Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The Good
The story, the story, the story, I can't say it enough, Jane Jensen did a marvelous job of constructing a complex, and riveting story, at the same time developing it into an excellent game. This title was a boost in the adventure genre's arm, telling a good story in a modern environment, that was not only chilling, but frightening realistic! The research into the subject matter is deep and thorough, this becomes clear as you progress into the game. The story is what kept me playing, but the puzzles were also top notch and imaginative, there are a few that take are abstarct, but they don't take from the game. The dialogue is also great Tim Curry does a top notch job as do the other voice acters.

The Bad
Nothing really, this is the ideal adventure game, perfectly blending a deep story, with excellent gameplay.

The Bottom Line
Buy it, Buy it NOW!

The Good
Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers is a game I knew little about until I bought it on GOG.com along with its two sequels. I also saw Pushinguproses' episode dedicated to the game and after watching her review I was very excited to play the game. Not only did I enjoy it, but Gabriel Knight also revitalized my appetite for adventure games!

In Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers, you play as the titular character, an ambitious but not very successful novelist who lives in New Orleans and owns a book store (that virtually nobody actually visits). Suffering from writer's block, Gabriel decides to help his best friend and police detective Mosely solve a string of murders in which the murder victims were apparently used in Voodoo inspired sacrificial rituals. As our hero investigates the case, he discovers that his German ancestors have quite some involvement in the events happening in New Orleans. He also encounters Malia Gedde, a beautiful woman who gets romantically involved with Gabriel but who keeps a very dark secret away from him.

The game's story is told through the course of ten days and will take Gabriel to various real-life New Orleans locations such as Jackson Square, the Tulane University and the Bayou St. John. He will also visit a castle in Germany and mummy-infested catacombs in Africa. For every day, you have a certain set of puzzles to solve, information to discover and items to find before you can move on to the next day.

The game itself plays like a traditional 90s Sierra point-and-click adventure. So you click all over the screen in order to move Gabriel around, let him interact with objects or people or examine his surroundings. The game also has a score system (a stable feature in Sierra adventure games). You won't get the full score if you only do the actions necessary to complete the game. This adds some nice replay value and encourages you to explore and experiment. When you talk to people, you have access to a huge variety of subjects to talk about, you can ask them important questions in order to progress the story or just have some small-talk with them. It adds great depth to the conversations and helps fleshing out the characters you meet.

Two of the game's best aspects are its story and characters. The story may be a bit unoriginal, but it's told in such a way that it keeps you interested until the very end. Like Gabriel himself, you will slowly but surely discover the truth behind the murders, Gabriel's family and what the word Schattenjäger means. As you play through the game you will also get some nice educational information about New Orleans and Voodoo culture (the real one and not what you saw in the second Indiana Jones movie).

When it comes to the characters in the game, you can expect quite a variety of personalities, both friendly and hostile. Aside from the characters I mentioned before, there's Gabriel's sexy and intelligent personal assistant Grace (who remains professional and level-headed despite Gabriel's macho humor). You will also meet the intimidating and shady Voodoo museum owner Dr. John and Gabriel's relative Wolfgang, who plays a key role later in the game.

Voice acting and music is nothing short of amazing. The game has some very talented actors voicing its characters. For example, Gabriel Knight is voiced by Tim Curry, detective Mosely has Mark Hamill's vocal chords provided to him and Michael Dorn gives life to Dr. John. Virtually all actors did a splendid job at bringing their characters to life and make them very memorable. Gabriel Knight in particular steals the show. He's a flawed and relatable regular Joe, he sometimes lets his impulses get the better off him but his incorruptible sense of justice and fearless daredevil attitude make him really stand out from the crowd.

The music, composed by Robert Holmes, has plenty of variety and always fits perfectly in the situations you encounter in the game. The musical score ranges from joyful fanfare music and blues rock to downright threatening African drumming. It all adds to the game's compelling and sometimes very scary atmosphere. You cannot help but feel that the villains are watching you every move and that they could just kill you when they want to. In particular the moments taking place in the African catacombs really unsettled me. It features the dark and brooding drumming I already mentioned, and seeing all those seemingly dead mummies really made me wonder what will happen next!

The Bad
There are a few moments at the game's final day wherein you may risk getting into an unwinnable situation. I'm not sure whether there are similar situations at earlier days of the game, therefore I highly recommend you to use at least two saves and use one of them to save your game at the beginning of each day.

The game's narrator gets on my nerves from time to time. I believe the developers wanted her to be a Voodoo witch or fortuneteller but she really oversells her role in my opinion. She speaks very slowly and with way too much drama. Fortunately, you can turn her voice off in the game's options.

Just as a little warning, Gabriel Knight is pretty gory at times. The game doesn't shy away from showing you lying on the floor with a zombie on top of you, ripping out your heart and eating it as an afternoon snack! So avoid this game if you're squeamish about blood and guts.

The Bottom Line
Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers is considered among many to be one of the all time greatest games in the adventure genre and I completely agree with that. Like a great crime novel, you really get engaged into the story and want to play on until the very end. This combined with the game's memorable cast of characters, awesome soundtrack and voice acting makes the game a thrilling rollercoaster ride! Now it's your turn to play, Schattenjäger!

The Good
"The flesh is weak, Johnny. Only the soul is immortal." (You know what I'm talking about, right?)

The Bad
"I got a thing about chickens" :-P

The Bottom Line
It was the time when Sierra’s classic series had started to lose their splendor and brightness. Lacking the necessary originality and innovation, they somehow repeated themselves without offering something progressive. It was then that Jane Jensen, already an employee of the company, was given the chance to make her designing debut. The result was “Gabriel Knight”, an adventure that took the world of gaming by surprise and arguably is the genre’s finest hour.

The game casts us as Gabriel Knight, an unsuccessful writer who lives in his bookshop in the French Quarter of New Orleans, striving for a breakthrough in his career. He is not the kind of person who takes life very seriously. Also, he often displays laziness, bad manners and a bit of eccentricity. But he definitely has a charming personality to save him. His assistant, Grace, is the exact opposite of him. She is serious, organized and methodical. Very often their strong personalities come to disagreement, but undoubtedly there is an interesting chemistry between them. One of Gabriel’s few and greatest concerns are the inexplicable and horrible nightmares that haunt him and deeply depress him. He is currently working on a book inspired by the so-called ‘Voodoo Murders’ that are taking place in the city during the recent weeks. His best friend, Police Detective Mosely, provides him with some useful ‘inside-information’. In the coming days, Gabriel will meet his destiny. Day by day, a chain of supernatural events will change him forever. The scenario draws elements from the ‘neo-gothic’ lore. It is dark, mysterious, erotic, thrilling and dramatic. It could as well be the script of an actual film.

“Gabriel Knight” is a ‘pseudo-3d’ adventure that utilizes the icon-based system. Specifically, it makes a new approach to this system. First of all, the game introduces a new way of making conversations with other people. Except for the ‘TALK’ one, we now have the ‘ASK’ icon. The first is used for interactions of a more open and general nature. Now the second one brings us in the ‘interrogation mode’. There, between the portraits of Gabriel and of the interviewed person, is a list of subjects for discussion. Most of them apply to all the people we interact with, but there are some that solely concern certain individuals. Talking will usually lead to other subjects that will arise. The immensity and the depth of this procedure are simply remarkable. Apart from giving us clues on how to continue our investigation, it nicely outlines the richly designed personalities of the characters we interact with. We can later hear all the dialogues through the ‘RECORDER’ option. The typical ‘HAND’ icon is here divided in four different ones. There are the ‘PICK UP’, ‘OPEN/CLOSE’, ‘OPERATE’ and ‘MOVE’ icons. This separation makes for more demanding playing, as the player must have a clear idea of what he needs to do rather than randomly clicking on things.

Visually, the title reaches excellence. It is not only that its graphics are brilliantly designed. Above all, it is how successfully they fit its environment. Their dark style, coloring and shading strongly grasp the ‘film-noir’ concept. There are many places to visit. All of them are designed in great detail and with a certain ‘dim’ effect that makes them mystifying and enigmatic. That ‘dark detail’ is present everywhere, in the sprites, in the character-portraits, in the foregrounds and the backgrounds. In some places, like the cemetery, we constantly have the feeling that something unexpected is about to suddenly take place. The graphics include several superb cut-scenes. There are two kinds of them, the first are the ones that appear every night, during Gabriel’s tormenting dreams. They consist of series of still images that succeed each other very fast, radiating a terrifying and sometimes paranoid feeling. The other ones take place during the actual playing time. They are made of small graphical strips that emerge from the left of the screen moving to the right, in a comics-like fashion.

The sound aspect of the game is also superior. The musical score is simply an outstanding classic. It contains distinctive themes for every location and occasion of the game, all wisely chosen to amplify the impact and the sensation. Relaxed pieces of music and more powerful ones appropriately. Also, several high-quality sound effects support the experience.

There are all kinds of puzzles in this adventure. Some of them require the correct use of items. Others are about being in the right place in the right moment. A few are based on close observation of factors. And finally there are those of a larger scale that involve more than one location. They are all based on logic and reason and are made with respect and care for the player and his entertainment. During playing we will also encounter several, full of agony, time-sequences* where swift moving and acting is essential. The game is generally of high difficulty and lasts for many intriguing hours.

Some months after its release in floppy disks, the game became available in CD format. The CD version has two major updates compared with the diskettes one. Firstly, it has full speech support for every person in the game. All the voices are convincing and sound right in terms of acting performance. The voice-cast even includes two quite known actors, Tim Curry and Mark Hamill as Gabriel and Detective Mosely respectively. Tim Curry satisfactorily captures the accent and the mentality of the stereotyped Southerner, overdoing it only in a couple of instances. The second important improvement is that, thanks to the CD’s capacity, the cut-scenes of the dreams now have animation that makes them much more fluid. Needless to say, anyone who wants to play this game is encouraged to prefer the enhanced CD edition.

“Gabriel Knight” had two great sequels. Each one had drastic changes in the technology and method it used. But both of them are inferior to their predecessor. It seems that they could not reach the unrepeatable atmosphere and feel of it. This timeless masterpiece is unlike anything we have ever seen. Recommended to every self-respecting gamer “Gabriel Knight” is, especially for us passionate adventurers, an experience of a lifetime.

• In the sixth day of the game, the use of a slow-down utility (e.g. Turbo) is needed for passing the time-sequence in the police station.