in a more 80's action movie kinda feel with that whole bit about the serial killer attacking your wife... Gate's PQ continues to elaborate over that so its the most cinematic/ less-gimicky game in the series, for better or worse.
Damn... now I want to replay it, all I remember was the interrogation scenes and the digitized graphics.
General Error (4328) on 5/24/2007 12:30 PM · Permalink · Report
Well... I can only really talk about the AGI / SCI0 adventures (everything as long it doesn't have any VGA graphics :-). That's the games up to Larry 3, SQ 3 and PQ 2.
In direct comparison, I'd prefer SQ and Larry over PQ, because they're more anarchic and definitely much more funny. Yet PQ is not a bad game. You get this realistic feeling that you play a real policeman, with all the problems and boring procedures you have to do. The drawback is that you need the manuals to play the games, otherwise you won't know what to do in certain situations -- you're always required to fulfill the correct police procedures. Of course, another drawback for me as pseudo-anarchist is that very conservative feeling, but hey, this game is all about law and order, so one shouldn't expect otherwise... It's definitely not a bad game.
Indra was here (20745) on 5/26/2007 3:01 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Only thing I remember about Police Quest was Sonny Bonds hitting on "apparently" hitting on the Chief's wife, when you pull over a Porsche for speeding.
Look at headlights
Nice.
But I was never interested in the Police Quest series. Probably, because it was 'too real' compared to other titles by Sierra. SQ was Sci-Fi. Heroes Quest and KQ was Fantasy. Even LSL was "fantasy" since kids had no idea was being a "man" was like. Hehe. The only reason why I ended up playing PQ was probably because of Sierra. Already familiar with the game style.
The Fabulous King (1332) on 5/26/2007 4:53 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Seems like I am the only one who has played all the Police Quests so I`ll answer to my own post.
Anyway, the differences between Jim Walls and Daryl F. Gates: both had shitty things in them, both had freaks of nature, drugs, etc. but Daryl`s game was full of hatred.
The first three games, despite the shitty things were full of optimism and friendliness towards the human race. Now in PQ4 I could really feel that "we should shoot all the drug-addicts" makes sense in some twisted way. I could really feel that how tempting it is to go all punisher on people. PQ4 IS hatred: there were rapers (rappars... how is the right way to say it... rap artists?) promoting violence against police, there were fat stupid nazis, there were reporters maliciously aligned against your honest hard-working cops and trying to blame them everyway they could, there were corpses of innocent children in the dumpsters, there were psychos with gender issues that you had to burn to death.
Now the first three PQ games didnt turn the blind eye on such stuff either - There were shootings, there were drugs, there were side plots where one of the officers' children is hooked on cocaine, etc - but they didnt make feel that I should hate the world. Now it may be because Jim Walls was a bad writer and couldnt portray these things the way he intended to (unlike Daryl Jim wrote his own games... at least thats what the wise people on internet keep telling me), but I think it`s something else. Daryl was a chief in L.A, Walls a patrol cop somewhere in California. I guess big cities corrupt.
Anyway, the reason that IMO makes Police Quests unique is that they allow us to get inside the heads of these policemen and compare the attitude of both men towards the world. And perhaps a chance to understand that who are those people that look after law and order.
BurningStickMan (17916) on 5/27/2007 3:09 PM · Permalink · Report
My take on the four pretty much matches yours, DI. Walls did start as a terrible writer, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was pressure from Sierra to keep the first game "lighthearted and clean" to match the rest of their catalogue. Really, PQ1 (AGI) was a coloring book compared to the others. Walls did get better and more serious with PQ3 (though he lifted a number of cop-movie cliches to do it), and its serial killer/cult story makes the best comparison to PQ4. Or Blue Force with its revenge-minded, jaded character. In either you can still clearly see the difference in attitudes.
I think PQ4 shows what kind of man Gates really was, and certainly matches the impression I got from him in his media quotes. The game seems to be Gates saying "If you knew what I knew, and had seen what I'd seen, you'd understand why I have to do anything necessary to protect the city." It could be seen as an attempt to justify his career I suppose, since all of his nightmares come 100% true in the game - maniacal roving gangs of black kids with guns, the media trying to bring the police down, crazy-ass white supremacists trying to assassinate you in public, etc. I'd probably be able to say more and make more connections if I had lived in L.A., but I did get the feeling that you were supposed to say "Wow, Darryl... you and all your stereotypes were right!" at the end of the game.
And I hadn't considered this, but DI brings up a good point. I don't think I ever felt love for any of the characters in PQ4. Hatred, definitely. Resentment toward the media. Superciliousness toward a number of other characters (I half expected Carrey to pat the dimunitive female evidence officer on the head or pinch her cheek for doing a good job), duty and responsibility toward the citizens - but not a feeling of love for any of them or pride in the city. Sort of a curious feeling that the world is worth fighting for, but the people in it are not. There's some almost-sympathy for the greiving mother and the little girl, but it seems like you use both simply as leads to continue the investigation.
Walls definitely seemed to think of officers as public servants, while Gates took a more insular "police vs the world" outlook. I'll admit that maybe this is simply because the story revolves around solving the murder of an undercover officer, so most of your investigation and locations are focused on finding the killer and protecting other officers. And it is a bit hard since we have three games to judge Walls by and only one for Gates, but overall I agree that optimism vs hatred view is the best way to sum up their differences.
The Fabulous King (1332) on 6/5/2007 10:48 PM · Permalink · Report
Hey, thanks for answering with a long well thought out post. I must say, the reviews on Just Game Retro are really good and entertaining to read. I like their honesty.
BurningStickMan (17916) on 6/6/2007 4:21 AM · Permalink · Report
Thanks for the compliment, and for reading. We started out as another Seanbaby/ Angry Video Game Nerd kind of operation, but I soon saw that most print reviews from the time these games were released aren't being archived online, and newer reviews for older games are generally either short and indifferent, or more "comedy" writings riffing on crap games. I now try to write my reviews like they're the only ones going to be around in 30 years. I hope that isn't the case, but it helps us focus and be thorough. And maybe be useful too.
Also just finished SWAT. Seems like Gates merely opened the door there and L.A. SWAT is the one that actually influenced the direction of the game, but again it's a tight-knit police vs. the world view. Less... well, grumpy than PQ4, but definitely not Walls. And man, they HATED the media.