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Police Quest: Open Season (also known as Police Quest IV[a]) is a 1993 police procedural point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It is the fourth installment in the Police Quest series. Departing from the fictional setting of Lytton, California from the first three installments, Open Season follows police detective John Carey as he investigates a series of brutal murders in Los Angeles.
| Police Quest: Open Season | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Director(s) | Tammy Dargan |
| Producer(s) | Tammy Dargan |
| Designer(s) | Tammy Dargan |
| Programmer(s) | Doug Oldfield |
| Artist(s) | Darrin Fuller |
| Writer(s) | Tammy Dargan |
| Composer(s) | Neal Grandstaff |
| Series | Police Quest |
| Engine | SCI |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Windows, Mac OS |
| Release | November 1993[1] |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The game was produced in cooperation with former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) chief Daryl F. Gates, who had been recently ousted for his involvement in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.[2] Gates replaced former series director ex-California Highway Patrol officer Jim Walls, who left Sierra around 1991.
Open Season received mixed reviews and underperformed compared to previous entries. An updated CD version was released in 1996. An indirect sequel and spinoff, Police Quest: SWAT, was released in 1995. Since release, the game has been criticized as a racist and "reactionary" depiction of crime in Los Angeles.[3]
Gameplay
editOpen Season uses mouse-based point-and-click gameplay similar to the previous Police Quest III and other contemporary adventure games. Icons for actions such as "walking" and "speaking" are used rather than a text-parsing system as seen in the first two Police Quest games. The player uses these actions to interact with characters and investigate crime scenes.
Like previous Police Quest games, Open Season emphasizes the following of "realistic" police procedure and will penalize the player for failing to do so. The player will suffer negative consequences for violating protocol, failing to file paperwork, or committing sexual harassment.[4]
The game features full-motion video, with much of the imagery based on video recordings of actors or real photographs of Los Angeles. The 1996 CD version replaces in-game written text with audio narration.
Plot
editLAPD robbery-homicide detective John Carey is dispatched to investigate a homicide in a South Central alleyway. Carey finds his best friend and ex-partner Bob Hickman dead alongside an eight-year-old boy. Carey investigates the murder as a gang killing, but over time five more victims are found mutilated in public places and Carey learns the crimes are the work of a serial killer.
Carey's investigation eventually leads to a local movie theater. After being questioned, the theater owner gives Carey a cup of tea and a free movie ticket. Carey passes out while watching the movie and has a vision of the theater owner dressed in women's clothing. Carey wakes up and is thrown out by the owner.
Later, with the aid of his police dog, Carey discovers the serial killer's house and a secret passage leading to the movie theater. Carey finds a captured woman but is knocked unconscious. After waking up, and having realized the theater owner is the killer, Carey fashions a makeshift flamethrower, kills him, and rescues the woman. The game ends with the Los Angeles mayor presenting Carey with the LAPD Medal of Valor.
Development
editOpen Season was the first entry in the Police Quest series to be developed without former series designer Jim Walls, who left Sierra due to undisclosed circumstances.[5] The game was developed in Sierra's SCI engine.
Sierra had three box designs in consideration for the game: A bloody hand reaching for the title, a file folder, and the Los Angeles city skyline. The company had a focus group vote on them, and the file folder design garnered almost no votes, with the other two covers splitting the majority. The final decision was reached because parents in the focus group often had a negative side comment about the bloody hand design, so the skyline cover eventually won.[citation needed] The game was released in November 1993.
Whereas previous Police Quest installments included a police procedure handbook that functioned as a proper game manual with relevant gameplay information, Open Season included an actual LAPD policy handbook that, while informative, focused more on LAPD resources such as radio codes, uniform dress, and legal regulations, but largely lacked information that would be relevant in the actual game.
The 1996 CD release of the game included audio dialogue, a two-minute promotional video, and copies of official LAPD documents.[6]
Reception
editThe first four Police Quest games totaled 850,000 sales by late 1995. However, Markus Krichel of PC Games noted that "interest on the part of the gamer fell slightly" with Open Season (Mainly due to the absence of creator Jim Walls, and those who did play the game weren't happy playing as anyone besides the series's classic protagonist Sonny Bonds), which led Sierra On-Line to experiment with a new direction for the series with Police Quest: SWAT.[7] According to Sierra, combined sales of the Police Quest series—including SWAT—surpassed 1.2 million units by the end of March 1996.[8]
Computer Gaming World stated in February 1994 that "Police Quest: Open Season evinces a remarkable degree of work-a-day police realism as a result of Gates' contributions", with "marvelous digitized backgrounds".[9] A longer review in March 1994 stated that the game had succeeded "at so many levels", that its realism and "seemingly endless amounts of" police procedure offered "larger implications about our society and its struggle against the drug machine". The reviewer noted that treating NPCs with the same "lack of consideration" players do so in other games "seems incredibly damning—and heartrending—because it's true to life. We treat each other, the game implies, in our attempts merely to cope with the problems with which we are faced, like NPCs". The magazine concluded that "Open Season tells that story magnificently".[10]
James V. Trunzo reviewed Police Quest: Open Season in White Wolf #43 (May, 1994), giving it a final evaluation of "Very Good" and stated that "If you don't enjoy meticulous attention to detail, you're going to hate this game. If you're thinking about taking the next police exam, you can use Open Season as a primer."[11]
Next Generation reviewed the Macintosh version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "the ultimate Sierra police-based game is still a fond dream to look forward to; and in the meantime we can still keep ourselves amused with the Leisure Suit Larry series."[12]
In a retrospective 2013 review, Adventure Gamers gave the game 2 out of 5 stars and lambasted it for constant backtracking to find what the player missed, pixel hunting, an unsatisfying ending rendering most of the plot irrelevant, and flat and stereotyped characterisation.[13] PC Gamer, in a 2015 entry of its Reinstall retrospective series, found the police work bureaucracy a chore while enjoying more the game's reactions to out-of-line actions, and likewise criticised the game for pixel hunting, ethnic stereotyping and a disappointing ending making most of the preceding story superfluous.[14]
Controversy
editOpen Season was met with some controversy over its portrayal of minorities. In the game, most African Americans use exaggerated African-American Vernacular English (e.g., a witness introducing himself as "I be Raymond Jones the third"), and numerous businesses are owned by immigrants who also speak in stereotypical accents (e.g., a convenience store owned by a Chinese American who speaks Engrish).
Although credited as the game's author, Daryl Gates did not write the game's storyline and denounced the depictions, insisting they were not his idea. Gates claimed that the story had been penned by Sierra writer Tammy Dargan, a former segment producer for America's Most Wanted; Dargan said the African American dialogue was based on Fab Five Freddy's rap dictionary Fresh Fly Flavor.[15]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ The game is listed as Police Quest 4 (PQ4) in the manual. It is also shown in the file names and the credits, and when exiting the game in DOS, "Thank you for playing Police Quest IV: Open Season". The number does not appear on the title screen.
- ^ Fyfe, Duncan (January 18, 2018). "How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s". Waypoint. Vice Media. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
- ^ Cannon, Lou; Lee, Gary (1992-05-02). "Much Of Blame Is Laid On Chief Gates". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2018-11-22.
- ^ Fyfe, Duncan. "How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s". Vice. Retrieved 21 February 2025.
- ^ Andy Kelly (2015-08-12). "Police Quest: Open Season was a detective game that wanted you to play by the book". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 2024-10-03. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ^ Walls, James. "Rap Sheet - Jim Walls Reloaded". Archived from the original on February 16, 2016. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
- ^ "Making Of Police Quest IV: Opean Season". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2013-10-16. Retrieved 2007-06-02.
- ^ Krichel, Markus (November 1995). "Spezialeinheit". PC Games: 40, 41.
- ^ Sierra On-Line Form 10-K (Report). Bellevue, Washington. March 31, 1996. pp. 7–9. Archived from the original on April 16, 2018.
- ^ "Taking A Peek". Computer Gaming World. February 1994. pp. 212–220. Archived from the original on 2017-10-03. Retrieved 2017-11-09.
- ^ Owens, Dennis (March 1994). "The Killing Game". Computer Gaming World. pp. 44–45. Archived from the original on 2017-11-10. Retrieved 2017-11-10.
- ^ Trunzo, James V. (May 1994). "The Silicon Dungeon". White Wolf Magazine. No. 43. p. 44-45.
- ^ "Finals". Next Generation. No. 9. Imagine Media. September 1995. p. 99.
- ^ "Police Quest: Open Season review". Adventure Gamers. 2013-05-10. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ^ Andy Kelly (2015-08-12). "Police Quest: Open Season was a detective game that wanted you to play by the book". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 2024-10-03. Retrieved 2024-10-24.
- ^ Tirella, Joseph (April 1994), "Video Vigilante", Vibe, USA, p. 23