The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

aka: A Fera Interior: Um Mistério de Gabriel Knight, GK2, Gabriel Knight 2, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, TBW, Ta'alumat Gabriel Knight: Ha-Khaya she Betokho, The Beast Within: Ein Gabriel Knight Krimi, Un Mystère avec Gabriel Knight : The Beast Within
Moby ID: 118
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Description official descriptions

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery is a direct sequel to Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the first in the supernatural mystery adventure series telling the story of a bookstore owner and writer Gabriel Knight, the last offspring of generations of Schattenjaegers (shadow hunters), whose task is to fight the evil forces that abound in the world.

After leaving New Orleans, Gabriel moves to the Ritter Castle in Bavaria, Germany, his family heritage. One day, a group of peasants approach the castle, and the elder tells Gabriel about a terrible death of a little girl, who was killed by a vicious wolf. Suspecting the wolf could be a supernatural creature, the peasant asks the Schattenjaeger to purge the evil. The investigation brings Gabriel and his assistant Grace Nakimura to the mysterious Hunter Society and to Bavaria's dark past.

The game utilizes a cast of live actors and full-motion video technology: the actors are filmed over photorealistic images of Munich and its surroundings, and nearly every interaction with the environment leads to a FMV sequence. Despite its visual style, The Beast Within is not an interactive movie, but a full-fledged adventure game with many dialogues, detective work to do, and puzzles to solve. Unlike the first game, it is entirely controlled through point-and-click actions - all the icons have been replaced by a single cursor. Both Gabriel and Grace are available as playable characters during different chapters of the story.

Spellings

  • תעלומת Gabriel Knight: ×”×—×™×” שבתוכו - Hebrew spelling
  • 狩魔猎人2 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 247 ratings with 12 reviews)

One of the better FMV efforts available

The Good
The story was gripping, the game play wasn't too puzzling, and the FMV didn't suck. Given that FMV sucks for 95% of the games it's used in (not counting cutscenes), this is a major accomplishment.

The Bad
Don't recall anything about the game that really irked me.

The Bottom Line
A good, solid old-school adventure game.

Windows · by Afterburner (486) · 2001

The Gabriel Knight Series sets the bar for other adventure games to beat

The Good
The Beast Within has tense, driven story that will captivate and draw you into the adventure. The puzzles are logically placed in the story and are believable for what a normal person would do. But again, it is the story that will keep you playing this game for days, and possibly weeks. I felt that it was a rare sequel that was better than its original.

The Bad
I do have to say that one of the puzzles requires timing, which is not my strong suit. I had to replay that part several times over. Also, this is just a personal preference, but I did not like the full motion video setup of the game, but this was the big technology at the time, and it did not hurt the actual story in any way.

The Bottom Line
A mystery/suspense adventure game that will keep you guessing until the end.

Windows · by mclazyj (28) · 2000

Grandma, why are your teeth so big?..

The Good
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was a landmark achievement even for a venerable developer like Sierra: a "serious" adventure in the vein of their own Laura Bow games, it was better scripted, better written, and thick with atmosphere.

From that point of view, The Beast Within is most certainly a worthy sequel. Like the first game, it boasts a suspenseful story, involving and credible with its meticulous attention to detail. Werewolves and obscure details about Bavarian kings hardly attracted me when I first heard about the game; I don't always enjoy Wagner's music and I certainly don't like Wagner himself. But Jane Jensen did her homework as a storyteller: she managed to present the quirky melange of low mythology and pseudo-historical material in such a way that I couldn't put the game down.

I must admit I have a weakness for the lost art of FMV with live actors in games The joy of seeing your favorite adventure game being treated like a movie was among the strongest sensations of the time. Even games with handicapped gameplay (like Phantasmagoria) could create a lasting impression because, with the right tools and talent, the resulting atmosphere could be incredibly convincing. Same happens in this game, where the very first scene envelops you in a blood-chilling, yet oddly comforting ambiance of a well-told mystery.

Much of the scenery can be interacted with. Some objects have detailed descriptions and elicit comments from our heroes. You'll gather evidence, spy on people, read old documents, interrogate suspects, and solve puzzles. There are long conversations, careful examination of clues, and original elements such as a certain change of perspective late in the game.

The Bad
It would be, however, wrong to state that the series hasn't lost anything from the transition to FMV technology. For me, the most alarming flaw was the simplification of the interface. I generally think that the "smart cursor" was one of the worst things to happen to adventure games. I understand that the traditionally verbose interface might have possibly diminished the cinematic impact of the game, but there must have been a better way to counter that than reducing all possible actions to a default, generic "interaction".

The puzzles are, for the most part, rather forgettable, and the game fails to recreate the gradual suspense-building, the coherence of the world, and the attention to detail that were so noticeable in its predecessor. At times it almost feels inappropriately cartoony and dumbed-down, lacking not only the romantic dark edge of the first game, but also many of its gameplay features.

There are a lot of video sequences, and they play even when you perform the most mundane of tasks (such as picking up an object). I must stress that, personally, I liked that feature and thought it contributed to the immersion into a movie-like experience. But the resulting slow pace is, of course, not something everyone would enjoy. Besides, I'm not sure if the game's already rich and convincing narrative needed more dramatic help from video cutscenes depicting plain, solitary actions. Also, don't expect a good movie where there is just a good game enhanced by special presentation: the direction and the acting here are completely forgettable.

The Bottom Line
The Beast Within is neither a great cinematic achievement or a particularly good adventure game. Rather, it is an interesting experiment, but one that quickly becomes outdated. For a better treatment of the same visual technique, I recommend the Tex Murphy games.

DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2017

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

The Beast Within was originally intended to take place over the course of nine chapters instead of six. The additional three would have had the player shift into the past in order to play as King Ludwig II. These chapters were ultimately cut from the game due to time constraints, budgetary limitations, and the fact that this would have required even more CDs for a game that already requires six discs.

The game's backgrounds were created from photographs taken on location in Germany.

German language

Most Germans in The Beast Within are played by American actors. They thus speak German with a bemusing English accent. In the completely localized German version of the game, quite a few "German" characters have a notable American accent, which is even stranger. Additionally, because Gabriel and Grace speak German in the localized version, the translators had a problem in dealing with scenes in which one of the protagonists speaks to a German and doesn't understand him. The problem was solved somewhat half-heartedly by suggesting that Gabriel and company speak High German, whereas the locals speak in a Bavarian dialect.

German version

When the game was first released in Germany it was the un-dubbed and un-subtitled version which had a few scenes censored (for example, a character sitting in his cave and eating flesh from a human bone). The screen would go black and instead of being able to see what was happening the player would instead see a short message on the screen in German simply describing the scene. When the game was later released in its localized German these scenes were uncensored.

French version

Though the game was greeted with excellent critical reviews in France by the time of its release, the French-dubbed version is now quite infamous for its supposed mediocrity, despite being the work of a professional dubbing team. Among the numerous recriminations against the French version, one of the most famous is that you can actually hear several times the dubbing actors making mistakes while reading and then deciding to start again without any kind of editing.

Inaccuracies

  • In the game's opening movie, the camera shows a close-up of a scar on Gabriel's arm (acquired in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers). The scar is on the wrong arm.
  • There is no sign of the chapel in Schloss Ritter that featured so prominently in Sins of the Fathers.
  • When Grace browses the part of the Schattenjäger library that is supposed to contain books on the occult, she finds a book on Lycantrophy between volumes with such German titles as Das Nest and Der Arzt von Stalingrad. These are novels without any relation to occultism.
  • On looking at a window display of watches in Munich, Gabriel claims that he can't stand wearing things on his wrist. In a later scene, a watch is clearly visible on his arm.
  • German Volkswagen Golf keys have a standardized look. The car key that Gabriel carries around in his inventory will unlock anything except the Golf he drives. His car also has no license plate.
  • Even though Grace doesn't speak German, she has no problem reading loudly from Cosima Wagner's diary, which was most likely not written in English.
  • In the book Lore and Law it is said that in Brazil there's a priesthood society called "Manos Del Sol" (Hands of the Sun). But the language spoken in Brazil is Portuguese, and "Manos Del Sol" is in Spanish. The correct name would be "Homens do Sol", as is seen in Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, when Gabriel researches the same subject on SIDNEY, the computer database of shadow hunter data.

Actors

Kay Kuter (Werner Huber) seems to enjoy playing the role of a bartender; he also plays one (Griswold Goodsoup) in The Curse of Monkey Island.

Novel

Jane Jensen, the series' designer, has written a novelization of this game as well as one of the first game (Sins of the Fathers).

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • June 1996 (Issue #143) – Game of the Year
    • November 1996 (15h anniversary issue) - #17 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #10 Hardest Computer Game
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #7 Most Memorable Game Villain (Fredrick von Glower)
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #4 Most Rewarding Ending of All Time
    • November 2003 (Issue #232) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2005 - #33 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list

Information also contributed by -Chris, Adam Schoales, Alan Chan, chiriniea, Foxhack, PCGamer77 and Swordmaster

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Eurythmic.

Macintosh added by chirinea. DOS added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Trixter, MAT, Adam Baratz, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, The cranky hermit, formercontrib, Zeppin, Dudujones, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, RetroArchives.fr.

Game added May 15, 1999. Last modified January 23, 2024.