Overview

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Review

Release Date: 11.05.1999
Platform: PC - Windows
Developer: Sierra Studios
Publisher: Sierra On-Line, Inc.

Reviewed by Andrew McClure on 3.28.2004

Review Rating: 8/10

Playing Gabriel Knight 3 is a lot like watching those old “House of the Future” shorts from the fifties; it’s a trip into a future which never quite made it. Instead of self-aware toasters and robots that take care of the kids, it’s a fully 3D point-and-click adventure game. Unfortunately, the point-and-click adventure has gone the way of the buffalo and we never got to see where this great game would’ve taken us.

Perhaps a bit of background is needed here. For those not in the know, the Gabriel Knight series stars Gabriel Knight (natch), a sometime author/bookstore owner who happens to also be a Schattenjager, literally “Shadow Hunter,” a sort of a paranormal investigator. Since every great detective needs a sidekick, Gabriel has Grace Nakimura, an intelligent and independent woman who for reasons even she sometimes doesn’t understand has stuck with Knight through thick and thin. The first two games in the series, Sins of the Father and The Beast Within (one of the few FMV games ever made which was actually quite good), garnered the series a large fanbase with their great characters, story, and gameplay. It also helps that the series is one of the few to actually take the horror genre seriously rather than just pumping the game full of sex and gore.

At the beginning of Gabriel Knight 3, Gabriel receives an invite from Prince James, the current heir to the Stewarts of Scotland who are now in exile in France. At first it seems that the trip was just a social outing (Gabriel has become somewhat of a pseudo-celebrity based on books written about his past two adventures), but the Prince had very specific reasons for calling a Schattenjager. It seems that the Stewarts have had a bizarre problem over the generations; the Stewart heirs have been waking up pale and drowsy with two small puncture wounds in their necks. Prince James has just had his first child, Charles, and is loath to let the family curse claim him. Gabriel and Grace are naturally skeptical but agree to stay the night. As they sleep, a man comes into the nursery and kidnaps Charles. Gabriel, being the hero of the story, chases the man onto a train where he is knocked out and left for dead. From there the story spreads, involving sultry French vixens, double crosses, templars, hidden treasure; all stuff you’d expect in a good horror mystery. The great voice-acting (Tim Curry’s Gabriel Knight deserves high honors) is just icing on the cake.

Gabriel Knight 3 was built on Sierra’s own Half-Life engine. Though perhaps now the characters seem a bit crude, it’s all still lushly animated, with plenty of texture and detail. Most of the puzzles are similar to what you’d see in a 2D adventure game (other than some of the items being cleverly hidden), but there are some distinct advantages to a full 3D game. Probably the biggest advantage is the huge environments, which are definitely a step above the small one-screen rooms of traditional adventure games. Also intriguing is the camera, which is fully dependent; you control it with the mouse and can move it around where ever you want. This means that you can actually fully explore an area instead of having to wait for your character to walk there. It does take some getting used to, but after an hour or so of play it becomes almost second nature. Though the majority of the game is the usual "find-the-right-object" hunt, Gabriel Knight 3 features one of the most inventive and fun tools ever, SIDNEY.

SIDNEY is a computer program created by Grace and her brother which acts as a Schattenjager database. All throughout the game, Gabriel is picking up pamphlets, fingerprints, old pieces of paper, and various other clues which he can then put into SIDNEY. Towards the end of the game the control switches over to Grace, and you get to play with SIDNEY. Rather than someone just sitting down and telling you the plot, you actually have to figure it out yourself. No one hands you a map with an X on it; it’s your job to piece all the info together. You have to solve the puzzle yourself. It’s an incredibly fun and satisfying experience; I would love to play a game where all I do is use SIDNEY to solve a mystery. Unfortunately, the time spent on SIDNEY is over too soon and you have to actually leave the hotel room to solve all the mysteries.

Not everything about the game is perfect, though. As I stated earlier, the game runs on the Half-Life engine, which has not aged all that well. The characters and items are rather blocky, and there is some serious clipping, especially when a character is holding an item. Probably the biggest blow against the game is the ending (and I'm not even counting the horribly frustrating chess board puzzle). It seems like they wrote the story one way, but then thought that they needed a twist at the end. So, rather than having an ending which, while a little obvious, worked; we have an ending which flies in out of left field. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common problem in the adventure genre.

Despite these problems, Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is a great game. With a wonderful story and some truly innovative gameplay, Gabriel Knight 3 is a look into a future which could’ve been, or if you’re more optimistic, which has not yet come to pass.

Box art