Summary
A new quality of adventure
The Good
Welcome to the world where the banal becomes profound and where cliches are full of inspiration: "Gabriel Knight Mysteries". Two adventure games which took the genre to the highest point, opening new possibilities for it.
I must admit I hesitated a lot before I finally decided to purchase this collection. On the cover there were pictures of a hanged man, and the advertising blurb promised a true horror experience - that is, nothing attractive for me. Besides, the titles of the games ("Sins of the Fathers" and "The Beast Within") sounded rather banal to me. Anyway, something inside me told me to fork over the dough and to become an owner of this compilation. As soon as I came home, inserted a CD in my CD ROM drive and watched the intro of the first game, I was captured, fascinated and imprisoned by the world of Gabriel Knight.
If there's such a thing as balance between reality and fantasy, it exists in those two games. It is amazing how Gabriel's life is exposed to your eyes and convinces you so much, that all the supernatural elements of the games are quite easily absorbed by even most sceptical players. Alone the personality of Gabriel - undoubtedly one of the most profound and original ones ever created in a game - consists of both those elements: the daily, the trivial, on one side, and the mysterious, the supernatural, on the other. Because the trivial element is so convincing, we have also no problems dealing with the supernatural one. Gabriel is presented neither as a saint nor as a typical "fighter with the dark side": he is, first of all and most of all, a human being like all of us, and typologically he has very few to do with a "hero" or a "noble warrior": in a certain sense, he is even a rather weak person (in his decisions concerning the opposite sex, for example), and there is a childish side in him which makes him so lovable. And he wins our sympathy precisely because of the fact that he finds enough inner strength to follow his duty and to change his character, while being actually a most ordinary and common man.
People surrounding Gabriel are as vividly drawn as the hero himself, both in New Orleans and in München. Many of them take the rumors about supernatural stuff (voodoo magic, werewolf) very seriously. This also adds to the credibility of the supernatural in those games. The creator of the games, Jane Jensen, has obviously thouroughly studied the subject before writing the script. The educational value of both games is huge. The player will find tons of genuine and interesting information about many issues concerning occult sciences and mythology. Think of the voodoo lecture in the university in the first game or the castle library in the second. The lecture is fascinating, being actually just a collection of facts. Edutainment at its best! Pity Gabe fells asleep during the lecture, so we don't have the chance to listen to the end. Beside this, the games also provide a lot of knowledge about such completely different topics as history of New Orleans or Bavaria, snakes, Wagner and other useful things.
Both games took revolutionary steps in the tendency (unfortunately, not a so popular one) to turn a pure adventure game into interactive fantasy novel. In a certain sense, "Sins of the Fathers" continues the tradition first set by "Sierra" in "Colonel's Bequest": the story of the game is so important, that it becomes an objective in itself, so that the puzzles' significance turn to be secondary. While classical adventure games like "Monkey Island" and especially "Day of the Tentacle" tried, like any classical piece of art, to maintain a perfect balance between the basic components of an adventure (story-puzzles), "Sins of the Father" clearly belongs to a completely different period - the Romantic one. The puzzles are integrated into the story and can't be thought as an independent part of the game. The few exceptions (like the hair-coloring puzzle) only confirm the rule. Instead, the progress of the game is achieved mostly by talking to characters or examining found items as parts of the mystery to be revealed. In "The Beast Within", which is an interactive movie with life actors, this tendency is even more evident. While "Sins of the Fathers" still features a typical adventure-interface with "look", "take", "push" and other icons, in "The Beast Within" the controls became more intuitive, were simplified to a single-action cursor, which allowed less "trial-and-error" choices so typical for the classical adventure.
Technically speaking, both games are absolute masterpieces. The first game is one of the last of the glorious VGA games made by "Sierra", with beautiful painted graphics, while "The Beast Within" is considered by many as the peak of the FMV-interactive movie style. Both games feature amazing soundtracks, in the middle of a huge FMV sequence in the second game you'll even here music composed in the style of Wagner (and even much better, if you ask me! ;-)) to represent the fictive "lost opera".
The atmosphere of both games is one of the strongest I ever sensed in a computer game. The world of Gabriel Knight will draw you inside and won't let you go. Your imagination will hardly find a better food among computer games. The games will make you think, dream and feel about all the things you learn while playing them. Such an immersive experience as here can be rarely met.
The Bad
May I be cursed by a voodoo priest or turned into a werewolf if I'm lying: there's nothing wrong with this collection!
The Bottom Line
Games for ages, two incredible products of creativity and imagination. Great story, great atmosphere, great gameplay, everything is here to provide the ultimate pleasure for a serious gamer. Romantic, story-driven adventures at their best, they opened new horizons for the genre, which can easily become the adventure game of the future.
