I have not played it, but I would imagine it's classic Sierra / AAA: a tremendous volume of excellent work done in service of an awful game design.

More thoughts about Sierra. I think in terms of creativity and game design chops they were a flatline. However they got into making games very early. They were good at making functioning games, shipping them with impressive graphics, presentation and features, in the 80's that was a big deal so they were successful.

Industrial films are competently made and great for making some presentation about your new factory or something. But they're not shown in theatres. Sierra games are like that, they are the gaming equivalent of 'Zaat' imo.

I thought the Space Quest series were mostly good.

If you narrow your focus to nothing but their 3 worst adventure series, sure? They made WAY more games than that though.

Otherwise it's the exact opposite. They were either quality games like Quest for Glory, some decent-ish games that were nothing spectacular, or total shovelware level dreck like the endless Hoyle series, edutainment, or completely forgotten nothings. The intersection of "early AAA production values" and crappy game was very low.

That's just the developer. As a publisher? Jesus, the entire Dynamix library alone.

and I assume you're being sarcastic on these graphics holding up and the voice acting being excellent.

I can't imagine this game being worse than V, and that is (or was) one of the more highly-regarded games in the series despite having absolutely atrocious dialogue and puzzle design as well as the usual sickly-sweet Roberta Williams crap.

You know what game rules though? The Black Cauldron. Interesting, very open-ended experiment with a great interface compromise between the text parser and full mouse control. A vision of a different, better future imo. Not a flawless game by any means, but as close as Sierra games got. Imagining a cross between that and Quest For Glory and getting a bit nostalgic for something that never was.

One thing I'll give Sierra credit for was attempting to inject some game-y elements. The point-and-click/no dead-ends philosophy of Lucasarts was the right way to go for pure adventure games and a great antidote to the pointlessly obtuse, arbitrary nonsense logic that Sierra games tended toward, but it hobbled the genre as a whole. Sierra games having multiple puzzle solutions, optional puzzles/routes, mini-games/manual dexterity and bringing in stuff like RPG stats were good ideas hobbled by mediocre talent. What really poisoned these experiments was leaning too hard on the 'save early save often' mantra, to excuse some truly bad design and a lack of respect for the player. The Lucasarts 'foolproof puzzles' was an incomplete solution to this issue.

Myst really did ruin everything, but it couldn't do it alone. A landscape where that was an appealing alternative needed a Myst to ruin it.