Video Game / Quest for Glory V

Our Hero reflects upon his enemies.

Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire is the fifth and last game in the Quest for Glory series, a 3D revival of the franchise brought about by fan request. After the events of the last game, the Hero finds himself teleported to Silmaria to discover the truth behind the murder of Silmaria's King. Many characters from previous installments are Back for the Finale, a mysterious assassin roams unchecked, a Prophecy of Doom lurches toward its inevitable fulfilment, all while the Hero competes with other characters in the rites to determine the next King of a land modeled after ancient Greek myths and legends.

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Contains examples of the following tropes:

• Actionized Sequel: Combat is a much larger part of this game. Especially if you are neither a Fighter nor a Paladin. Previous games of the series made it a point that thieves and magic users could complete the game with very little to no fighting - simply running away from random encounters and defeating potential bosses through puzzles and guile rather than brute force. Here, several mission objectives require one to fight, no matter what class they are. Also, wizards and thieves can suddenly use swords and shields, as well as new action additions such as helmets and axes.
• And the Adventure Continues: A possible ending. If you refuse to become King, you can say that you want to keep adventuring. Or in the case of paladin that you are needed more elsewhere.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The dialog trees are much better handled than past games. Rather than navigating through the dialogs in a MS-DOS manner (with parent and child topics), the dialogs are shown more akin to a file explorer, allowing you to select the topic you want on the spot. Selecting a topic will also turn it yellow, indicating you've already selected it.
• Anyone Can Die: Even if you win the game, you can still get an ending where almost everyone you care about is dead.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Wearing heavy armor lowers the hero's Magic stat until he takes it off, and makes his spells less effective.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Nawar, who does not even have a face (although she was easily the most memorable of the faceless concubines in the Emir's harem) in Quest for Glory II, returns as a love interest.
  • The owner of the Bank of Silmaria is the beggar who was in the street of Spielburg - having since wisely invested the money he was given. (He considers begging and banking to be surprisingly similar jobs.)
  • Toro. He was just sub-boss in the first game, a particularly tough fight for the fighter, but otherwise an enemy to bypass for the mage and thief. A foot note in the game pretty much, where as here, he's a big character and an important source of exposition.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Some of the Rites of Rulership boil down to killing a particular bad guy or monster. Asskicking might not equal authority on its own, but it's certainly a prerequisite.
• The Atoner: Arestes, if you get him arrested for the bank robbery and then heal his arm.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The mercenary general is tougher than any of his soldiers.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: At the end, you can become king, give up the throne to the next in line and have Elsa be queen, be king and marry her and have her as a queen, or give up the throne to her and marry her, becoming her king consort. One way or another, someone gets crowned ruler of Silmaria at the end of the game.
• Back for the Finale: The game's full of characters from previous installments to play up nostalgia and make it a grand sendoff for the series.
• Back for the Dead: If you play poorly, both Rakeesh and Ugarte can get killed off.
• Back from the Dead: Depending how you play it: Katrina or Erana. Word of God states that canonically, both are freed from Hades. invoked
• Bad Guy Bar: The Dead Parrot inn, ran by of course, Signor Ferrari.
• Bad Liar: When it comes to trying to bluff one more card than they have in bringing charges against Minos, Logos admits to, even if it came to it, not being a "believable" liar.
• Bank Robbery: The Thief is able to rob it not once, but twice. The Wizard or Paladin can track down a perp, who they normally wouldn't encounter in their main storyline. (The bank is never robbed when playing a Fighter, for some reason.)
• Bears Are Bad News: Bearmen and Grizzlymen armed with spears.
• Belated Happy Ending: Julanar is finally freed from her curse and with a man who loves her.
• Bilingual Bonus: The guards sometimes say actual Greek words, like "Yassas", which means "hello", and "Signomi", which means "I'm sorry".
• The Blacksmith: Pholus. Much like Issur from Quest for Glory II, he's a big jerk.
• Blow You Away: The whirlwind spell. Not truly damaging, but very useful to pin enemies in place, especially those pesky flyers.
• Call-Back:
  • Elsa reveals that Minos brought her to Silmaria because her reputation as a brigand leader led him to assume she had no scruples, and would therefore have no problem going along with his plan.
  • The Thermonuclear Blast spell: The list of spells in the manual for Quest for Glory III includes the Thermonuclear Blast. In that game, the blast only appears in the endgame, if the entity the demon is summoning gets through. In this game, someone has found a scroll for the spell, and gives it to the Wizard. It can be used to take out the final Dragon.
• Cheap Gold Coins: In a Call-Back to Quest for Glory III (whose moneychanger mentions it in one of his rumors), Drachmas are pretty strongly inflated. The cost in Drachmas of food and potions in this game is roughly equivalent to their cost in silver in the first game.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: In Quest for Glory III you're told never to cast the Trigger spell on a Wizard's staff, as it will activate all the stored spells at once and promptly explode. This was a Chekhov's Lecture in III^note During the final battle the Demon Wizard will use Fetch to pull the staff out of your hands, at which point you Trigger it to turn him into a smoking crater, but in V you'll find yourself facing Centaur Wizards wielding staves, which makes Trigger a One-Hit Kill spell.
• Chocolate of Romance: You can give chocolate candies called Sokolotak-ya to romantic interests (or whoever else, really). An assassin also plays off of the "secret admirer" cultural message by leaving drugged chocolate for various people. Eating the drugged chocolate he leaves for you is not good for your health.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Wolfie, who gleefully describes the problems that Silmaria is going through (as well as his personal problems) as if they were the greatest things ever and doesn't seem to grasp the gravity of the events occurring on the island.
• Continuity Nod: As the final game in the series, the game is full of nods to the first four:
  • Elsa mentions that her father has retired and Barnard has become Baron of Spielburg.
  • The Katta merchants in the market tell you that Zayishah has become ruler of Raseir.
  • Rakeesh tells you that Johari and Yesufu are married now.
  • You learn from Gnome Ann that Punny Bones, the gnome from the fourth game, stayed at her inn for a while but left before the Hero arrived in Silmaria.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Dragon Fire spell. Sure, it can incinerate large group of mooks in a pinch, but it's a massive mana drain unless you're using a staff or have loads of mana potions. Lightning Ball or Frostbite are much more cost effective while still being deadly. They also work against the Final Boss, whereas Dragon Fire doesn't.
• Darker and Edgier: While Dragon Fire keeps the atmosphere from the first four games, it also adds three layers of darkness.
  • First: While general violence against innocents was always a threat, the first four games put these threats at the horizon. In Dragon Fire, the very trailer shows the invading mercenaries in the act of slaughtering defenseless villagers.
  • Second: If you bring Erana or Katrina back from the dead, you will find out that her previous life (before her horrible death) was hell in many ways. And that such damage is not easily repaired. Either woman has massive trust issues. Also, Erana suffers from unjustified self-hatred, while Katrina seems willing to shrug off her own misdeeds with very little remorse. Erana will be desperate for your love, while driving you away with her insecurities. Katrina will not dare to show much emotion at all, being defensive all the way. Oh, and if you bring Erana back but choose another lover or fail to get past her insecurities... the game can end with her suicide.
  • Third: It's the only game where the Hero has someone actively gunning for him and his allies for most of the game. While the previous games don't have any shortage of danger, it's more the Hero plunging along into danger, never is said danger coming for him or his allies. In this game, it's made clear from the start by Logos that the Assassin will try to have a go at the Hero.
• Dem Bones: Lemures, shades and manes, restless souls that you'll have to fight in Hades.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Minos. Toro and the Hero pretty much immediately figure out he's up to no good. No one trusts him.
• Disc-One Nuke: Frost Bite. While in the last game it was just another combat spell with the modifier of "area effect", all that meant was that it wasn't repelled by Reversal. In this game, it's a constant cone of cold that lasts about six seconds and drains just about any weak-to-moderate enemy's health in one casting. That's IF you only cast it once. You can cast multiple times at once, compounding the damage greatly, and even the more difficult enemies can't stand up to it.
• Draconic Abomination: The Dragon of Doom is actually a combination of negative energy and magical fire that take the shape a dragon. You have to bind him to the material world to make it vulnerable.
• The Dragonslayer: You become one at the end of the game, slaying the Dragon of Doom and putting an end to its threat to the island forever.
• Driven to Villainy: Arestes. He was once a sailor, but lost his arm in an accident. He couldn't find any jobs because of this, so he turn to thievery.
• Dumb Muscle: Abdim, Abdum, Abdull and Abduel, four eunuch brothers. Ferrari doesn't keep them around for their brains. The Goons also fill this role for Minos.
• Elemental Embodiment: The Dragon of Doom is stated to be a fire elemental, but in the shape of a dragon. Which is why it is supposedly unable to be killed by conventional means.
• The Empath: Paladins gain a bunch of new abilities in this game, one of which is called "Sense Aura". It's an ability which allows a Paladin character to gain an impression of the feelings being experienced by an individual and can even give the Paladin an overall emotional impression of a location.
• Everyone Has Standards: Arestes may be a thief, but he won't be around if Bruno becomes the new Chief Thief, as Bruno is violent and has a dark nature.
• Failure Is the Only Option: You can't actually do anything to prevent the plot that would unleash the dragon.
• Fission Mailed: If you "give your life" to one of the possible love interests, a pair of undead will hack away at you until your health goes down to 0, but you don't get the usual Game Over. In fact, you get up a short time later - with reduced health and stamina as a result of having given up half of your vitality stat.
• Foreshadowing: A few examples. One of the game's characters is called Kokeeno Pookameeso, which is Greek for Red Shirt. His death in the game is unavoidable and must occur to move the plot along. Asking the Famous Adventurer about Pegasus will prompt him to comment that Pegasus must be lonely, seeing as it is the only one. He then says "Everyone needs a lover sometime", foreshadowing the player's likely choice to marry one of the four marriageable characters. In addition, if you return Sarra's lost basket and talk to Marrak afterwards, he'll comment on how good he feels to know how happy she is - adding, "You should find yourself a mate and experience such married bliss."
• Fourth-Date Marriage: What the romance subplots are like for most of the love interests, considering the hero only meets most of them once, and briefly, before this game starts. Katrina, the only major exception, was manipulating him for most of the time they shared before, only seeming to accept anything else about them when she was Taking the Bullet for the hero.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: In quests where Elsa fights alongside you, she'll automatically heal herself to full health if she takes too much damage, ensuring she can't die. While it's still true for Elsa in the final battle, Toro and Gort aren't so lucky and can get killed by the dragon if you're not careful.
• Genre Shift: The first four QfG games were graphic adventures with RPG elements, while Dragon Fire is the other way around. Since stats and combat were always a part of the series, though, the shift is less jarring than with King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, and thus Dragon Fire is better-liked than KQ's infamous Franchise Killer.
• The Ghost: Gnome Ann's fellow gnomes and kitchen staff, Tony Maloney, Messy Tessie, Miigal Sal and Rover are constantly been alluded by her, but they never show up. If you try to enter the inn's kitchen, you'll hear them having a food fight and you can't go any further.
• Gladiator Subquest: The Colosseum allows you to fight against various competitors (mostly your opponents in the Rites). You can even place bets on your own matches. Unlike many other Arena quests, contenders don't just fight you - each "champion" has a week dedicated to fighting every other competitor, with the matches playing out in-game for you to observe and bet on. Averting Statistically Speaking, each arena competitor is about as strong in-game as their character is meant to be in the story, from weakest to strongest being Abdul - Kokeeno - Gort - Toro - Magnum - Elsa.
• Golden Snitch: For the Silmarian Chief Thief competition, ownership of the one true Blackbird statue is one of these due to how highly valued it is among the thieves of the world.
• Guide Dang It!: Marrying Katrina requires you to give her three very specific gifts, and while giving her candy and flowers may make perfect sense, it takes a certain amount of moon logic to realize that she would particularly appreciate an Amulet of Defense. What makes this a Guide Dang It moment, though, is that the only Amulet of Defense you can get (prior to the endgame, when it's too late to woo or propose to her) is from the village of Paros during the Rite of Freedom near the beginning of the game; by the time you could have revived Katrina, it's become Permanently Missable Content.
• Handicapped Badass: Arestes only has one arm, but he managed to rob the bank all by himself (unless the PC is a thief). Even the banker acknowledged his skills.
• Have a Nice Death: Particularly notable in this game as they take the form of rhyming couplets.
• Hellhound: Cerberus himself guards the doorway to Hades.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Pholus, the centaur Blacksmith. After Magnum is out of the contest, he comments that you better the win the Rites of Rulership or they'll be stuck with a woman as king of Silmaria.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The hero can do this once or twice throughout the story and survive. In the endgame, you and several others can do this. Note that you lose the game if you actually die that way.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Combined with a bit of Broken Pedestal and Broken Bird. For four games, Erana was built up to be this incredible Archmage of surpassing power, grace, and beauty. While her reputation is justified, it turns out that she doesn't have the self-confidence that would normally go along with it. When you finally get a chance to meet and talk with her, it turns out that she has been lonely all her life and that she has a huge inferiority complex over being half-human and half Faery-Folk in a world where these two races stay away from each other. She grew up being shunned as an outsider, both by the humans and by the fairy folk. This background encouraged her to develop her powers of peace and healing, but it also encouraged her to look down upon herself and assume that people would see her powers as pointless and pathetic.
• His Name Is...: Ugarte has the opportunity to sell out the assassin, and gets poisoned right in front of you for his troubles.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Try offering the Ring of Hera to Rakeesh. He'd consider it, if he weren't already married to Kreesha. Note that he's a liontaur, too.
• Hulk Speak: Toro speaks in broken and simple English.
• Hurricane of Puns: Even moreso than the previous games. Just click the eye on just about anything in the Adventurer's Guild multiple times and be ready for a lousy pun or twelve.
• Idiot Ball: After the Big Bad confessed being behind all of Silmaria's troubles, Logos order the guards to apprehend him. The guards were not only stationed far away from the Big Bad, but they slowly walk toward him, giving him enough time to teleport away. Giving that last night Logos and the Hero were very certain of his implication, you'd think they would have taken some precautions to prevent his escape.
• Idle Animation: Multiple characters have these. Perhaps the most perplexing is one where the Hero "checks his watch".
• Inevitable Tournament: Moderately unusual insofar as ALL the qualifying are rounds are "on-screen", so that the hero can watch and bet on AI fights when not in the arena himself. Participation is also necessary for some endings. Prowess in the tournament does not directly translate into importance to the plot either, with the least and second-most powerful combatants dying shortly after each other.
• Irony: The Thieves' Guild is in the same area as the guard's barrack.
• Jekyll & Hyde: The kindly Dr. Pretorious and the Jerkass Dr. Mobius are one and the same, swapping over at sunrise and sunset. The unpolished 3D graphics made it kind of hard to spot even during The Reveal.
• Jerkass: There are a couple of outstanding examples:
  • Pholus the centaur blacksmith is rude and refuses to sell you anything but the most basic weapons and armor before you officially enter the Rites. He comments that no true warrior would use a dagger in combat, which shows his opinion of wizards. He's also angry about the possibility that Elsa might win the Rites because she's a woman.
  • Magnum Opus is an arrogant braggart who constantly boasts about his skills while belittling those around him. He also refers to Toro as a beast.
• The Key Is Behind the Lock: Invoked & defied. Your room at the inn has a storage chest, and you can put your room key in it. However, you cannot keep the key there: The narrator will go on about how you "realize your mistake", and the game will automatically make you take your key back. This mechanism is still in place after you install the "mystic magnets" that will let you teleport into your room (without the key) whenever you want to.
• Lethal Chef: Gnome Ann's cook staff. Each day produces a different horrid meal that's usually of the result of the cooks fighting amongst each other. Capped off once you solve Ann's problem with the "Hero Surprise". She goes out and buys you a pizza. One day in the normal meal rotation you can also get Mac and Cheese, because she gave the cooks the day off. Narration says it's either the best meal you ever had... or you've been staying at her inn for too long.
• Lord British Postulate:
  • During the Rite of Valor, it's possible for players to attack Elsa rather than enlisting her help to defeat the Hydra. She'll fight you back and no matter how much damage you inflict, her health will never reach zero.
  • During the last rite, the assassin will harass you by teleporting in, throwing a dagger at you before teleporting out. This happened before the final showdown you're suppose to have with him by coming from Town Square and walking to Gnome Ann Inn at night. A mage could conjure tons of Boom skulls at his spawning point and send him straight to the moon and therefore, break the plot. It was later patched and the assassin will show up only at the final showdown.
• Love Interest: Any one of four different women who can be wooed in the last game as a Romance Sidequest. Not all of them can be married by every character class.
  • Elsa von Spielburg: First Girl Wins (even though she appears all of five seconds in the first game, where you can't speak to her, and not at all in the three other games). Can marry any character class.
  • Erana: The Betty and Broken Bird. The kind of girl who objects to being given flowers because, oh, it killed those poor flowers! (She'll happily accept a set of magic seeds though.) Also an uber powerful sorceress. Can marry a Paladin or Wizard.
  • Katrina: Broken Bird and The Veronica. Also, a vampire, until her resurrection at least, but still uncomfortable in the light. Big Bad of the previous game, and prone to summoning Eldritch Abominations. She has been reformed due to learning her lessons from the previous game. Although, for some reason, despite the fact that the only reason she wants to be revived is because she's in love with the hero, and he brings her back to life, she doesn't start off in love with said hero once alive again. Can marry a Fighter or Wizard.
  • Nawar: Ms. Fanservice and Satellite Love Interest. Can marry any character class. Seen in the second game, but only if you played a thief.
• Ludicrous Gibs: When killing an opponent with enough damage, it can blow him up into bloody pieces. This can make the game unwinnable since there won't be a corpse to search, leaving you without the required item to advance further into the game.
• Magical Barefooter: Katrina. (Also an undead barefooter in Quest for Glory IV.)
• Magic Versus Science: The scientist at the Silmarian academy wants science to gain prominence, so he enters his Frankenstein's Monster Gort in the Rites and drugs Erasmus and Shakra.
• Marry Them All: A bug actually allows you to do this, though only one will be acknowledged as your bride.
• Mauve Shirt: Magnum Opus and Kokeeno. The latter's name is a joke on the related trope.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard:
  • Rakeesh gets poisoned, and can potentially die if you don't obtain the black lotus Salim needs to make the antidote.
  • Erasmus, though the drug he was struck with won't kill him but may keep him asleep forever.
• Mini-Game:
  • Disarming traps requires you to play a mini-game. You are shown 8 various dancing poses of a figure. Once the timer starts, the 8 poses are hidden and the lock will randomly display a pose. You have to correctly match the hidden pose with the one displayed. The higher the difficulty, the more poses you have to match, the faster it gets, the harder it becomes to memorize the poses and the less chances you have to fail. Failure will cause the trap to fire up.
  • Dagger throwing at Dead Parrot Inn. You have to throw daggers on three spinning wheels so they form a proper line of one color. The more you play and the higher the difficulty, the faster the wheels will spin.
• Mook Chivalry: Enforced. When mobs of the enemies ambush you, only the two closest mooks to you will attack, everyone else will just stand idle.
• Multiple Head Case: Cerberus, with a tough guy head, a shrill yelping head, and a refined British head. Each head also has a different favorite food, which the other two heads dislike. The Hydra has multiple heads, but, being feral, averts this.

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Kokeemo and Magnus die, Logos begins having the guards protect the Dragon Pillars. Unfortunately, this just leads to the assassin having an even easier time to break the Pillars since he can just kill the guards.
• Not Completely Useless: The Thermonuclear Blast spell kills you when you use it. It can potentially allow you to take the Dragon with you, however.
• Not Me This Time: For most of the game it's assumed the poisonings and the murders are from the same party, as both make use of poison. It's not the case. The scientists are behind the non-lethal poisoning of the various mages, and are just as perplexed as everyone else on who's doing the murdering.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: The Big Bad initially wants to rule Silmaria, by killing the king and using one of the contenders in the Rites of Rulership as a puppet to be the next king. At the same time he strives to cause chaos around the island so people will gather around their new king and said king's "advisor". When it dawns upon him that he can't win, he settles for trying to destroy the country instead, via the titular dragon that is way too strong for him to control.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Just like in the first game, you need to answer the guardian's 3 questions to enter Erasmus' home. You can say:"Oh no! Not again!" instead of answering the questions and the guardian will throw you out.
• Our Centaurs Are Different:
  • Logos and Pholus. Logos is a wise adviser to the old king and is ruling in his stead until a new king is selected. Pholus is a crass blacksmith.
  • There are also some generic Centaur Wizards. One functions as The Dragon to General Claudius, and two (Who look exactly the same as the first one) in the final fortress.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The games has several: dragonlings, dragonfishes, the hydra and the Dragon of Doom.
• Palette Swap:
  • Ferrari's guards, Abdim, Abduel, Abdum and Abdull, all use the same model with different color scheme.
  • Kokeeno is a red Palette Swap of the blue-coloured town guards.
  • Various enemies have a "more dangerous" colour, like Goremen to Boarmen.
• Pegasus: There's only one and it lives on the north end of the island.
• Permanently Missable Content: Quite a few examples.
  • Certain characters get murdered or drugged throughout the game, making certain events permanently missable. Spoilers follow:
    • Kokeeno Pookameeso, in addition to being a Red Shirt, has arena fights scheduled for days 1 through 5. If you liberate Naxos (triggering his death) before the evening of day 5, all of his arena fights will be canceled.
    • Erasmus actually has two time-gates: A Wizard must visit him on day 2 to acquire the Whirlwind spell from him, because both of them will be otherwise occupied on day 3 (what with the bank robbery and all). Then, a few days after the beginning of the Rite of Conquest, he will be drugged and indisposed.
    • Ugarte will only be available for the first two rites, as the Assassin will try to silence him soon after the Rite of Conquest.
    • Magnum Opus, similar to Kokeeno, has arena fights scheduled for days 6 through 10. Completing the Rite of Conquest before day 10 will cancel those arena fights.
    • Rakeesh will be targeted by the Assassin after the Rite of Conquest is over.
    • Shakra will be drugged a day or so after you acquire the plate from the Sybil of Delos, making all of his spells and items unavailable for the rest of the game. This is particularly problematic for Wizards, who can only acquire the Summon Staff spell from him after dancing with the Dryads on Delos.
  • If you're playing a hybrid character and have the Lockpicking skill, some quests, rewards and points will be unattainable. The game will treat you as a Thief character, even if you haven't committed any crimes. The Famous Adventurer will reward you with a stealth charm instead of a magic helm (for a Fighter or a Paladin) or the Thermonuclear Blast spell (for the wizard). Ferrari will refuse the peace statue in exchange for Gnome Ann's deed as he wants the blackbird instead (fortunately Ferrari won't rat you out at the end of the game). Erana and Katrina will refuse to marry you. This can be quite punishing as a player could have created this character build years ago and as far back as the first game.
  • Doing things in the wrong order can prevent a Wizard from learning certain spells: most notably the Whirlwind spell, as noted above, and the First Aid or Dragon Fire spell (which must be acquired from either Erana or Katrina respectively before completing the Rite of Courage).
• Pet Rat: Ugarte for Ferrari.
• Picked Flowers Are Dead: You can give flowers to various ladies and eventually marry one of the four most prominent ones. One of them will feel sorry for the flowers, but giving them to her earns you romantic points anyway. She will use their seeds to make more living flowers. (Alternatively, you can give her a set of magic seeds; which will please her greatly, as they grow really fast.)
• Pig Man: Boarmen and Goremen as regular enemies.
• Point-and-Click Map: Navigating the islands consist of clicking to direct your hero, though the arrow keys can be used as well. This comes with the obligatory Random Encounter.
• Pungeon Master: Gnome Anne, who gives the narration a run for its money in sheer pun density.
• Punny Name:
  • Gnome-Anne's Land Inn, Kokeeno Pookameeso. Let's just say that, being a Quest for Glory game, if we listed every example, we'd be here all night.
  • How do you find the identity of the bank robber? Look for someone named Arestes. Even his own name is giving him away.
  • It requires a Bilingual Bonus, but Kokeeno Pookameeso's name means "Red Shirt."
  • Ferrari's guards Abdim, Abdum, Abdull, and Abduel. The former three are...not exactly bright. While Abduel is the first combatant that every arena champion, the hero included, must face. Also, any Hero courting Nawar will be told that Abduel wants her for himself, and asked by her to fight him. (It's actually *Abdull* that the hero has to fight though, so either they put the wrong guard in front of the inn, or it was a script flub.
• The Reliable One: Arestes is the caretaker of the Thieves' Guild because he keeps the guild honest.
• Red Herring: Shakra & Erasmus' drugging has nothing at all to do with the main plot; their attackers were the scientists behind Gort, who are tired of magic getting all the attention.
• Red Shirt: Kokeeno Pookameeso. The name even means red shirt.
• Redshirt Army: When the pillars are being destroyed one by one, Logos start to assign guards to protect them. It doesn't stop them from being destroyed. In fact, it may have unwittingly contributed to their destruction, as the narrator of the game's intro says that the blood of a murdered man will destroy the pillars.
• Replaced with Replica: During a Thief playthrough you'll have to give the real Blackbird to Ferrari to reclaim the deed to Gnome Ann's inn and to convince him not to blackmail you by outing your "night job" to the general public. You can then steal it back by breaking into Ferrari's house, but you have to substitute a fake (either one made by Wolfie, or the fake from Mordavia if you imported your character) to keep him from realizing until it's too late.
• Retcon: For the sake of simplicity this game assumes all character classes snuck into the Emir's palace through his harem in the second game (in reality this only happens for a thief), to explain how Nawar and Budar know him. Or he met Nawar and Budar after killing Ad Avis (since the endgame says that the Hero talked to Mayzun afterwards, and she was in the harem too).
• Romance Sidequest: There are four women that can be romanced and possibly married at the end of the game if the correct actions are taken. Some, but not all, of the romances are locked to specific classes.
• Screw Destiny: You are told that if the Dragon of Doom is freed, the sacrifice of a life will be required to bind it again. You can say nuts to that, and just beat the dragon to death, albeit it is difficult. (From a game mechanics standpoint the fight is on a timer without the sacrifice: Take too long, and the dragon will simply fly away and lay waste to the land.)
• Self-Deprecation: Examining a pair of horns in the Adventurers' Guild causes the game to proclaim "It was the beast of times, it was the worst of rhymes."
• Shipper on Deck: Various people will offhandedly remark that life is better alongside someone, trying imply that the hero should court a bride.
• Shrinking Violet: According to her mother, Salla the Katta musician will not speak to you because she is too shy.
• Sinister Scimitar: Abdim, Abdum, Abduel, and Abdull's weapon is a huge scimitar.
• Sinister Scythe: The weirdings' weapon of choice.
• Sadistic Choice: The hero makes a brief venture into Hades, where two of his aforementioned love interests currently reside... and he can bring back one of them. Or, if you so choose, neither, you jerk. Word of God states that canonically, the Hero is such a badass that he was able to free them both, but this is impossible to pull off in the game.
• Shout-Out:
  • If you die by drowning, the Have a Nice Death message is "This is the lesson you've been taught -— Guybrush Threepwood you are not. When by water you are surrounded — Get to shore before you're drowned."
  • If you die by overexerting yourself, the message reads "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (or you a dead hero). Try to get some rest occasionally."
  • When the Famous Adventurer gives the Thief his Stealth Charm, he says he got it from a thief called "The Mouse" who retired to take up falconry.
  • If you give the black lotus to Julanar, she says that she's heard it can be a great source of mana.
  • Dr. Pretorius's name is from Bride of Frankenstein, while Dr. Mobius's name is from Forbidden Planet.
  • One of the questions on the science lab door asks what a quark is. One available answer is that he's a bartender on a space station.
• Starcrossed Lovers: The Famous Adventurers' Correspondence School Famous Adventurer and the queen of Atlantis.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Pholus' opinion of Elsa when she enters the Rites of Rulership is that women are not fit to be either warriors or kings.
• Storming the Castle: The last rite concludes with you storming the villain's extremely well-guarded house. Unfortunately the hero is all by himself for this one, at least until he reaches Minos.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: You'd be amazed how long your character can hold his breath once he learns how to swim. On the other hand, the other four games carefully avoid underwater scenes (or make them instant Game Overs).
• Take Your Time:
  • Zig Zagged. Played straight at first. Then it's averted once the Rites of Rulership begin as you must finish them before your competitors, though you still need to complete the story elements for each rite. (If someone beat you to it, you'll simply be informed upon turning in the rite.) It's played straight again for the last two rites because they can only be solved by you.
  • It was quickly discovered by players that for the Rite of Freedom (the one where the fishing villages had to be freed), the Hero could free all five of them himself. This resulted in the game not being able to allow one of your competitors to complete the rite, since you had all of the village sigils already.
• Tank Controls: Uses your typical Resident Evil-style tank controls/prerendered background combination (though you can at least turn while moving.) Unfortunately, this can make combat just as awkward as in the game the control scheme is mimicking.
• Theme Naming:
  • Rakeesh's family. We find out his son is named Shakra, on top of his wife and daughter from earlier games being named Kreesha and Reeshaka.
  • Also, Ferrari's four guards are named Abdim, Abdum, Abdull, and Abduel.
• To Hell and Back: You're sent down to Hades as one of the Rites. Technically, all you have to do is gather some Styx water and come back, but you end up needing to pull off a Rescue from the Underworld (or explicitly turn down doing one) to avoid making the game Unwinnable.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the first game drinking Dragon's Breath at the tavern kills you instantly. After all the training your adventures put you through, by this final installment you can actually handle a drink of Dragon's Breath. Also in the first game, fighting Elsa or Bruno was instantly fatal; in the fifth game you have an opportunity to fight and defeat both of them.
• Useless Useful Spell: Most utility spells from the earlier games have little or no use in this game with the greater focus on action; you'll mostly rely on blasting spells for combat.
• Unexpected Genre Change: The last fight with the Dragon is a party fight; with at least Elsa and Toro and other companions possible depending on your prior actions. Gifting them with a Dragon Slayer sword and Minos' Minotaur's Axe will help immensely.
• Unreliable Narrator: If you ask Arestes about his missing arm while he's drinking at the Dead Parrot, he'll tell you a tall tale about how a shark bit it off. If, as a Paladin or a Wizard, you arrest him, you can ask him about his arm again when he is in jail; he'll have a much more mundane story about how his boat was tossed about in a storm and how his arm was smashed against the deck.
• Unscaled Merfolk: The tritons of Atlantis.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: It's a pity, but Minos' Minotaur drops an axe that's just pumped to the gills with magic power; but humans can't use it. Keep this is mind when Toro fights by your side during the Final Boss.
• Unwinnable by Design: If you kill guards or townspeople you'll be locked out of the Hall of Kings and unable to progress in the story. The people don't want a bloodthirsty killer on the throne, after all.
• Victory Pose: Every arena combatants, including you, have one when they win a duel.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: If you cast a projectile spell at the townsfolk they will explode.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Attacking the townsfolk will cause all the guards to immediately become hostile. Doing this renders the game unwinnable.
  • If you try to attack Shakra, he will shoot you with a lightning bolt and kill you instantly. You're rewarded with a game over screen and a funny little poem regarding the circumstances of said death.
  • Elsa will angrily kill you as well, if you attack her on Hydra island.
  • Attacking the dryads results in them killing you instantly.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Ugarte. Whether you find the cure to the poison or not, he will never show up again unless you're a Thief.

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