Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The Good
Well for one, this is one deep story. Other Sierra adventure games had this "surface level-fun kiddies" kinda of story line. This is the first Sierra Adventure game with a really serious-adult like approach to a game. The mysterious but not so creepy storyline gave a constant adrenaline flow, but not so much to give you a heart attack.

Our main character appears to be a favorite among "men with minds like boys" : a cool, mysterious laidback kinda guy, but always seems to be a corny and horny guy in the background. Gabriel Knight is yet the most "real character" most blokes can relate with. One thing that is probably memorable is the various "useless actions" that ol'Gabriel does especially when he interacts with his lovely secretary. It may not have to do anything with the overall plot, but it certainly was the most memorable ones.

The graphics in this game is astounding, coincidently enough it's about the same period to the breath-taking graphics in Hero's Quest III. I remember just stopping and notice on how "smooth" the graphics were compared to previous Sierra adventure games.

One of the best things about the game was the Sound and the Music. The sound was totally aligned with the game-play: the sound of the motorcylce racing along is one of the most memorable sounds you get. The music cool and mysterious, certainly shall be a reminder of the best music compositions around in gaming history.

The Bad
Can you spell: B U G S?

Unfortunately, the reason why I didn't finish this game was the multitude of bugs which often cause the dang game to crash. Bugs appear to be a favorite feature among Sierra adventure games...don't know why.

Something I've noticed about this particular Sierra adventure game compared to other Sierra adventure games was the lack of "places"...in games like King's Quest there are many places which may or may not have something for the hero to do. In Gabriel Knight there usually is something to do every area you visit, although more than often it's just one of two things. After that, you barely visit them again. It's like the church in the game, the only thing you do there is to get some pastor's clothes. That it. Ho-hum. Oh, well.

To my recollection, the puzzles were one of the toughest I have experienced, even by Sierra's standards. Funny that it was tough despite the it was the "point and click" adventure types. My IQ must've have been not very high back then...not that much has changed now...:p

The Bottom Line
Certainly one of the best mystery adventures around.

The Good
I don't think there's a whole bunch to not like about this game. For starters, Jane Jensen's masterful writing will keep you on your toes until the very end. This is backed up by great character design, a good MIDI score with lots of memorable themes, beautiful character portraits, and the best voice acting that I've ever heard in a computer game. Tim Curry absolutely makes the role of Gabriel Knight his own. The game also includes lots of other stars and people of note: Leah Remini (Grace Nakimura), Mark Hamill (Detective Mosely), Michael Dorn (Dr. John), and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr (Wolfgang Ritter). The ending is rewarding, the game drips with atmosphere, and the story will stick with you long after you've finished playing.

The Bad
In terms of pure gameplay, I can't think of anything bad to say aboout GK. There are a couple of rough spots as far as technology goes, though. There is a patch available for the game, and as I recall you do have to download and install the patch in order to be able to finish the game. Do it before you start playing, because once you run the patch you won't be able to use your old saved games. Unfortunately, the terrific voice acting wasn't always well recorded. There is much more clipping than there should be in a professional product. (Clipping is the digital version of analog recording's distortion; it means recording levels were set too high.) Also, sometimes the recording levels were set too low and you have to do some quick audio adjustment to hear what people are saying. The game will only allow subtitles OR speech, so you can't both read and hear what people are saying. However, it would take a lot more than this to have taken away from my enjoyment of the wonderful acting. This game is from an era where diskette versions of games were still shipped; in fact, they often shipped quite a long time before the CD-ROM versions were. Make sure you get the CD-ROM version. I still rated the game a 5 in every area - except for graphics. The comic-style cutscenes were a cool idea, and the high resolution character portraits (I believe these were only available in the Windows version of the CD-ROM game) easily rival, and often surpass the 3D graphics of today. However, the in-game 320x240 graphics could have been better.

The Bottom Line
If you're an adventure gamer and you haven't played Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, shame on you. Go out and buy it right now. :)

The Good
When we say "adventure", we often think "comedy adventure", and the reason for that is simple: the greatest classic adventure games are comedies. "Serious" adventure games have always been much less popular. Sins of the Father is not the first attempt on this field, but it is the first one that takes hardcore puzzle-solving gameplay and charming humor that made comedy adventures great, and uses it to create an amazingly intense, atmospheric experience with touches of horror, an intricate narrative, and an unprecedented (for adventure games) degree of realism.

Sins of the Fathers succeeds where most others failed, before and after. How to make an adventure with puzzles that are hard enough, yet do not distract from the realistic setting of the game? How to combine humor with horror? How to write a story that is supernatural and natural at the same time? How to create lovable characters that resemble real people in everything they do, without becoming dull? This game solves all these problems.

The unique atmosphere of New Orleans fascinates the player from the very beginning. Every corner of the city oozes mystery, yet at the same time the city is so realistic. You'll meet typical inhabitants, old French catholics, Haitian voodoo specialists, black people who talk with that wonderful Southern accent, and many others.

The heroes of the game, Gabriel and Grace, belong to the most charismatic and memorable characters the adventure genre has ever produced. Their witty dialogue provide the necessary comic relief and give the game a wonderfully light personality, despite all the horrors that occur in it. By the way, be sure to get the CD version of the game - the voice-overs are fantastic.

A deeply involving story develops in New Orleans, written by Jane Jensen, the master story-teller. Detective mystery, educational trip into the realm of occult sciences, information about a region and its inhabitants, religious fable of sin and redemption - it is hard to say to what style this story belongs, but one thing is sure: it is good in everything it does.

The outlines of the plot follow a classic detective/mystery pattern: a crime takes place in the beginning of the game, and you have to find out who committed it and why. But of course, this is not just a regular crime, and soon you'll plunge into the world of ancient cults, superstitions, and magic. What is so great about this story and about Jane Jensen's style in general is not the abundance of supernatural effects to stun the player; it is rather the extremely natural approach to everything that happens, which makes it so credible, no matter how incredible it actually is. All the supernatural things grow out of a realistic setting, so that the player never feels they are forced. One of the techniques Jane Jensen uses to reach this high level of credibility is the correctness of the cultural material used in the game. She gathers historical details to meticulously reconstruct the picture of voodoo cult, and because of this scientific approach, the player is convinced the whole thing is real.

This is the background for a game that was developed by a company that already had years of experience in making quality adventure games. But even for Sierra, the gameplay of Sins of the Fathers was a rare achievement. The biggest problem that creators of serious adventure games have to face is the fact tricky puzzles aren't realistic and usually don't fit in an involving story. Either you fill your game with hilarious item combinations and get a comedy; fill it with mind-breaking puzzles, stop the action and make it a dull Myst clone; or reduce the gameplay to a minimum and get a shallow "interactive movie".

Sierra chose a different approach. I believe their early games like Colonel's Bequest employed the method of "detective simulation" - and probably there were text adventures that did it even much earlier. In any case, this is the path Sins of the Fathers followed. It is based mainly on investigation and dialogues: you talk to people to find out more about the topics you are interested in, then ask other people about the new topics you learn in process, etc. But at the same time, the game is full of hardcore puzzles that are very creative and that are equally far from Myst-style riddles and insane inventory orgies of comic adventures.

When playing a semi-serious adventure such as Fate of Atlantis, I still felt very strongly I was in a game. Sins of the Fathers never evoked in me this feeling. One of the greatest achievements of its gameplay is the fact it is a challenging game with real puzzles and serious detective work, yet it is not a collection of brilliant puzzles that are there just for their own sake.

Sins of the Fathers is also one of the last masterpieces of hand-painted graphic style. If you want to see how beautiful a 2D game can look without resembling a cartoon, take a look at this game. That was the "serious" graphics style that matched the game perfectly. There are many dark colors, especially brown, to make the game world look more mysterious and sinister, yet very cosy at the same time. Character portraits that appear during the dialogues are excellent. In addition to that, the game is accompanied by one of the best MIDI music scores I have ever heard.

The Bad
Not all the puzzles in the game are great; some just made me scratch my head, wondering why they were inserted into this game. Worse are the dreadful moments of "irreversible" situations: I believe that there are a few instances where you can get irrevocably stuck in the game because you forgot to do something before. This still reminded me that it was a Sierra game, after all.

There is also a bit too much of "triggering" - walking around and talking to people over and over again, going through all the locations in circles, clicking on everything on the screen, etc., in hope of triggering a scripted event and being able to advance the story.

The Bottom Line
I don't know what kind of voodoo magic they did here, but Sins of the Fathers proved that adventure games could, in fact, tell serious, involving stories, create dark, atmospheric worlds, and even throw at you educational material without boring you to death - all without sacrificing the gameplay. Truly a timeless classic, Sins of the Fathers is required gaming for those who care for the genre.