Gabriel Knight appreciation thread

Cafe Society
1

In the scariest moments in video/computer games thread the Gabriel Knight series of supernatural mystery games from Sierra came up, and I thought there seemed like enough interest to warrant starting a new thread. So if you’re a fan of the GK games, post here!

I’d been interested in the first two Gabriel Knight games when they were released, but was young enough at the time that I was considered too young to play them! Two years ago I happened to see Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned at my local secondhand book and media shop, and picked it up. I was hooked right away. What a great game! What great characters! But I knew there was a lot of backstory I was missing out on, and after I beat the game I wanted something similar to play. I was determined to track down the first two games.

Thanks to various online vendors I eventually got them all, although tracking down Gabriel Knight I: Sins of the Fathers took a while. I wound up having to play the series in reverse order, but that was okay because it meant I saved the best for last. GKI is, IMHO, the single best computer game ever made. I spent most of my free time during the summer before my senior year in college playing and replaying the whole Gabriel Knight series. On a personal note, I’ll just mention that for family reasons this was a very difficult period for me, and these games were really the only enjoyable things I had in my life at the time.

So, what makes these games so great? For me, it’s both the characters and the mysteries. Unlike most other computer games, the characters have…character. They aren’t just there to dispense information or to provide comic relief, they seem to have real personalities. Unusually, this is true even of the protagonist, the sort of guy who (as we learn in GKI) would spend several weeks’ work of grocery money on a black leather jacket, and then wear it in the summer. In New Orleans. Most games try to leave the main character as much of a blank as possible so the player can easily insert themselves into the role, but in this series it’s clear that Gabriel is Gabriel and he has his own desires and flaws that may not match up with yours. I learned this early in GKIII, when Gabriel visited the local scooter rental shop. There was an awesome motorcycle parked outside, but the clerk said the only thing not spoken for was a rusty old moped. I would have been happy to just take the moped, but Gabriel Knight was not having with that! He’s the sort of guy who’s going to get the motorcycle even if he has to work through a fairly silly and complicated inventory puzzle to do so. This is for the best, as later in the game you have reason to want to make a quick getaway that the moped wouldn’t have been able to handle.

But my favorite character is Gabriel’s sidekick/partner Grace, with whom he shares a somewhat Mulder-and-Scully-esque relationship (although I believe GKI was released before The X-Files premiered). Grace may be the single coolest female character ever to appear on the computer screen. She’s almost certainly the best educated – she’s got an Ivy League graduate degree. She’s also attractive without being a bimbo, nice without being a pushover, quick with the witty comebacks, and not afraid to unleash her “inner bitch” when necessary. I want to be and/or marry this woman!

I won’t say much about the mysteries now because I don’t want a lot of spoilers in the OP, but I found them all to be well-written and well-thought out blends of history and fantasy. Each game has you explore various exotic real-world locations, and the puzzles are challenging but (usually) logical. I enjoy mysteries but have never cared much for mystery novels, mostly because I read faster than I can problem-solve and thus reach the end before I’ve had the satisfaction of figuring things out on my own. The beauty of a well-designed mystery computer game is that you can work your way through the mystery story rather than passively absorbing it. I have yet to find any other games that did this anywhere near as well as the Gabriel Knight series.

2

I got the first game shortly after it came out, and its been my benchmark for adventure/horror/rpg games ever since. I got the original release on six floppies, and have always regretted missing out on the voice acting. (Might have to start looking for a copy on CD soon…)

I always liked the way the game fitted together. It had the best developed characters of anything I’d played then and most of what I’d played since. Grace was my favourite character, but I always felt sorry for Detective Mosley (well, with a guy like Gabriel showing up in his office you have to).

I think the main scares in it for me were:

[SPOILER]The bit in the crypt where you find mosley in the drawer. Its short, but I was playing with the lights out and a friend looking over my shoulder. We both jumped.

The other one was in the lecture hall when Gabriel falls asleep. Not a jump, just a sustained shudder.
[/SPOILER]

Which moments did you like in it? Also, are the second and third games as good? I’ve got very good memories of the first and keep putting off buying the sequels in case they aren’t at the same standard.

3

I too got the first game when it shortly after it was relased I didn’t knew anything about it other than it was a brand new Sierra adventure that came in this really weirdshaped box. I can still remember reading the (rather bloody) graphic novel that came with the game on the way home, wondering what kind of sick game I had just bought.

What makes Gabriel Knight great for me are the characters, the atmosphere and the plot (a lovely blend of fiction with a dash of fact). I love the interaction and verbal sparring between the characters (esp. Gabriel, Grace and Mostly).
I think the Sins of the Father is the best Adventure game ever made. The plot was great. The puzzles (mostly) logical. The many icons gave you so much control over the items and the screen (which I prefer over today’s “smart cursor” that does everything on my behalf). I really think it set the bar for back-story and sidetrips in adventures. I love the way the Sins of the Father slowly builds up monentum and suspense. It started out rather mild but by the fifth day you didn’t trust anyone or anything in the whole darn city.

The Beast Within was I think a much more mature game, at least plot wise. I have some minor problems with it: the lack of interaction with your surroundings, some spotty acting and forcing you to find every #@#% hotspot in the museum, too name a few but it made up for it with lots of atmosphere and an intriguing story. Someone in the other thread mentioned the homoerotic tension, the first time I saw the sleeping Gabriel-Von glower scene I did a huge double take. I too couldn’t believe what I was seeing in a computer game (and I loved it :slight_smile: ).

The less said about Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned the better, I like it but I don’t love it like the first two games. The dialogue, voice-acting (esp. Tim Curry’s whom I loved in SoTF) and puzzles seemed….i don’t know….not up to standards set by the first two games.

I do have to praise Robert Holmes’ music though which is unforgettable and really sets and underlines the suspense in the games.

Despite a few misgivings I love the series to bits/bytes and I play them consecutively at least once a year…

….now where did I put those CD’s.

4

I hit submit too early,
Please excuse my many mistakes.

As penance I’ll do four wally’s, two smacks and a sad
:wally :wally :wally :wally :smack: :smack: :frowning:

5

I like these games. It’s not my favourite series, but I’d say it’s in my top five.

I played the first game as a teenager, but the game kept sctrewing up whenever I reached the secret hounfour. I assumed the disks (old 3.5" ones) had been corrupted, and reluctantly gave up.

I played the second game in French (because, due to Quebec laws and market forces, French versions of video games are often dirt cheap), and I liked it. It was really interesting to go so heavily into Bavarian myth and history. The photo realism got to be a bit too much for me at times, though.

Then I played the third game, which remains my favourite in the series. It’s beautiful. It did what the X-Files always tried to do, but it succeeded: it mixed together crackpot conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and New Agey ideas into a whole that instilled both fear and wonder. Beautiful, and well worth the time. I loved the Shattenjäger database, too. I once loaded the game onto my computer just to check it.

Just last December, I got the first game again, as a gift from a close friend. I decided to finish, and I ran into the same error at the secret Hounfour. Turns out that if you turn off the sound, it works perfectly. So it took me 11 years to finish that game :smack:

Anyway, I’d say it’s a great series just because it takes the most clichéd horror movie monsters imaginable (zombies, werewolves, vampires), goes right back to their sources, strips away the accumulated layers of cliché, and weaves them almost seamlessly into a modern context. And it does it with innovative graphics and gameplay.

That’s how I see it, anyway.

6

Possibly my favorite game moment all time is the exchange that takes place if you have Gabriel offer the magnifying glass to Grace. It has nothing to do with the plot, but everything to do with the characters! I also got great creepy thrills from the encounter with the fortuneteller and

the deaths of the professor and Crash.

I think the first game is the best of the series, but the second and third are really excellent as well. GKII: The Beast Within suffered from being in FMV, because technological limitations meant it couldn’t be as interactive or contain as many “extras” as the other games. But the story itself is great…although I must admit to some bias because Bavaria’s Ludwig II is my all-time favorite monarch. :wink: The historic information is well presented, and is also well blended with the fictional elements of the mystery. The same is true for GKIII: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, although the mystery in that one is on a more epic scale.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen another game handle rising tension so well. Heck, many movies don’t.

*That reminds me, I’d like to give props to the series for presenting a diverse cast of characters without seeming heavy-handed or tokenistic about it. GKI showed New Orleans as the melting pot it really is. There was less opportunity for ethnic diversity in the later two games, but there were always strong female characters and (even more remarkably) homosexual characters.

That’s how I see it, too. :cool:

7

A lot of what I wanted to say has been covered by everyone else in this thread, but I’ll add my two cents.

I feel this is one of the best series ever, but the first game was one of the best games of all time. The other two are good, but have their own failings.

The first had interesting characters, a plot that made the conspiracies and supernatural seem plausible, combining the past and the present is a convincing way, had one of the best soundtracks ever, great visuals and above all, wonderful atmosphere.

Maybe it was the color Palette, or the way it was drawn, or something else, but the game made you feel an oppresive feeling of dread and paranoia. On day one, when you are listening to the police radio, you hear somebody mention something about a “claustrophic” feeling, an “oppresive” feeling. having to do with the clouds and the heat…

Maybe I just imaigned it, but during that whole game, I could feel what he was talking about. The muggy, overcast weather, that whole sense of it being hot and damp and cloudy, on the edge of raining but it never actually does, that seems uncomfortable. And that seemed add wonderfully to the whole atmosphere, where something has got to give, but the tension(like the oppresive humidity) keeps building until the end.

The game starts fine, but then you slowely realize that things are amiss, are not as they seem, and then it seems as if the city itself is watching you. A great example of this is the Rada drummers. You see them everywhere around the quarter, right outside windows. You don’t pay attention to them and they fade into the background.

Then crash dies is a pretty horrible way and tells you about the Drummers. You then realize that you’ve been ignoring their presence and you notice again that they are everywhere…spying on YOU and telling the cartel about your movements, without anyone realizing it. That fresh sense of horror.

Damn, I want to go to New Orleans someday.

Same with the burial mound, where you have this sense of dread just walking in there. The text of the hints of something moving in the background, seen just out of the corner of your eye. Not to mention the creepy frozen Golems, and the fact that in at least one game, I could swear that I was putting the tiles in the slots and somebody was taking them out again.

The 2nd game was perhaps the best FMV game ever made(but most FMV games were nothing move then movies that occasionally made you click to progress). Germany, unfortunatly, isn’t nearly as creepy as New Orleans or Africa. The mystery was well put together, particulary for a werewolf centered one, by tracing the wolf back to it’s source and showing what a werewolf might do in it’s spare time. The Wagner and Ludwig stuff was quite interesting, though I was disappointed to learn that there aren’t really any wolf panels in the singers hall in Nueswanstein(I should have expected that, but oh well). The endgame was nicely done, particulary the Opera they showed. Maybe some subtitles would have helped it, but it still worked nicely.

GK3, on the other hand, was a plot game, taking what seems like a bad conspiracy theory invovling the bible, the freemasons, and making it seem believiable, even if it seemed like there was some depth that seemed like it was missing. I particulary liked the geography/computer puzzle and how the whole thing fit together. SYDNEY was also rather useful, being able to easily collate and translate information(and not getting wierd looks from your lawyer). The big downside of entire game? The incredibly annoying jumping puzzles when you get to the temple at the end. There had to be a better way to implement that.

Another annoying problem was that it’s quite easy to miss vital clues that broaden your perspective of the whole affair. Searching the rooms on day 2 is the most obvious example. However, the first time through I missed a conversation that takes place on top of the tower on day three, just before you meet with the Prince. That gives you the Priories veiw of the whole thing, and broadens the understanding of the plot quite a bit.

8

Lamia:

Thanks for the reccomendation - guess I know what I’m playing through for the next few weeks.

9

I was disappointed when I visited the Tierpark Hellabrun in Muncih and discovered that there are no wolves there! Not a one!

*Oh, I hated those puzzles in GKIII. First of all, it’s a stupid game cliche ("…and so the ancient and mystical secret society decided to guard their inner sanctum with JUMPING PUZZLES!"), and secondly there was some sort of CD speed problem that forced me to do the Roulette Wheel of Doom umpteen times before I could pass it. Gah. The climax wasn’t enough to make up for the annoyance, although since I played the games in reverse order I wasn’t in a position to fully appreciate the revelation of the origins of the Schattenjaegers.

However, big sap that I am, what did make it all worthwhile for me was the denouement when Gabriel returns to the hotel and

[spoiler]Grace is gone! Oh man, you blew it! By that time I was half in love with Grace myself, so I really felt for the poor lug. I know Jensen had plans for a fourth game before Sierra went under, and it breaks my heart that we’ll probably never find out what was to happen to our dynamic duo.

Since I’m in a spoiler box about the GKIII ending already, did anyone else wonder just how Grace managed to get out of town? The train schedule was a clue earlier in the game, and there weren’t any departures listed for that late at night. I guess there could be a bus service though, or she may have been willing to pay for cab fare to another station.[/spoiler]

10

“I dreamt of blood upon the shore, of eyes that spoke of sin…
The lake was smooth and deep and black, as was her scented skin…”

Ring a bell, anyone? That poem still gives me chills, the way it unfolds over the course of the game.

I think what I appreciated the most about this series is the way that it handled things intelligently and in a not-stereotypical way. I mean, let’s think about the pitch to Sierra: "I’d like to start up a {fill in the blank, Sierra}-Quest type game about a supernatural hunter… What’s the first thing that comes to mind that he could fight in the first game? I’m gonna guess that “Voodoo” didn’t make the top 5. Probably not the top 10. It’s a wonderful choice, though.

I actually visited NO on vacation once and made a point of checking out the locations in the game. I couldn’t find the hole in the confessional at St. Louis Cathedral, though… :slight_smile: If you do happen to visit NO, go on the voodoo tour… You’ll see a lot of the locations from “Sins of the Fathers”. I guess I just need to trek around Bavaria and Rennes-le-Chateau now. :slight_smile:

GK1 – I can’t say enough good things about this game. The first game that ever gave me nightmares, and not from some stupid jump-fright moment(s), but from the overall sense of dread. The drummers, the creepy dude looking in the window at St. George’s books, “Uncle Wolfgang… NOOOOOOOO!”, and the sacrificed chicken in the bookshop… My heart’s still pounding thinking about that damn bird. What a great game.

GK2 suffers from the FMV curse – myself and a group of friends debated trying to “remake” GK2 in the old SCI interface (used in all the old-school great Sierra Quest games) and grabbing the voice acting from the FMV… It’s still on my list of things I’d like to accomplish before I die. Having seen the interface they used for GK3, now I think the game could rock that way…

GK3 was great, if for no other reason than being a great spoiler for “The DaVinci Code”. I mean, the first chapter of the book has a character named Sauniere! The story (of GK3) is wonderful, and I’d like to “me too” on what other people have said – it ties together secret societies, wacko conspiracy theories, and more than just a touch of fact to come up with a compelling story that blows away anything I’ve seen in a movie or read in a book in the past 10 years.

I really want to know exactly what was in Grace’s note in GK3, or exactly what the group was that was trying to recruit her. It’s been a few years since I played it last, so maybe that was covered and I just missed it. Damn, what a great game…

Okay, I’ll stop gushing now.

11

Spoiler boxes are about the ending of GKIII: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned:

[spoiler]According to Jane Jensen, the note was a basic “Dear John” thing that didn’t say much more than “I’m leaving”. I don’t think Jensen herself bothered to write out the exact message, but that’s the gist of it.

We probably would have learned more about the group in India in the next game, but here’s all I can remember about it. Throughout the series Grace had expressed an interest in becoming a Schattenjaeger herself, but that specific title seems to be hereditary and limited to the male line of Gabriel’s family. However, as Grace learns in GKII, there are other people and groups around the world fighting supernatural evil, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the “Men of the Sun” in Brazil.

The Buddhist monk Grace exchanges e-mails with is another one, and he apparently oversees some sort of monastary training camp for those who fight against the darkness. Goodness knows how she met him, must have happened between GKII and GKIII. Anyway, I didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to recruit her into any kind of organization, although since you’ve mentioned it I see the possibility. But it seemed like Grace just wanted to go to India for a while with Gabriel and spend some time honing their skills and exchange information and tips with others in the field. And maybe after that Gabriel would finally respect her as an equal partner in their professional relationship rather than a mere sidekick.

In the end she realized that she was letting Gabriel (or her feelings for Gabriel) hold her back, and decided to go by herself. And as sad as I felt about the ending, I also have to say “You go, girl!” She shouldn’t have to sit around waiting while Gabriel tries to Come to Grips With His Emotions.

I’m sure they’ll wind up together again someday anyway!
[/spoiler]

12

GK (2 I think) got me cheap medical help in Germany!
When travelling Europe I managed to cut up my legs quite badly in a fall, I patched myself up and was OK for a while, but the cuts were still problems by the time I got to Germany. So I called at a doctors office, and knowing I had no travel medical insurance, I was careful to be very polite. Now remembering falsifying that letter in GK helped me know to say “Godden-margen hair doctor” and then with help of translation book and mime I showed my leg cuts, and the doctor patched me up and gave me a prescription for 10 DeutchMark which I am sure was mutch lower than his regular private consultation fee.

13

:frowning:
I didn’t know this – either that the company had gone under or that there’s never going to be a fourth game.

14

That’s because Sierra hasn’t gone under…unfortunatly, they no longer consider Adventure games to be a “Priority”.

15

The name Sierra is still in use, but IIRC the company was bought out and the old staff went their seperate ways. (I have heard that one of the problems behind the scenes with GKIII was that everyone working on the project knew it was their last one with Sierra and that they would soon have to find jobs elsewhere.) The company that exists now has little relation to the company that produced the Gabriel Knight series and the other classic Sierra games. But you’re right, “gone under” wasn’t really the best expression to use. If they really had gone under there might actually be more hope for a sequel, because the rights to the GK series could then easily be bought by another game company or Jensen herself.

16

Who knows. It could still happen. I heard that Lori Cole was planning to make an “unoffical” Quest for Glory game, changing a couple names, but otherwise the same game with another company. Maybe Jensen could do the same.

Hell, it’s companies like sierra that make you gain a lot of sympathy for…the dreaded P-word.

17

Last I heard Jensen was at work on a game for another company that involved a male/female paranormal investigation team, although I don’t know if they’ll be Gabriel in a fake moustache and Grace in a blonde wig or completely new characters. I remember their being some talk of Jensen wanting to just write the fourth installment of the Gabriel Knight series as a novel without an attached game, but I don’t know if anything will ever come of that.

18

Ha ha, that’s great! Glad to hear the game provided you with value above and beyond entertainment.

I’ve got a couple of years of German under my belt – nowhere near a fluent speaker, but I can manage “survival German” and simple conversation. I was pretty pleased by the way the language was used in GKII. It helped me to feel like I was “really” in Bavaria. There wasn’t so much German as to risk turning off players who don’t know any at all, but there was enough that interested people might pick up a few words or phrases. I also thought the translation puzzles were well done. In fact, I had wanted something more along those lines in GKIII and was somewhat disappointed that everyone kept speaking English at me! And what are the odds that practically every soul in a rural French village speaks fluent English?

19

I seem to recall there were at least a couple who didn’t – a bartender, I think? But most people either had top-secret jobs that would have required them to know a few languages, or worked in the tourism industry catering to American tourists, so I didn’t think it too odd.

Anyway, the thing that frustrated me the most in that game (besides the weird puzzles at the end) was trying to figure out how to get a tape-recorded conversation translated. I kept thinking, “I don’t need to get this translated. I know French.” :smiley:

20

The bartender didn’t, and neither did the scary old lady crushing grapes for wine. But everyone you need to pump for information conveniently speaks English.

*Not too odd, but it felt like a bit of a stretch to me that the old woman at the tiny local museum, the hotel night clerk, and even the maid all spoke English. Since I played GKIII first I actually spent the early part of the game thinking that maybe Gabriel, being from New Orleans, might just be Cajun enough to manage passable conversational French. So when he was talking to the cab driver, hotel clerk, etc., I assumed they were “really” speaking French but the game was portraying it as English for the player’s convenience. When it finally became apparent that Gabriel didn’t speak French at all, my suspension of disbelief momentarily came crashing down.

*I liked GKII better, where you could just…

ask your trusty bilingual lawyer to do it for you.

But man, I sure would love to have (GKIII puzzle spoiler)

a laptop that could translate speech perfectly! The best I can do with this thing is call up BabelFish and run some text through it, and we all know how amusing those results can be!