Last time I talked about Gabriel Knight I was but a young child of adventure games: totally unable to really talk about the mechanics without much clarity. When I played the game I felt I had a firm grasp on the concepts and the puzzles, but when I sat down to write about it I didn’t know how to specifically argue for the game. I'd chalk it up to being a bit rusty in my writing, and also the fact that I had no idea how to explain these things without sounding like a terrible wannabe game journalist. My writing was what an aspiring wannabe games journalist would write, unfortunately. I think though, with my most recent journey, I’ve gotten my hands on and played with the genre enough to understand a few things.
Like, sifting through hot garbage puzzles in the hopes that the next plot point will have some meat to it. Or struggling to get the triggers to go off and let the game know to push me forward. On that note, I peeked at a walkthrough twice in the game because I was just simply lost. Once it was because the game decided to hand you one of the dumbest ideas I’ve seen in a while – namely, having one of the main characters carry a live pigeon in their coat pocket for a solid afternoon. The other time was because I was simply tired of how lethargic the game moved and the limp pacing by the time the final chapter rolled around.
The game I’m referring to is, of course, The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. The second game in the franchise, and an FMV game.
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery - You Done Goofed, Jane
I really didn’t know what to expect. I’ve watched a few Let’s Plays of these types of games, and enjoyed Vinny and Dave goof around in Phantasmagoria (thankfully making a playthrough of that pointless and thus saving me from playing that pile of trash). I’ve never played one myself and, since I’d played the first Gabriel Knight as a gateway into point-and-click adventures I decided to give it a go and fire up this 1995 piece of work. The game follows directly after the first game, with a yearlong break between the two storylines and with Gabriel having finished his novel about The Voodoo Murders – appropriately titled… The Voodoo Murders – and being confronted about a possible Werewolf case by locals around the Rittersburg estate of Schloss Ritter.
The first thing I noticed, other than the drab main menu lacking any theme, was Gabriel. Or rather, the actor playing him. Even though I would have loved to see Tim Curry in a wig and overlong coat, Dean Erickson does an all right job of filling in the physical features. Though the different jacket bugs me for some ungodly reason. The other noteworthy change is that, unlike the first game, you play as both the titular character and his assistant Grace Nakimura. While I thought changing between the two characters was going to ruin the game’s premise and pacing, I ended up enjoying the interplay that the two storylines had more than just about anything else on display.
As for his acting itself, well… Erickson does a decent enough job of being a body. After that, things get fuzzy. The obnoxious, rude, and roguish dork that Gabriel was in the first game is replaced by this sometimes annoying, oftentimes impotent sounding American tourist. With the story taking place mainly in Germany, hearing Erickson butcher these words and names is something else as well. And one of the first discrepancies I had with the game was mainly in how convenient it was that all the major players in the game spoke English to some degree. Whether that’s because I’m not German, and haven’t been to Germany so I have no clue the English fluency around the Munich area, I don’t know. It’d be nice to clear that up since I’d probably retract that complaint.
One I won’t, however, is the lack of English subtitles or ones that I could find without downloading an external patch. I don’t understand the language and, assumedly, neither does a fair share of the demographic this version was produced for. When I did download the patch I was almost halfway through the game and the patch refused to allow me to load those games, so I was forced to search for something resembling a cognate to try and gather context about what the hell these people were saying. Luckily, most of the important documentation in the game is either translated at some point or pre-translated so I don’t have to stare at a foreign language I have no concept of.
Since watching composited actors gape awkwardly at each other is the name of the game, it was surprising to see the level of quality some of the screens had. Some were just fully composited while others had actual physical sets – usually an office or small room – which lent a very strong atmosphere to the game it otherwise wouldn’t have. Even if the actors performing weren’t outstanding, the visuals were pretty great and actually not a detriment to play. On the other hand, the audio quality is a total mess with standards ranging from full and without decent pop filtering to tinny, boomless productions and an even more annoying profile with a low hum and well sthPoken P’s all over the place. I can’t help but wonder if that’s an error in my version of the game rather than with the game itself, but it was still completely distracting and irritating. The music, like the first game, was always on point but the quality issues that plague the dialogue unfortunately crept into the music as well, oftentimes cutting between different portions of the same song when you changed scenes in a location.
Fortunately, even though the delivery is sometimes stale or just completely bizarre, the game has another interesting storyline that kept stringing me along through awful gameplay and strangely overlong FMV of people picking up newspapers. At first the game gives us a kernel of information – a German farmer’s daughter was murdered by a mysterious Black Wolf and he has called upon the new Schattenjäger to aid him. From there the game goes into a surreal conspiracy theory style tale of werewolfry within the former Bavarian throne room. Namely in King Ludwig II, a mad-king who was an introvert most of his life, and connecting to him a string of supposed “Black Wolves” until it begins to connect to Gabriel’s newest friend Friedrich von Glower, a Baron he meets when he joins an exclusive hunting club.
The story has a strong foundation and builds on that just as well as the first game, with some portions being even stronger – especially the clues and hints as to the actual players in the storyline. I feel the reveal that Malia and Dr. John were in on it the whole time in the first game were simplistic and a little boring, if well executed. Here, the intertwining histories of the Rittersberg locals and the characters around Munich created a much more engrossing and enveloped story. For instance, the Ritter family ubergrau (which I take to be a combination of a lawyer and accountant) Harold, is a great little part of the game because he plays only the role that makes sense for what’s been described so far. He’s not some Schattenjäger sidekick in the making, even though I want that game now. There’s no reveal for him – he’s just doing his job, assisting Gabriel when and where he can.
His main role, really, is to ferry information between Gracie and Gabe. Especially when she gets deeper into her studies into Ludwig and his connection to the composer Richard Wagner, specifically his composing an opera for Ludwig personally. Now, I’m not a classical music historian so the significance was lost on me but the idea of this mad-king having great trust in his friend who created works the king lost himself in was fascinating. Better yet, the Black Wolf eventually ties back into Ludwig in a great reveal – that the monarch himself was a werewolf, and that Wagner was writing an opera and building an opera house to help ease his friend’s pain while transforming. What made this interesting wasn’t necessarily the story itself but the fact that the game told this entirely through letters that Ludwig wrote to his few friends and his closes servants rather than a total expository scene where the game repeated the wolf reveal over and over again. I’d put this together about a chapter before and because the game gave adequate clues, the final reveal left me feeling smug in the same way any good mystery should.
Unfortunately, and it comes with the territory, this mystery is littered with bad, and I mean sometimes downright awful designs. With the original game I felt the majority of the gameplay was totally understandable and I was able to finish the game without really looking at puzzle FAQ’s or guides. With this game, I tried my damndest to follow through on that and, for the most part, I succeeded. Because of the style of visuals it was much easier to tell what and where I could interact with and made analyzing everything in the game for the next trigger far easier than the original game. However, once everything was collected I had to sit down and string together some frankly stupid things to finish a chapter.
I could name a few, Weiss wurst and cuckoo clocks off the top of my head, but the one I feel exemplifies the absurdity on display involves the aforementioned pigeon. After Gabriel is attacked by another wolf and left ill, though whether the game is implying he’s turning into wolf I’m still not 100% sure on even though I think he is, and another visit to a couple of demonologists who just happened to be looking for the Schattenjäger a while back Grace decides it’d be a smart idea to find the lost Wagner opera by… you guessed it, distracting a guard in the Ludwig museum with a bird so that she could open a twelve-by-eight hole in the wall. I guess the game showed you exactly where each portion of the opera was hidden, which made the whole ordeal far less obtuse and more of a chore. But what made this especially bad wasn’t coming to the conclusion that the bird was the goal object, but finding a way to get it. Most of the time, the game rarely has any use for Gabriel’s bedroom after the second or third chapter but at this point the game expects you to go all the way back up there to investigate his linens. You literally catch a pigeon with a pillowcase and keep it in your trenchcoat for hours.
And how was I supposed to know Gabriel has his bed made only once every two months?
Anyways, once the story comes to a conclusion the game just kind of… drifts off. The ending of the first game felt powerful and almost like it was earned because of the excellent buildup to the end. Here, the strangely unclear fade falls apart and leaves me wanting. It’s obvious the developers ran out of time and money during shooting, and even worse because the final chapter could have been an incredible subversion on what the game was presenting up and to that point. Instead of having Wagner being a true friend to Ludwig and actually writing his opera to help him, it would have been far more interesting to have the composer make it so that the wolves didn’t just transform in the hall. I wanted to see the possibility of Gabriel falling from grace, so to speak, and have the final game be his redemptive arc. Instead what I got was a solid ten minute production of Wagner’s opera, a joke of a final action scene and a disappointing conclusion.
I’ll admit, while I played the game I was enjoying it and generally just grumbling along when the puzzles got muddled or hard to parse. When I started writing this, though, I couldn’t help but see where I was just forgiving the game and letting it by on the good graces of its forbearer. Even though I really want to love this game – the goofy alternate history especially – I just can’t bring myself to believe this is better, or even as good as, Sins of the Fathers. The most surprising part of that conclusion was the FMV having almost nothing to do with the disappointment, at least directly. There might have been some difficulty designing puzzles that could manifest physically with the actors in mind, but that’s no excuse for some of the cruft in the game.
I’m going to take a short break before I dive into the next game like this. I have the 2013 Tomb Raider I still want to finish,Rogue Legacy to barrel through, and more hours of Dota 2 than I really should be comfortable with. Next time I’ll be taking an even weirder trip into the future (?) with another FMV game, in my attempt to find what the hell made adventure games so popular with:
P.S. Even though I do want to see where the series goes, I don’t want to look at another Gabriel Knight game for a while. Especially the icky, late 90’s 3D graphics that sit in the weird valley of shit I don’t want to focus on for any amount of time. I also don’t own GK3, but gog’s got my back.
P.P.S. There's a KKK joke in this game. Thought I'd point that nonsense out.
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