Rating GABRIEL KNIGHT

[Tawmis]

So - if you had to rate the games from best to worse - what order would you put them in?

Maybe say what you liked or disliked, to explain the order, to generate some conversation?

[Tawmis]

This is tough, because GK was written so well across the board. But it's ironically in the very order they were released, best to worse...

GK1 - Simply because not only was it a great game, but it influenced my love of New Orleans and Voodoo. It led to me going to New Orleans almost annually for several years in a row; which led to meeting Jules out there as well. This will always be very special to me because of that.

GK2 - Because I loved the FMV. I felt like I was directing a movie. And it had werewolves!

GK3 - Was amazing that you can pan the graphics around Gabriel and zoom in and out. But that damn Cat Mustache...

[Rath Darkblade]

GK1, GK3, GK2.

Two reasons:

GK1 was best and most original;
GK3, even despite the cat mustache, was great. Amazing ending.
GK2... have never been able to get past Dean Eriksen's acting... or Act 4.

[Tawmis]

GK2... have never been able to get past Dean Eriksen's acting... or Act 4.

I liked his acting! He brought to life the quirky of Gabriel.

[BBP]

God he's horrible. He makes my toes curl in virtually every scene he's in - the showing data to the press thing in chapter 3's the worst.

Looking at it from an objective point of view:
1:
Top notch acting
Top notch music
Good puzzles
Great story
Large amount of content
Nice amount of suspense

Lesser points:
Narrator voice
Unnecessarily complex verb system can be a bit annoying when you're trying to leave and have to figure out whether to use Hand, Move or Open.
Timed sections, mainly Zombies.

3:
Acting ranges from the very good to too much, depending on your point of view.
Hosts possibly the best puzzle in all of adventure gaming in Le Serpent Rouge.
Excellent music
Some bold moves made in the storytelling - the 2AM closing film and the ending are some definite changes in the setting between the characters that would be irreversable. This may sound like odd, but think of Broken Sword - in every story the lead characters begin as non-couple and end as couple, meaning that by the start of the next episode there's some silly story to explain why they aren't changing diapers. I really appreciate they didn't go for the status quo.
Free roaming camera is an amazing toy
Secondary characters move around, figuring out where they are is part of the game
"Say... Roxane... my pants are a little dirty. Would you be able to clean them for me?"
The bittersweet ending is awesome on so many levels - Gabe telling Madeline to shove it is so satisfying...
The feel of Rennes-Le-Chateau really reminded me of the feel of south-French towns, which I've visited by the score, they captured it so well...
Graphics may have been outdated by the time the game was released but there are still a lot of beautiful sections - nighttime Rennes-le-Chateau and the early morning valley for instance...

Lesser points:
Obvious filler material due to troubled production: besides the Moustache there's of course the haemorrhoid cream (which I think is an even worse puzzle) there are some hideous fidgets. Among others, Gabriel sports some highly awkward shoulder moves while talking, and as Grace is reading on day 3, her bosom makes a very odd bounce.

2:
Acting ranges from the uncontestably amazing (Von Glower) to the uncontestably awful (Herrenchiemsee lady)
No matter what you think of this game - the opera is an amazing output for a video game.
No matter what you think of this game - Neuschwanstein is gorgeous.
Pretty nice puzzle in the theatre basement...

Lesser points:
Mostly bad puzzles - in chapter 1 to 4 it's mainly walking back and forth and pixel hunting - also the Ch 5 ending section falls flat since it's a poorer version of the chapter 6 finale. The lily puzzle is inexcusable. Also the Altötting heart section - it's essentially grave robbery that also relies on things that don't exist and that I'm not prepared to believe at that point in time. Werewolfs, OK. Contact with the dead and with the virgin Mary? No.

Most of the information consumption is static - a lot of it is gathered by plain reading a lot, opposed to, say, Hartman's lecture, interrogating Dr John, GK3 Larry's interrogation about the Knights Templar and the very small sections of text at the GK3 museum.

The tarot for me as a person with only little knowledge about tarot is annoying since it's wrong. These games are supposed to be well-researched. When you go that far it's easy to ditch the opera (although it's good,but hey, I'm a musicologist) - it doesn't remotely sound like anything Wagner would write at this state in life, there's no way it would be produced in only two months, there's no way it would be produced by people (Gabriel and Grace) who aren't producers and then conducted by an "unemployed music student".
Also - no, absolutely NO opera actor would beg for a complete new aria in a recently discovered Wagner piece hours away from opening.

When it comes down to it, the opera is a plot hole - this may be fixed in the novel though.
When Gabriel is strangled by a snake or torn apart by zombies he's dead, but how does Gabriel "die" when he's caught in the costume room or when Von Glower escapes?

Numerous characters border on annoying - particularly Mrs Smith is grating, along with Herrenchiemsee lady... but worst offenders are Gabriel and Grace. Gabriel is still a jerk but the charm of the character is completely absent.
The less said about what was done to poor Grace, the better - starting from that strange conversation at St George's Book Shop, her appalling behaviour towards Gerde up to stuffing a live pigeon down her coat... no longer the brainy powergirl from GK3...

The sound design of the game is not well - to what extent this could be blamed on FMV I don't know, but Marienplatz with the beyond annoying Saints, Altötting and the church in Rittersberg have such nasty soundscapes I really didn't want to spend any time there.

[adeyke]

When Gabriel is strangled by a snake or torn apart by zombies he's dead, but how does Gabriel "die" when he's caught in the costume room or when Von Glower escapes?

If they don't manage to kill von Glower, Gabriel's transformation to werewolf will be complete, and he'll either be killed or will become an irredeemable monster. There are potential ways out of those situations, but most of them wouldn't let Gabe continue being a respectable Schattenjäger afterwards. Or they're just not the story the game wants to tell.

[BBP]

Lengthy death scenes can be a bit of a drag like in LSL2 after you've seen it, but still...
Von Glower's escape death a bit of a stumble for me but still acceptable.
I can't think of any reason why being caught in the dressing room should be a game over. Nor do I know why Gabe is so obsessed with getting on stage while the whole point of the chapter was getting him back to Rittersberg (and failing for whatever reason).

..Ooh wait I remember that was the plothole:
The beta can only be cured if he kills the alfa. If the opera is supposed to kill Von Glower then Gabriel would be left a werewolf after Glower was killed (unless you suggest that producing the opera would be enough but since Gabe is violently ill even before the opera is found I doubt Gabe would be doing much). If the opera is supposed to cure the werewolves Gabriel wouldn't have to be taken away.

[adeyke]

The idea behind the opera is that, at the point in the opera where Baron is revealed through Engelhart's wolf howl, the music, channeled through the chandeliers and the acoustics of the hall, would sound enough like a wolf howl that it triggers von Glower's werewolf curse, causing him to transform. Everyone present would witness this and Leber would shoot him. As you note, though, the werewolf book says "If the Alpha werewolf is killed - through some action of the Beta - the Beta's curse is broken." I think even under a broad definition of "through some action", Leber shooting him wouldn't qualify. So yes, that is a plot hole. Also, the plan relies on Leber being able to react quickly enough before von Glower could attack or escape, which turns out not to be the case. Also also, the plan relies on von Glower choosing to attend the opera. It turns out that he did, but that was stupid of him. Obvious trap is obvious.

As for why Gabe was at the opera, it's not clear to me. The plan was for him to be back in Rittersberg during the night of the opera, but I'm not sure why he was even there at all. He wasn't in any condition to help out, and Grace is the one who did all the research necessary for the plan. It would have made more sense for him to just stay in Rittersberg the whole time (in-universe, that is; it wouldn't have worked for the plot). When they couldn't get him back in time, the alternative was to just securely lock him up so he wouldn't be a danger to anyone if he transformed. But when Grace told him that the building had been rebuilt with slightly different dimensions, he realized that that meant that their plan wasn't going to work. We see that von Glower gets uncomfortable and tries to leave, but he manages to retain his composure. It's only when Gabriel turns into a wolf and howls that von Glower is unable to remain human. However, he then manages to jump out of the loge, leading to that final pursuit and showdown. So getting on stage was definitely necessary at that point.

[Collector]

Lesser points:
Narrator voice

This is something that is often a complaint by non-Americans. Virginia Capers accent is that of an old Delta Creole lady. Perfectly fitting given the environs. Many Europeans don't seem to recognize that there are many different American accents and/or dialects. The Delta alone has about four or five different accents. It seems that Creole is one of the lessor known ones.

[JasefWisener]

Yeah, I've always found the narration in 1 pretty endearing, but it's largely because of that exact reason.

[BBP]

It's not her accent really, it's more the monotonousness and the slowness that takes away the tongue-in-cheek that I can read in the text.

[Tawmis]

It's not her accent really, it's more the monotonousness and the slowness that takes away the tongue-in-cheek that I can read in the text.

That's how people with that Creole accent talk though. Very slow dialect when verbally spoken.

[Rath Darkblade]

I liked the Creole accent that Virginia Capers used. I've never been to America, but when I played GK1 for the first time, that Creole accent really helped me to "imagine" what New Orleans sounds like. (I'll avoid saying "Nawlins" because I don't want to offend any Louisianans here).

I just did a quick trawl through YouTube and found a quick sampling of American accents. It's definitely not all the cities or even all the states. I'm well aware that Americans have many different accents - people from Texas don't speak the same as people from California, etc (and people from New York don't speak the same as people from Newark!) It's the famous "melting pot" allegory - America is full of communities from all over the world - English, French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, African Americans, and I haven't even mentioned the many, many tribes of the American Indians. Yet people get along with each other, generally speaking. I always thought that it's one of the most admirable things about the US.

Of course, all places have many accents. The UK has many regional accents - people in Somerset speak differently from people in Hertfordshire, etc.

[Spikey]

Must put GK3 first.
The environment is so fitting, and the complex story unfolds in such a shocking and unexpected way - that is what I'm looking for. I'm sure Dan Brown book would have been way more interesting if he had played this game. The characters are just genius, and it really shows how great Jane is at stitching together many different storylines into one cohesive whole. Thank you Jane.

Then GK1. I loved the voice acting, the mystery, the DRAMA, the bloody chicken in your shop. A character dies on a scene where you are talking to him, and then you expose his tattoo. Is this police quest or Erotica by Madonna? Only my chest surgeon knows for certain.

Last, there is GK2. A good game, but it missed the mark for me. Gabe in 1 and 3 is pretty consistent, but I'm not sure if it is the dialogue, animation or Tim Curry that stitches it together. Not only Gabe, but Grace I find annoying as hell in GK2, and they both shouldn't be. Nor have to be, as the other 2 games show.

[Tawmis]

Must put GK3 first.
The environment is so fitting, and the complex story unfolds in such a shocking and unexpected way - that is what I'm looking for. I'm sure Dan Brown book would have been way more interesting if he had played this game. The characters are just genius, and it really shows how great Jane is at stitching together many different storylines into one cohesive whole. Thank you Jane.

Then GK1. I loved the voice acting, the mystery, the DRAMA, the bloody chicken in your shop. A character dies on a scene where you are talking to him, and then you expose his tattoo. Is this police quest or Erotica by Madonna? Only my chest surgeon knows for certain.

Last, there is GK2. A good game, but it missed the mark for me. Gabe in 1 and 3 is pretty consistent, but I'm not sure if it is the dialogue, animation or Tim Curry that stitches it together. Not only Gabe, but Grace I find annoying as hell in GK2, and they both shouldn't be. Nor have to be, as the other 2 games show.

You're clearly not as terribly scarred by the Cat Mustache as I was...