Gabriel Knight

Gabriel Knight is the title character in a series of adventure games produced by Sierra On-Line in the 1990s. Three games were released in the series: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within and Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. It is unlikely that any more will follow, however, due to Sierra being dissolved by parent company Vivendi and disappointing sales of the third game in the series.

The Gabriel Knight characters and games were created by writer Jane Jensen, who also worked on King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow with famed game designer Roberta Williams. All three games in the series focus on the adventures of Gabriel Knight, a New Orleans author and bookstore owner who finds that his destiny is to become a Schattenjäger, or "Shadow Hunter". Gabriel's assistant, sidekick, and sometime romantic interest Grace Nakimura is a major supporting character in Sins of the Father. In The Beast Within and Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, she shares the role of protagonist with Gabriel. The player alternates between Gabriel and Grace for different portions of each game.

The first episode of the series was released in 1993, and was one of many of Sierra's games at the time to feature a nonlinear format. The first game used a system of "days", each of which had a required set of actions to be performed before proceeding to the next. As a result, linear dependencies of actions in the game are guaranteed to be resolved: a puzzle on a given "day" must be completed in order to reach the next "day". This format was used throughout the series, replacing "days" with "chapters" and "time blocks" respectively. Each game also awards a number of "points" both for completing game required actions and for completing various optional puzzles along the way.

With a balanced mix of historical facts and fictional elements, as well as an emphasis on character development (e.g. the relationship between Gabriel and Grace is an important subplot throughout the series), the Gabriel Knight games have been praised as outstanding achievements in storytelling. The music in the series, composed by Robert Holmes (Jensen's husband), contributes significantly to the atmosphere.

The games

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993)

The first game in the series follows Gabriel as he follows the police investigation into a spate of killings which apparently have voodoo overtones. Gabriel is hoping to use the investigation as the basis of a new novel, but as the days of the case progress, he is drawn much deeper into a mystery which links the murder spree to the underworld of voodoo myth and practice, and towards a beautiful and mysterious New Orleans socialite. He also draws links between the case and an horrific recurring nightmare which has plagued him all of his life. Gabriel comes into contact with a lost relative in Germany who informs him of his family's heritage. Gabriel finds he has inherited the mantle of Schattenjäger, a sort of modern day Inquisitor, and that only by embracing his calling can he overcome the curse which has almost wiped out the Schattenjäger line and is the cause of both his nightmares and the Voodoo Murders. Gabriel travels to Germany and Africa, before returning to New Orleans for the denouement and has to choose between love and forgiveness or fulfilling his duty (the game offers two endings which differ as a result of Gabriel's actions)

The CD-ROM version featured voice talents of such well-known actors as Tim Curry as Gabriel, Mark Hamill as his friend Detective Mosely, Leah Remini as Grace and Michael Dorn as Dr. John, a proprietor of a voodoo museum in central New Orleans.

Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (1995)

The second game (also referred to as The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery) follows Gabriel on his second Schattenjäger case. A year after the events of Sins of the Fathers, he has moved to his ancestral home in Bavaria, Germany to write his new novel. The population of Rittersberg, the seat of the Schattenjägers, are well aware of his family's reputation and when word reaches them of what is reported to be a werewolf attack in Munich, they compel Gabriel to go and investigate. Gabriel is joined in Germany by Grace, once she learns that he has begun a new case and hasn't asked her to join him. Whilst Gabriel follows a trail from missing zoo wolves to a mysterious men's hunting club in Munich, Grace conducts research back in Rittersberg and around Bavaria. Her investigations lead her to the history of King Ludwig II, the composer Richard Wagner and a shadowy figure known as the Black Wolf. Eventually the links between the cases become clear, and Grace discovers that the person in the greatest danger has become Gabriel himself.

The game was created using techniques developed in Phantasmagoria, with the characters and many objects captured in real-time video against blue screen backgrounds and appearing on "virtual sets" consisting largely of photographic backgrounds. Although this technique has come in for much criticism from games makers and players alike, The Beast Within was generally well received with the quality of the script and some of the performances coming in for particular praise. Dean Erickson plays Gabriel Knight and Joanne Takahashi plays Grace Nakimura. The magnificent soundtrack by Robert Holmes, who even composed an original opera for the story, titled "Der Fluch Des Engelhart" ("The Curse of Engelhart"), was later released on a soundtrack CD included in the Gabriel Knight Mysteries compilation.

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999)

Main article: Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

A year after the events of the second game, Gabriel and Grace are asked by the exiled Prince of Albany to protect his newborn son from a centuries old family threat which appears to be a group of vampires. Shortly afterwards, the boy is kidnapped and Gabriel follows the kidnappers to the mysterious French village of Rennes-le-Château. Gabriel's arrival coincides with that of a tour group; supposedly all in town hunting for a legendary local treasure linked to the Knights Templar, the Cathars and supposedly connected to the Holy Grail. Amongst the international tour group is Gabriel's old friend, Detective Mosely, from New Orleans. Gabriel's search leads him to investigate the members of the group and search the town. Grace arrives shortly afterwards and delves into the history of the area to try and find the connection between the kidnapping and the area's rich history. Together they uncover the truth behind an incredible mystery, stretching back to the birth of Jesus Christ.

A custom designed 3D engine, the G-Engine, was created to drive the game which allowed the player control of a free roaming camera to explore environments and to watch non-interactive sequences from any distance or angle. The creation of such an ambitious engine came at a price, however, and the game which was originally due for release in Summer 1998 didn't ship until Fall 1999 after changes in the design team and the decision to undertake a major rearchitecture of the engine halfway through production.^[1] The detailed story was inspired in part by The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail book. Tim Curry also returned to voice Gabriel Knight.

Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned received mixed reviews with the general gaming press being less enthusiastic about the game's merits than dedicated adventure gaming publications. As with the other games in the series, though, most reviews of the game cited Jane Jensen's story as a subject for praise. The game received the dubious honor of being named "the last title of note in the adventure game genre" in an article on Old Man Murray in which the author uses a puzzle from the game to lambast the absurd puzzles of adventure games as a whole. It is the last adventure game to be published to date by Sierra Entertainment.

The books

The stories of Sins of the Fathers (ISBN 0-451-45607-6) and The Beast Within (ISBN 0-451-45621-1) were adapted into novels by Jane Jensen. The first is a straightforward adaptation of the events of the game. An approach which Jane Jensen decided, in retrospect, was not the most successful way of introducing Gabriel Knight to a literary audience. For the second novel she "threw the whole idea of the game away and started again from scratch."^[2] Both books are currently out of print.

The future of Gabriel Knight

After the release of Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, Jane Jensen stated that she had started planning a possible story and setting for a fourth game in the series (see "Trivia"), but as of yet no Gabriel Knight 4 has been announced. In August 2006 it was confirmed that Jane Jensen's next adventure game project would not be a new Gabriel Knight but the revival of Gray Matter^[3], a game which had been postponed in May 2004.

Trivia

• In Sins of the Fathers, when he uncovers the Schattenjäger library in Schloss Ritter, Gabriel can examine the bookshelves to browse their contents. Among the books he finds are reference material alluding to werewolves and vampires — which would turn out to be the supernatural antagonists in his next two games.

• A search of the SIDNEY computer interface for "gk4" in Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned brings up an entry on ghosts, which Jane Jensen has remarked would have been the antagonists in her outline for a fourth entry to the series.^[4]

• The second game, The Beast Within, was originally going to be much longer. Its original design indicated eight chapters rather than the published six, including one that required the player to act as Ludwig II and hide the Lost Opera in his castles. However, according to game designer Jane Jensen, the game ran over budget (its original budget was estimated at 3 million dollars and ended up going over budget by almost a million) and the required material could therefore not be filmed. It would also have taken up too much space as the game already had enough data to fill six CD-ROMs and would have required as many as nine to incorporate all the additional story. This helps explain why the transition from chapter five to chapter six is so jumpy and why chapter six itself is so vastly larger than the other chapters.

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Notes

1. ^ Technical Lead Scott Bilas' take on the troubled GK3 production.
2. ^ Jane Jensen interview at Adventure Classic Gaming.
3. ^ Announcement of Gray Matter's revival at Adventure Gamers.
4. ^ Jane Jensen inteview at GameSpy.

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