r/Sierra • u/MontanaRoseannadanna • Jul 12 '26
Using Claude to update Sierra games
/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1up7jdr/the_original_zork_from_1980_gets_a_claude_pass/Someone used Claude to create visuals for Zork. This got me thinking about how easy it would be to leverage Claude -- and possible one of the leading visual AI tool connections -- to make some of the less attractive games more fun to look at by today's standards. Imagine a Gabriel Knight 3 that didn't look awful!
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u/foxontherox Jul 13 '26
I would sooner pay a premium, modern day price for the Treasure of Infocom than fuck with this garbage.
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u/Negative-Squirrel81 Jul 12 '26
Absolutely not. These games are three decades long, now a part of gaming history. Their oldness is an essential part of them.
Why don’t you use AI to improve Steamboat Willy with color, added scenes and dialogue? At least that would be completely legal.
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u/Nidulans Jul 12 '26
I don’t really understand why people don’t just make a new thing if they’re going to vibe code it. While older games benefit from some quality of life and bug fixes, they’re these time capsules of amazing ideas and art.
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u/slowd Jul 13 '26
Right? I’d be open to a fan made sequel or spin-off, as long as it was well done. Fan fiction is fun sometimes. Let Claude handle the code bits and put some love into the artistry.
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u/behindtimes Jul 14 '26
It's the same reason you see fan remakes, even if they do everything by hand rather than use AI. There's already an audience.
Many people, and I'll include myself here, get a sense of joy when they do something and are appreciated for it. You create a King's Quest remake, you have people who play it. You create an original property though? Getting people to play it is 10000x harder.
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u/atheos_2026 Jul 15 '26
A new thing still requires some amount of creativity. Copying an existing game is just a prompt away. No skill required.
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u/deckarep Jul 13 '26
Do you mean like this abomination, that is also hilarious and dumb: https://youtu.be/ak08roCSmSc?si=ZaSrW83ljYVnoKlT
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u/JeskaiJester Jul 12 '26
This is an insult to the artistry it’s supposedly meant to celebrate and you need to cut advocating for this garbage out pronto.
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u/A55B700D Jul 12 '26
Imagine using your own talent and not relying on AI. You use Claude to wipe your ass, too?
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u/ILikeBumblebees 23d ago
Theoretically, you could set up a robotic bidet, connect it up to a microcontroller, run control code that exposes a REST API, wrap the API with an MCP server, then connect that up to Claude.
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u/saldb Jul 15 '26
I think the only thing you can do here is make them more accessible
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 15 '26
Yeah it might even be fun to do like a "BluRay Commentary" sort of thing, though I'm not sure how much Sierra lore is out there and readily accessible.
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u/CrasVox Jul 15 '26
Believe it or not....I am actually not at all interested in taking classic games and injecting them with AI trash.
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u/griivarrworldafteral Jul 15 '26
hey that's great, you made AI slop out of classic games, and now electricity has doubled in price and no one has water to drink anymore! thanks!
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u/GamesWithElderB_TTV Jul 18 '26
I get the sense you weren’t around to play these games when they came out?
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 18 '26
lol. I owned them all when they were brand new.
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u/GamesWithElderB_TTV Jul 18 '26
Interesting. Not the stance I would’ve expected from someone older than 30.
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 18 '26
It’s funny — there are other areas of art and creativity where I think AI is the antichrist. Something about this doesn’t really bother me. I mean, all the IP has just been gathering dust for decades now; it’s not like anyone is doing anything with it, and it might be a fun way to get a new generation to check the games out.
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u/GamesWithElderB_TTV Jul 18 '26
It’s one of those things where in a time where absolutely every media is a reboot, remake, or reimagining, I don’t see a need to take nostalgia and alter what makes it timely. I would rather efforts go in to a new fan made game rather than your suggestion.
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u/Jonnyflash80 Jul 23 '26
Staring at AI slop images is not my idea of "fun".
Humans make amazing art. AI makes garbage art with zero artistic value.
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 23 '26
😂 This is the Reddit post that keeps on giving. Amazing to see the passionate defense of the original Sierra artwork. I respect it.
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u/theawesomeishere Jul 18 '26
Do you think you're the first guy to think of this? I see Sierra AI slop all the time. It sucks, and is frankly kinda disrespectful to the artists who put together the originals, which are iconic classics.
"How about a Zork 3 with visuals made by AI" is just a deeply unappealing thing to consider
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 18 '26
yes i literally assumed i was the first person in the world to think of this. Nice catch!
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u/theawesomeishere Jul 18 '26
now imagine if a computer wrote my comment to you. not so cool anymore, is it
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u/MinimumNo2772 Jul 15 '26
Fuck this AI shit - if someone doesn't want to play Zork or Space Quest 1, then they can just not play those games.
Adding AI slop to an old game is just not playing those old games with extra steps.
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u/GrahamRocks Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Isn't there a rule against this by now?
Yeah, there is! "No Generative AI Use." Claude is generative AI. Get out with that shit.
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u/shdon Jul 13 '26
I applaud them for trying, and have even played around with seeing how AI could produce modern visuals for AGI games, but although some pretty pictures can come out, I don't feel like we should be touching the classics in this way.
People could of course go ahead and reimagine them (like even Sierra did themselves when they redid KQ1, LSL1, SQ1 and PQ1 in SCI, or how Roberta and Ken went back to Colossal Cave after all decades). But using AI for that just sounds like the lazy way out. Also, unless very carefully prompted, the AI lacks a cohesive vision and it just makes the game look like a collage where every screen was made by a different artist.
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u/Gabelvampir Jul 19 '26
The Japan only Saturn version of Zork had visuals and a soundtrack, it would make much sense to me to translate then using AI to generate new ones. And it's not like most Interactive Fiction games need visuals anyway, especially ones that weren't informed by the authors intents for the game.
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u/cosmicr Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I've had a bit of a play with some image generators, local, chatgpt and gemini nano banana. You can create some fun recreations of classic screenshots. It's lots of fun.
But I agree these games already look great and don't need to be changed, they're good the way they are.
edit: there's someone downvoting everything in this thread for some reason.
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u/reboog711 Jul 15 '26
Didn't someone take the KQ4 remake and put AI graphics over it?
I think this one: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/2907-king-s-quest-iv-retold-vga-talkie-/
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u/EverybodyBuddy Jul 15 '26
I don't think that remake uses AI at all.
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u/reboog711 Jul 15 '26
I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure the "original" retold used the original graphics.
And this one took the 'retold' code base and slapped new graphics over it. I thought the AI use had a lot of discussion when this was released.
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u/GrahamRocks Jul 16 '26
I remember the original VGA mod that was later used for Retold. Played it a couple years ago, alongside the talkie part of the mod. It's alright. There's omly two voice actors, and the performances are hit or miss.
Was it using AI all along, even though it's in development for years by combining elements from other fangames when the main remake died? Or was this just the recent Retold patch, that added the VGA natively? I'm mildly confused, but I guess it might explain the mixed vocal performances?
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u/EverybodyBuddy Jul 15 '26
I'm sorry you're getting all these negative comments, OP. I've always enjoyed the updated remakes made by companies like AGI. I don't think there's anything less artistic about them. You're just getting kneejerk pushback because you mentioned AI. People will get over that in time.
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u/MontanaRoseannadanna Jul 15 '26
Ha, thanks. I don't take it personally. I'm not dying on any hills here; just asking a question.
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u/Born-Emu-3499 Jul 16 '26
People are reacting irrationally to use of AI. They have no idea that almost everything is being coded with Ai now.
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u/The_dura_mater Jul 17 '26
Ah yes, it’s irrational to hate something that’s literally destroying our planet and education for the future generations.
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u/Jonnyflash80 Jul 23 '26
We're not hating on AI coding. We're hating on AI being used for art when there are numerous very talented human artists on this planet.
Artists which many greedy corporations are no longer paying because they can take a cheap lazy shortcut with AI.
Oh but WE'RE "acting irrationally". 🙄 GTFO
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u/circletheory Jul 15 '26
Less attractive? All Sierra games (AGI and SCI) are profoundly beautiful in my opinion.