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Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

aka: Gabriel Knight I, Gabriel Knight: Die Sünden der Väter, Gabriel Knight: Les péchés des ancêtres, Gabriel Knight: Lucha Contra Las Fuerzas Sobrenaturales, Gabriel Knight: Pecados dos Pais, Gabriel: Zikhronot Afelim

Description official descriptions

Gabriel Knight is a wise-cracking bookstore owner and would-be author. He is the last in a long line of Shadow Hunters, those fated to fight supernatural forces of evil. Tormented by terrifying nightmares, he must spend every waking moment scouring the side streets and back alleys of New Orleans for the key to his dark past. One day, a blood-chilling murder shocks the inhabitants of the city. The police detective assigned to investigate the crime is Gabriel's friend. In the beginning Gabriel collects evidence in hope of using the material for his new novel; but soon he finds himself personally involved in the investigation, and plunges deeper into the world of secret societies and murderous cults.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a third-person puzzle-solving adventure game. Created by Jane Jensen, the game differs from Sierra's Quest games (e.g. Space Quest) by having a realistic setting and focusing (despite its supernatural elements and humor) on mature themes and detective work. In this way it is more similar to the company's earlier Laura Bow games.

The game's icon-based interface is the same as in Sierra's previous titles, with verb commands that allow interaction with the game world and its inhabitants. Though the game still has plenty of inventory-based puzzles characteristic for classic adventure, its gameplay is heavily inclined towards dialogue. Typically, Gabriel will have to interrogate other characters, choosing conversation topics and thus gradually finding clues and advancing towards the mystery's solution.

The game's locations are done in hand-painted style. The CD version of the game adds full voice-overs to the dialogues, as well as narrator's voice to text descriptions.

Spellings

  • גבריאל: זיכרונות אפלים - Hebrew spelling
  • 狩魔猎人 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

91 People (81 developers, 10 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Discussion

Subject User Date
Gabriel Knight Multimedia CD-ROM Edwin Drost (5624) 2017-02-04 15:08:18
The game gets stuck at day 5 Nowhere Girl (8622) 2016-04-28 03:02:25
A GK remake and no one's talking about it chirinea (47116) 2014-11-11 11:23:20
I really dislike the narrator SnubPollard (155) 2013-02-08 03:14:53

Trivia

CD version

The CD version of the game includes a 20 minute behind the scenes avi file depicting the creation of Gabriel Knight. The file also included interviews with most of the cast, lead designer/writer Jane Jensen and others.

Covermount releases

  • The full, original game on CD was bundled with the 1/2001 edition of Computer Gaming World magazine.
  • The full, original game on CD was bundled with the July 1997 edition of CD-Rom Today, a Brazilian computer magazine.

German version

The German CD-ROM version has a major bug, which causes to crash the games at at least three points during the game. The program obviously hangs, because of a corrupted soundfile. Turn off voices & music in the crashing scenes and you can go on playing.

Leilani Jones

Leilani Jones (Malia Gedde) seems to like the Voodoo Priestess gig. She also plays one in LucasArts' Curse of Monkey Island.

Novel

Jane Jensen> has written a novelization of the game, first printed in February 1997, through Penguin's ROC imprint. The game's sequel was also given the novelization treatment.

References

  • It could be a coincidence, but there is a real life blues musician from Lousiana, named Dr. John. Perhaps the character's name came from a fan.
  • On day 3, you’re able to attend a (pretty boring) lecture at the Tulane university. Take a walk in the lecture hall and read the bulletin board. After looking at it a few times, you’ll get the message “There's a notice for a lecture on Investigative Reporting techniques to be given by octogenarian Pulitzer Prize winner Laura Bow Dorian." This refers to two game characters from the Laura Bow II – Dagger of Amon Ra adventure: Laura Bow en Steve Dorian. In the game, they fell in love. An octogenarian means someone between 80 and 90 in age, so this assumes the two of them got married in the end.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • June 1994 (Issue #119) – Adventure Game of the Year (together with Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #7 Best Way To Die In Computer Gaming (get the heart ripped out by a zombie)

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, chirinea, Chris Mikesell, Isdaron; Pseudo_Intellectual, Sciere and Zovni

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White Knight Chronicles
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Black Knight Adventure
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  • MobyGames ID: 116

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Eurythmic.

Windows added by Picard. Windows 3.x added by MAT. Macintosh added by Katakis | カタキス.

Additional contributors: MAT, Andrew Hartnett, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Daniel Saner, chirinea, Sciere, Xoleras, Boston Low, 1gnition, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger.

Game added May 13th, 1999. Last modified May 29th, 2023.