Deshrill

I just wanted to try writing a review for the first (and, in my opinion, best) game of the Gabriel Knight trilogy: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (hereafter referred to as GK 1). I imagine a lot of people have played this game, but it's old enough where some new adventure game fans might not have heard of it. I'll try not to describe the story in too much details, but there might be some MILD SPOILERS in the review.

STORY: In GK 1, you play the part of Gabriel Knight, a crude, womanizing novelist in his early 30's who owns St. George's Bookstore in New Orleans. He has written a few novels, although none were major successes. He runs the bookstore with another employee: Grace Nakimura. Grace is a recent college graduate in her early 20's planning to start grad school in a few months. She's very smart and practical, in some ways the opposite of Gabriel. The main plot of the game involves Gabriel researching a series of brutal voodoo murders in New Orleans for a new book he's writing. The voodoo murders end up unlocking parts of Gabriel's family legacy that will end up changing him forever...

The plot in this game is extremely well done. At times the sheer amount of dialogue makes it feel more like a novel than a game. When talking to important characters in the game, you can interrogate them on a number of subjects, resulting in a number of colorful responses. If GK 1 was a movie, it would be rated R: there is some strong language in the game and the murder scenes are often grisly. There is even brief nudity towards the end, but it's done in a way that relates to the plot. Although the plot of the game gets rather dark at times, there is enough humor thrown around throughout to keep the game from being too serious.

GAMEPLAY: The interface for GK 1 is very similar to that of King's Quest 5, Space Quest IV, Lesiure Suit Larry V, etc.-- it's done with a mouse. You can right-click to change the different actions you can do (walk, talk, pick up, examine, etc) and it works pretty well. A few of the puzzles are of the annoying pixel-hunting variety, but for the most part the puzzles work well with the story. Towards the end of the game there are a few arcade sequences that are a bit frustrating, but it's nothing too hard to deal with. The game is a bit buggy at times and has problems running on newer machines due to timed sequences, although it should run OK with an emulator to slow down your computer.

GRAPHICS: By today's standards, the VGA graphics look rather pixelated. Still, there are a lot of detail in the backgrounds and the animation works pretty well. The best graphics in the game are during the cut-scenes interspersed throughout; it literally feels like you're watching an interactive graphic novel at times. Another example of good graphics in the game are when you interrogate someone; the interface switches to a close-up to where it shows a detailed portrait of the character you are speaking to; the lip-synching is done well and it really adds to drawing you into the story.

SOUND: Although the graphics are dated, the voice-acting and music is where this game truly shines. Although it was released on floppies, the best version of GK1 to get is the CD-ROM version. The voice-acting is done by various talent and all of it works. Tim Curry plays Gabriel Knight (he would later reprise this role in GK: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned) with an exagerrated Southern accent that works for the rowdy, slightly thick-headed aspects of the character. Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker of 'Star Wars' fame) does a wonderful job as Gabriel's friend Detective Mosely and Leah Remini (from 'King of Queens') works for the snappy yet smart anctics of Grace Nakimura.

The music of GK 1 is one of my favorite computer game scores ever. Robert Holmes captures a jazzy feel in a lot of the pieces to represent the New Orleans setting of much of the game. My favorite music in the game is either the dark, forboding arrangement of the Gabriel Knight theme over the end credits or the jazzy music played on the radio in Gabriel's bedroom.

DIFFICULTY: GK 1 is tougher than your average adventure game. Although a lot of the puzzles in the game work for the story, some of them are a bit challenging to figure out. The arcade bits towards the end aren't as hard as they are frustrating.

Wormsie

I absolutely loathed the music in Gabriel Knight one. It was messy and ugly: Lucas Arts composers knew how to use low-quality MIDI music for their advantage, but Sierra seemed to be totally lost.

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eriq

I've only heard a little bit of it.

Can Gabriel Knight I CD version be ran on Windows XP?

I am getting Gabriel Knight 2 on CD in the mail tomorrow! Can that be played on Windows XP as well?

help! I've never played the Gabriel Knight games!

mrdunn

GK2 works fine on XP, I just played it last week. (It hasn't aged well, I played it all the time when I was in middle school/high school. Now, I realize how corny some of the acting really was. Plus, its too bad they didn't have better video compression back then...) However, GK1 does NOT work on XP. You can't save your game, so unless you feel like playing for two days straight, don't bother. Even then, it randomly crashes, and with no saving, that gets frustrating. Anyone know if anyone will ever be able to fix it? I tried setting up a dual-boot system, specifally to play GK1, but my harddrive got corrupted, now I'm scared of even trying it again.

Deshrill

Glad some people read the review! I just wanted to follow up on some of the comments...

I guess I can sort of understand the "messy MIDI" score criticism of Gabriel Knight; I personally like the score, but a few of the tracks tend to be too ambitious with using several different instruments at once. The LucasArts scores for the first two Monkey Island games sounded less cluttered than the GK score, but both games had catchy and memorable music IMHO.

As for running the games on Windows XP... I've had some problems. GK 1 in particular is annoying to run and tends to lock up in parts last time I played it. GK 2 ran without a problem, although a bug caused it to crash early in Chapter One when trying to go to someplace on the subway.

The acting in GK 2 is a bit melodramatic. I'm really puzzled why Grace was so much older in the game than the character was supposed to be. The actor that played Gabriel took himself too seriously, although I like the plot of the game (particularly all the information about German history).

Kolzig

I would've liked M.Hamill to reprise his role in GK3, but anyway the guy who eventually got the role of Mosely, did a fine job.

I thought GK1 musictrack was good enough.

Maccas

GK1 has a puzzle based on clock cycles in the police station so you can try and use moslow but even better if you have a slow computer.

Deshrill

Yeah, I also wished Mark Hamill would have reprised his role. At one point I e-mailed Jane Jensen about it and she said the reason why he didn't reprise the role is because he wanted too much money; apparently GK 3 was done on a tight budget or something. Still, Billy West did an excellent job as a sound-alike for Mark Hamill's Mosely performance.

Right, the puzzle in the police station had to do with setting the thermostat, if I remember correctly. I imagine the aracade sequence towards the end of the game in the Mayan temple would be tough to complete on a fast computer.

davez82

lol are you serious? For one thing mosely barely says anything in gk3, and secondly what else is mark hamill doing.

Well I played sins of the fathers after gk2. .. baaad idea. Everything revolving around gk2 pales in comparison. This game was ok, the only thing good was the voice acting. Some of the puzzles were super frusteraing, i dont remember which ones but its a sierra game what do you expect, they needed to make money offa hint books. I would reccomend this game only because it leads into gk2, no need to play 3, just play one into two, and you only play #1 so you can enjoy two even more .

Henke

I have played all Lucasarts adventuregames but I (almost) never played any of the Sierra games. I have now (well it was a rather long time ago) played Gabriel Knight 3 and I really want to play the other Gabriel Knight games. They seem so good. I want them sooo bad.

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80k

http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~bfrazer1/gk/

that shows you how to play GK1 on XP.
I just played through the entire game through dosbox as described in the link, and it works great... saved games no problem.

Just wanted to add that i fell in love with GK1. i hadn't played any adventure games in years, and then played Longest Journey a couple of weeks ago, and was very disappointed... was almost turned off from the genre. And then i bought GK1 and it changed everything!

mrdunn

OMG!!! Thank you for that link! You have no idea how long I've been waiting to play GK1 again since I got my XP machine. I had tried using DOSBox before, but couldn't get it working the way I wanted. While it is the lower graphics option, it's still better than nothing at all. Now I just gotta find some time to play it again.

Taylor

Try playing it with a Roland Sound Canvas (or an MT-32 if you can't get an SCC-1)

Check out QuestStudios.com for MP3's of what the game is/was supposed to sound like.

I think if the music was digitized like it was in GK2 and GK3 it would be the best score of the series.

Though I'm fond of The Dagger of Amon Ra for the best Sierra score. Still I listen to LB2, GK1 and GK3's scores on a fairly regular basis.

Leonardi

I can tell that the game works fine under Windows 98 SE. I keep an older computer (quite good for its time) with that operating system especially for games that won't run well or at all under Windows XP, or that represent such a hassle that they are better played on Windows 98.

Good review, I've played through GK1 last week and it was indeed wonderful. Great voice acting.

Deshrill

GK3's opening credits score was excellent, but I like the original's music the best... Very atmospheric of New Orleans and the whole voodoo feel.

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Snatcher42

Hi, thanks for posting that link to my site!

Just wondering, did you play the game in VGA or VESA mode? I'm still working on getting VESA running better, and would appreicate any feedback I can get about how it runs on various types of PCs. Thanks.

mrdunn

I tried the VESA mode, but, like you said, it don't work to well. The movies would crash the game, and it ran VERY slow. I think the audio might have been scratchy too, but I don't remember. I think the reason for that was because the VESA was only meant for Windows. I could be wrong though. I just remember from ages past when I played it, I could never get the game to look as good in DOS as it did in Windows. For one thing, the movies lack sound effects in the DOS (VGA) version, lightning..motorcycle...etc. And the icons were much smaller, and the usuable objects appeared much clearer. I have a feeling the VGA version will probably be the best we'll ever be able to get out of DOSBox.

Oh, I have an Alienware computer, with 2.16 Gig AMD processor. So it ain't a shabby machine.

Snatcher42

Well, there is a VESA mode for DOS included with the CD version - you can select it in the setup program - and I have gotten it running playable but choppy on my machine (also an Alienware) - still no sound fx in the videos, but the map and dialogue screens look sharper... I just think that DOSBox isn't emulating fast enough to run it well, thats all. Oh well. Thanks for the feedback.

fieky

Hi, I must be the 1000th person but I'm having problems running GK1 under XP. I'm using DosBOX as per the guidance on this forum, but what happens with me is that the dialog cycles through too fast to be read or heard - the text flashes onscreen and then disappears. Can anyone help?