King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human is the third part of the King's Quest series of graphic adventure games. Sierra On-Line created and made the game available in 1986. It first came out for the Apple II and MS-DOS computers. Later, it was made available on other computer systems. This was the first game in the series that did not have King Graham as the main character.

Gameplay

In the game's world of Llewdor, most areas and locations are shown on a magic map. When the main character, Gwydion, arrives in a new area, he can use the magic map to return to a previous area.

A real-time clock is shown at the top of the screen. Some actions in the game depend on the time displayed on the clock.

King's Quest III was much harder than the first two games in the series. Players had to type each magic spell one line at a time from a spell book that came with the game. These spells were part of a copy protection system, though the game also used disk-based protection.

All versions of the game use the AGI engine. Gwydion moves using cursor keys, and players give commands through a text parser. In the original version, 1.01 (released on November 8, 1986), pressing the escape button pauses the game, and there are no menus. Players access commands using the F keys, "Ctrl-", or by typing directly. Pressing F1 shows a help file that lists all available commands. This version used disk-based copy protection.

A later version, 2.14 (released on March 15, 1988), was included in many King's Quest collections over the years. This version removed the disk-based copy protection. Pressing escape brings up a menu, and arrow keys can be used to select options. This version also includes speed controls in the menu.

Plot

In King's Quest III, the story moves from Daventry and King Graham to the land of Llewdor, where a boy named Gwydion is held captive by the wizard Manannan. According to the introduction, Gwydion, who is 17 years old, has been kept as a servant by Manannan for his entire life. He cooks and cleans for the wizard in a home located on top of a large mountain in Llewdor. From this high place, Manannan uses a telescope to watch the countryside, the shoreline, the ocean to the east, and the endless desert to the west.

When Manannan is away, Gwydion takes his chance to escape. He enters the wizard’s laboratory, reads Manannan’s book of spells, and then travels through Llewdor to gather ingredients for the spells. After solving many puzzles to collect the ingredients, Gwydion uses a spell to turn Manannan into a cat and escapes. He also learns from an oracle that he is actually Prince Alexander of Daventry and that his sister, Princess Rosella, is about to be sacrificed to a three-headed dragon that is attacking the kingdom.

After defeating Manannan, Alexander tries to buy a ship to Daventry but is captured by pirates. He later uses another spell to put the pirates to sleep, escapes, and steals their treasure. Alexander travels through mountains and reaches the outskirts of Daventry, where he finds Rosella about to be killed by the dragon. Using one of Manannan’s spells, Alexander creates a thunderstorm and kills the dragon with lightning. He rescues his sister, and they return to Daventry, where they are reunited with King Graham and Queen Valanice. The Magic Mirror, which had been dark since Alexander’s kidnapping, is restored. King Graham decides to give his adventurer’s cap to one of his children. At the end of the game, Graham tosses the cap to Alexander and Rosella, who catch it.

The game’s title is a pun on the proverb “To err is human, to forgive divine” by Alexander Pope. The character Gwydion may have been named after Pope once it is revealed that he is actually Prince Alexander. The events in King’s Quest III lead directly to the story of King’s Quest IV.

• Gwydion: Gwydion was kidnapped as a baby by Manannan, who used magic to put his family to sleep and took him to Llewdor to be a servant. Because he was kidnapped when he was very young, he does not remember his family. He was to be killed on his eighteenth birthday, so he decided to escape before that day. Using forbidden spells, Gwydion learned to understand animals and met an oracle, who told him he was Prince Alexander of Daventry. He learned he must save his sister from the dragon or lose his family forever. Gwydion escaped Manannan, crossed the ocean, defeated the dragon, and reunited with his family. When he returned, the Magic Mirror, which had gone dark after his kidnapping, was restored.

• Manannan: Manannan is an evil wizard who kidnapped infant boys and trained them as servants, only to kill them when they turned 18. He ruled Llewdor for many years and allowed thieves and brigands to prosper. He kidnapped Gwydion in revenge for King Graham’s rescue of Valanice from his sister, Hagatha (King’s Quest II). Later, King Graham captured Manannan in a sack of peas during a battle with Mordack. After Manannan’s defeat, he was never seen again, and his fate remains unknown. His name is based on a wizard from Welsh myth named Manannan Mac Lir.

• Rosella: Rosella is the princess of Daventry and Alexander’s sister. She was about to be sacrificed to the three-headed dragon when Alexander arrived, killed the dragon, and rescued her. She is the main character in the next game.

• Graham: Graham is the king of Daventry. After Alexander’s kidnapping, the kingdom suffered earthquakes and was attacked by a three-headed dragon that demanded the sacrifice of maidens. Graham, struggling with grief, allowed girls to be sacrificed, even his daughter, Rosella. Rosella later forgave him, but Graham still dreamed about tying her to the stake.

• Valanice: Valanice is the queen of Daventry. The kidnapping of her son Alexander was a great loss, reminding her of her own kidnapping. She tried to cope by studying history and teaching children. She taught Rosella to read and fight for her, but she could not stop the dragon from taking her daughter.

Development

King's Quest III was the largest and most complex game Sierra had created at that time. Roberta Williams, the game's designer and writer, said: "My earlier games, from Mystery House to King's Quest II, were all good. But they were mostly simple treasure hunts, where the goal was to find and collect items to win. Because of technical limits, it was hard to make stories with more complicated plots." By the mid-1980s, new computers like the IBM AT, Amiga, and Macintosh had faster speeds, more memory, and standard hard disks. This allowed developers to make games with more detailed and complex stories than before.

Roberta Williams worked with a team that included many of the same people from her previous games, but more people joined this time. Al Lowe, who made the music for King's Quest II, became the lead programmer for King's Quest III, while his wife, Margaret, created the music instead. Later, Al Lowe started his own game series called Leisure Suit Larry. Williams said: "Rosella was introduced near the end of the game; when I saw her on the screen for the first time, I suddenly imagined her having her own adventures in a future game."

King's Quest III was the first adventure game to include auto-mapping, with a "magic map" that players could use to teleport to most places they had already visited. Some fans disliked this feature, saying it made the game too easy. As a result, future Sierra On-line games limited the teleporting ability of magic maps. The developers also added a real-time clock, where actions in the game depended on the time shown.

The game was released on five 5.25" floppy disks and three 3.5" disks, making it Sierra's second-largest game after Time Zone (which used six disks). It was about 50% larger than King's Quest I or King's Quest II. King's Quest III had 104 screens, while King's Quest I had about 80 and King's Quest II had about 92.

Alongside Space Quest I, King's Quest III was among the first Sierra games to use DOS instead of self-booting disks. It was also among the first to support EGA and Hercules graphics. A year later, the game was re-released with the improved AGI 2.435 engine, followed by another version with the AGI 2.936 engine in 1988. The Apple IIGS version included better music and sound effects.

The game's manual includes a short story by Annette Childs that describes Manannan's previous slaves and their deaths. It also contains spells from The Sorcery of Old, which players needed to cast spells in the game (these spells were later reprinted in The King's Quest Companion).

King's Quest III was the first game in which Sierra used a manual-based copy protection system (though it was not officially intended for copy protection). Nearly all AGI games, including King's Quest III, used disk-based copy protection, requiring the original game disk to be present to play. This method was not fully effective, and unofficial copies were common (this check was later removed from "King's Quest Collection" versions). To complete the game, players had to create magic spells using alchemical formulas found only in the manual. Many players found this process excessive, as 140 of the 210 possible points in the game came from following instructions in the manual, leaving less room for creative puzzles. Starting with King's Quest IV, later Sierra games required less information from the manual for copy protection. Usually, a dialog window would appear once, asking players to enter a word from a specific page. The spells were not true copy protection but were considered a game feature, as most puzzles relied on them. The complete list of spells was reprinted in official guides like The Official Book of King's Quest: Daventry and Beyond and The King's Quest Companion.

A novelization of the game is included in The King's Quest Companion. The novelization is written as an interview between Derek Karlavaegen ("Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles") and Alexander, taking place after the events of the third game. This was created as a novel-style walkthrough to help solve the game. The "Encyclopedia of Daventry" in the first and second editions provided additional backstories and details about characters and objects from the game. The chapter "The World of Daventry" also included more information about the Land of Llewdor and its people. The book also contains copies of the spells from The Sorcery of Old, needed to complete the game.

Reception

King's Quest III sold 250,000 copies by February 1993. According to Sierra On-Line, total sales of the King's Quest series reached 3.8 million units by the end of March 1996.

Although generally well received and winning the Softsel Hot List Hottest Product Award in 1987, the release of King's Quest III in 1986 caused strong complaints from some gamers. They claimed the game was not truly part of the King's Quest series because it focused on a young slave named Gwydion and his escape from an evil master. Players only understood the connection between Gwydion and King Graham of Daventry after completing the game months later.

A review in Computer Gaming World described the game as very frustrating, especially tasks like climbing stairs and identifying objects from unclear graphics. The hint guide was strongly recommended to help reduce frustration. The reviewer advised new players to try King's Quest I first, as it was easier to play.

The "automatic mapping feature" was heavily promoted with King's Quest III, but it was not included in later games. Player feedback suggested the feature made the games less challenging. Roberta Williams stated, "KQ3 was very dark and used many magic spells. The basic idea was to find ingredients for 'black magic' spells and cast them. Some religious groups were upset about this."

In August 2016, King's Quest III was listed as number 50 on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list.

Fan remakes

There have been two fan-created remakes of King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human that were not officially approved. In 2006, a group called Infamous Adventures made a remake. This version added new content, such as extra scenes, new characters, more dialogue, full speech, updated locations, and hidden surprises. Most of the original puzzles stayed the same, but the spell system was made simpler. The team created this remake to show they could recreate the game with better graphics and sounds. In 2011, AGD Interactive released another remake called King's Quest III Redux.