Designing Gabriel Knight 4.

[Tawmis]

The idea came to me to post some threads about other Sierra games, when I was just digging through my email and found an ancient story I had written where the next King's Quest game would be Edgar (from King's Quest IV) seeking out Rosella to try and win her hand in marriage. It was, in my head, a cool idea because Edgar would technically be a king (with his mother - spoilers! - now dead).

So, I thought - given the chance, if you were brought in to help, or pitch ideas, or help direct (so let's avoid answers like, "I'd call in Jane Jensen/Al Lowe/Roberta Willians/Scott Murphy/Mark Crowe/Christy Marx/etc" - and assume they're there too ) - to work on the next game.

So in this case - if you were a part of the creative team, what would you hope for in the next GABRIEL KNIGHT?

[Rath Darkblade]

Can I hope for Tim Curry to reprise Gabriel Knight?

I'm not sure what I would hope for, because the occult isn't really my scene. I've never been to New Awlins, or sampled its voudoun culture. I'm sure that Jane Jensen has much better ideas than I do.

Oh, and how about... more SYDNEY and fewer cat moustaches?

[Tawmis]

Can I hope for Tim Curry to reprise Gabriel Knight?

Yes! It's a fictional world here!

I'm not sure what I would hope for, because the occult isn't really my scene. I've never been to New Awlins, or sampled its voudoun culture. I'm sure that Jane Jensen has much better ideas than I do.

Oh, and how about... more SYDNEY and fewer cat moustaches?

Do you have any thing in regards to the supernatural that you think it'd be cool that Gabe looked into?

Because, Gabe was in New Orleans in the first, Germany the second, then France in the third. So he's been everywhere.

[Rath Darkblade]

Well - not quite everywhere. He hasn't been to England, or Russia, or Spain, or... There are places chock-full of medieval mysteries. Here's a sample: http://www.medievalists.net/2015/03/15- ... ddle-ages/

Still, I find it hard to think of how any of the ones in that link could be co-opted into a Gabriel Knight mystery.

Hang on a minute....... I think I might have something! I tried writing a noir mystery a few years ago, but gave up on it halfway through. My detective was trying to investigate what happened to the Lakota chief, Sitting Bull, after he was arrested by the US authorities in the late 1880s. Apparently there was some controversy there; the authorities said that he scuffled with the army officers and was killed when he reached for one of their pistols, but word-of-mouth among the Indians is that he was killed because of his inspirational personality.

To complicate matters, there was word of his inventing a new dance - the so-called "Ghost Dance" - to help the tribes re-connect with their ancestors. The Europeans claimed this dance was a pretext for the tribes to reunite and restart the old troubles; the Indians claimed that it was simply ancestor worship.

So... what happened to Sitting Bull? Did he die accidentally, or was he murdered? Blend in the ghosts of long-gone Indian chieftains and braves, and you might have something here, maybe? Or maybe I'm talking rubbish...

[Tawmis]

Well - not quite everywhere. He hasn't been to England, or Russia, or Spain, or... There are places chock-full of medieval mysteries. Here's a sample: http://www.medievalists.net/2015/03/15- ... ddle-ages/

That's my point though - he was more than just New Orleans and Voodoo.

So... what happened to Sitting Bull? Did he die accidentally, or was he murdered? Blend in the ghosts of long-gone Indian chieftains and braves, and you might have something here, maybe? Or maybe I'm talking rubbish...

See, that could work.

[Datadog]

I read somewhere that GK4 was supposed to feature a ghost mystery in Scotland, so I'd just go with that as a starting point. And the game could jump between Gabriel and wherever Grace ran off to (maybe have her solving a mystery in another part of the world that loosely ties into Gabriel's).

Would it be crazy to suggest Mosely be a playable character? That way, if you need a moped, Mosely can rent it without hassle.

[Collector]

My memory is of a ghost story, too, but in England.

[Tawmis]

You're both right:

GK3 Easter EggEdit

Typing in "Gabriel Knight 4" or "GK4" brings up an article on Ghosts in Sidney.

There was supposed to be - at least in my mind. There was never a GK4 in development. The storyline was going to be about ghosts and probably would have been set in England or Scotland.
Some other ideas for GK4 concepts involves witches in Scotland.

Source: http://gabrielknight.wikia.com/wiki/Gabriel_Knight_4

[Tawmis]

Gabriel's enjoying some time touring England, signing at various book stores, when a girl is murdered outside of one of the book signings in a gruesome manner. Gabriel goes out there (because that's what Gabriel does) and meets a strong female officer (whom, he naturally hits on, but she rebuffs him).

That night, Gabriel goes to bed and has a dream (similar to GK1) where he sees a woman walking, and a glint in the shadows. The blurry figure follows the woman, then knifes her, and murders her brutally.

The next day, another woman is found slain - and Gabriel is surprised to see that it looks exactly like the woman from his dreams. This keeps happening (until eventually it gets to the strong female officer in charge), and Gabriel finally knows who the next victim is and does everything he can to try and protect her.

I'd play it up with spirits occasionally talking to Gabriel and give it a Jack the Ripper vibe to the whole game; and when Gabriel starts to figure it out that it could be the spirit of Jack the Ripper (maybe the murders are happening on the same days), he calls on Grace to start feeding him information.

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm... that sounds interesting, but not if there are lots of victims. Jack the Ripper killed "just" four people. Other serial killers have killed many more.

The Bean Family (see Sawney Bean on wikipedia) is supposed to have killed - and eaten - over 1,000 people in Scotland.

[Tawmis]

Hmm... that sounds interesting, but not if there are lots of victims. Jack the Ripper killed "just" four people. Other serial killers have killed many more.

It could be just four people, each person happening on a different day, similar to GK1.

[BBP]

Hmm... that sounds interesting, but not if there are lots of victims. Jack the Ripper killed "just" four people. Other serial killers have killed many more.

The Bean Family (see Sawney Bean on wikipedia) is supposed to have killed - and eaten - over 1,000 people in Scotland.

Jack the Ripper is usually accused of 5 murders. These are the 5 canonical murders, all of ladies of the night:
-Mary Ann Nichols - murdered 31 Aug 1888, throat cut, cuts in abdomen
-Annie Chapman - murdered 8 Sep 1888, throat cut, cuts in abdomen, womb removed
-Elizabeth Stride - murdered 30 Sep 1888, cut throat, body was warm when she was found - it is believed the murderer was interrupted
-Catherine Eddowes - murdered 30 Sep 1888 Now called "double event", she was found shortly after Stride, kidney and part of the uterus removed
-Mary Jane Kelly - murdered 9 Nov 1888, throat cut, breasts cut off, many organs removed, heart was missing. She was the only Ripper victim to be found in a house - the others were found on the streets.

East London was a highly violent time in the late 1800s - there are plenty more murders on ladies of the night in this era that may or may not be attributed to the same mystery killer - Martha Tabram, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles...

I'd be opposed to a Jack The Ripper GK - Ripper's been flogged to death.


The GK fanfic I was writing years ago, had Gabe going to the east of The Netherlands to solve a string of murders, which was to blend in with Witte Wieven of ol' Dutch folklore. I'll check it out again, see if I can make headway...

[Rath Darkblade]

What is Witte Wieven? *curious*

I'd be opposed to a Jack The Ripper GK - Ripper's been flogged to death.

True. There have been plenty of suspects for who the Ripper might have been, especially while he was killing people. There was even a theory that one of Queen Victoria's sons might be the Jack the Ripper (here is the case for and against). Personally, I doubt it; Prince Albert Victor lacked both the medical knowledge and the guts (pardon the pun) to do anything like this. He was kind, pious and considerate, but uneducated and self-indulgent. Even more seriously, he was out of England during the attacks. So although it might be a sensational solution, it's very unlikely.

[BBP]

It's not really believed at the moment that Jack the Ripper had a lot of medical knowledge.

I liked the Kosminsky theory - Kosminsky was a Polish Jew who was put in an insanity asylum, he ran mad with syphilis.

What's always baffled me about the Ripper case is police technology - on one hand there are (gruesome, beware if you look them up) crime scene photos, on the other hand the amount of evidence that was stolen as a souvenir...

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm. As I understand it, forensic science at the time was very primitive, unfortunately. The 'modern' British police force (as we know it) was, at the time, only 40-50 years old and was learning this 'on the go', as it were. The first 'modern' British policemen were unemployed soldiers from the Napoleonic and Crimean wars, employed more for their physical prowess than for their brains. So it's not surprising that some of them would have stolen evidence as 'souvenirs'. (Yuck).

When Napoleon died in 1821 (just 60 years before Jack the Ripper ran amuck), during the postmortem, someone stole the dead former emperor's penis. (Double yuck). Why anyone would want such a gruesome object is beyond me - to make money off displaying it, perhaps?