Summary
A paradise for religion and mythology freaks
The Good
I love Gabriel Knight series. All three games belong to my all-time favorites, and I can't stop admiring Jane Jensen, the creative talent behind them, and all the designers and the programmers that managed to turn such complex and profound stories to engrossing and fascinating games. There is so much to love in each one of those games, so much quality in every their aspect, that I can hardly find anything at all to criticize in them. "Gabriel Knight III" is no exception. Its plot is so brilliantly written, that in a certain way, it even surpasses the ones from
Sins of the Fathers and
The Beast Within. Those two games also did wonders in combining the natural and the supernatural, or, better to say, in making the supernatural look completely natural, and in feeding you with information on history, religions, philosophy, and occult sciences, without boring you at all. In "Gabriel Knight III", the story goes even deeper, into the heart of Judaism and Christianity, and shocks you with entirely new ideas about their origins and historical development. If you are, like myself, interested in this kind of stuff, you will be amazed at what Jane Jensen has achieved in this story. She presents here an alternate history of Christianity, an entirely new aspect of it, and it even tells us a completely original and new biography of Jesus! If you thought a game cannot deal with such profound matters, just take a look at "Gabriel Knight III". Besides, she wonderfully connects the history of mainstream Christianity with that of Judaism, the Templars, and the Masons. It looks so convincing in the game, that you actually start believing it! And all this with a lot of good taste and tact, with tolerance and understanding. It is really one of the most fascinating stories I know. But did you think all the game is about is telling you the true story of Jesus and what the Masons really are? Not in the least. As much as the historical part of the game is interesting, there is also a more earthy story about Gabriel and Grace, which is wonderfully realistic and beautiful. In the middle of the game there is a powerful and touching cut scenes, that belong to the biggest highlights of the entire history of video games. The characters are also fantastic, as always, there is a lot of humor in the game, Gabriel himself is charming with his New Orleans accent and witty remarks, you meet old pals such as Mosely, and all other characters are as interesting and as convincing psychologically.
What about the game behind this story? Well, the game rocks, too. Except for having some traditional, typically Sierra-flavoured puzzle solving, the game lets you perform many actions which are not necessary to complete the game, but simply enrich the experience and enlarge the game world. You can really play the detective in this game, spy on everybody, lure at places that you know will be visited by somebody, take pictures and fingerprints, work with data on your laptop, and so on. The amount of pure adventuring here is huge, from tricky inventory-based puzzles to logical detective work and gathering clues. The biggest part of the puzzles is to be solved while working with your special computer, using all the data you managed to gather. Some puzzles are extremely tough and are sure to give you a headache, but are always fascinating and unusual - like, for example, connecting particular locations on the map to create a hexagram. The game is divided into small time periods, that will end and begin according to the actions you performed in order to trigger this change. Although it is not real time in sense of
Last Express, it is quite refreshing and make the game look and feel more realistically.
The game world is entirely 3D, with great graphics and a fantastic engine that allows you to explore the world with the camera, and to move Gabriel around - so to say, a combination of 1st person exploring and 3rd person moving. This works really great, there is much more freedom in this game than in most adventures. The music is also wonderful, as in all Gabriel Knight games.
The Bad
The biggest (and probably the only) weakness of this game is its so-called "traditional" puzzles. The detective/spying work and all the stuff you could do with the computer were really cool. On such background, the few "classical" puzzles, taken directly out of old-fashioned comedy adventures, looked completely out of place. The obvious example is the infamous "cat puzzle" - I won't give you the detailes for fear of spoiling you this product of mastermind puzzle design, but if you imagine a kind of a weird, illogical, and downright silly action you would normally avoid even in
Day of the Tentacle suddenly being required in a game that deals with religion, mythology, horror, and vampires, you will understand why it is so inappropriate.
The Bottom Line
If you never played a Gabriel Knight game, I feel sorry for you. This is one of those game series that make a gamer's life better. The third game is by no means inferior to the first two, and its story even surpasses the ones of its predecessors. The cultural value of this title is extremely high, the storyline is intelligent and deep, the gameplay is cool, and overall, this is really one game you shouldn't miss. It could have given the adventure genre an opportunity of a grand revival, if the people didn't prefer buying all kind of crap instead of quality games.
