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Gabriel Knight and starvation wages at Pinkerton Road
Twenty-one years ago the world was introduced to the mysterious universe of Gabriel Knight from prolific games industry creative Jane Jensen. This month marks the celebration of that anniversary, with the release of the Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers remake – enhanced with new visuals, audio and, in some cases, tweaked to preserve the original game's intended emotional resonance. One sequence, in particular, stands out to Jensen, she tells me: the police station. In the original 1993 release, the scene plays out light and even campy: "When Gabriel goes to the police station and breaks into Mosely's office [...] in the game there was a puzzle sequence that had to do with cops and doughnuts and distracting them. It was all very silly," Jane Jensen admits. The sequence, she says, has been changed in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – 20th Anniversary Edition (one year late, but close enough), to better parallel Jensen's original novelization. "I wrote a book about Gabriel Knight, I mean I wrote it as a novel after I had written the game, and so there were a few things that I had put in the novel that were new that we ended up rolling back into the remake," Jensen adds. In the novel, the police station sequence was written to be "much scarier," and given the opportunity to better convey the story's suspenseful hooks with the remake, the sequence was changed to better mirror the novel. It was the first of a few tweaks made in Gabriel Knight's return.
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father remake lands October 15
Revisiting Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on modern platforms will become much simpler on October 15, when developers Pinkerton Road Studio and Phoenix Online Studios release a remake celebrating the adventure's 20th anniversary. PC and Mac users can prove their point-and-click prowess by pre-ordering at Steam, Good Old Games and Phoenix's online store in exchange for a soundtrack and a 15 percent discount, leaving their total at $17. When the Sins of the Fathers remake was initially estimated for a mid-2014 arrival, iOS and Android ports were also mentioned, but release dates for mobile versions were absent from Pinkerton's press release. Purists may be comforted with a reminder that Pinkerton Road Studio was launched by Gabriel Knight series creator Jane Jensen. [Image: Pinkerton Road]
Activision PC games on sale on GOG.com this weekend
GOG.com is holding a sizable sale on Activision properties this weekend. While the official number of discounted games is 32, the sale features a number of multi-game packs in series like Quest for Glory, King's Quest, Police Quest and Space Quest for $3.99 each, bringing the grand total of games included in the sale to 55. Other deals for the weekend include Phantasmagoria ($3.99) and Phantasmagoria 2 ($2.39), the three games in the Gabriel Knight trilogy for $2.39 each as well as Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura for $2.39. The entire sale comes to $97.28, which the digital retailer says can save players $146.60 on all 55 games. GOG.com's sale is good until Tuesday, November 12.
Gabriel Knight remake headed to PC, Mac, mobile in 2014
As it approaches the 20th anniversary of its original release, the classic point-and-click adventure game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers will soon see a remake helmed by its original designer, Jane Jensen. Sins of the Fathers tracks book store owner Gabriel Knight and his quest to solve a series of ritual murders in the swamps of New Orleans. The remake was initially revealed during Jensen's Pinkerton Road Kickstarter campaign, though the project has since acquired funding independent of Kickstarter. The Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th anniversary edition is set to premiere in mid-2014 for Windows, Mac, iPad, and Android platforms, featuring 3D retina display-quality graphics, voiced dialogue, and a remastered soundtrack from composer Robert Holmes.
Gabriel Knight 2 now within GoG, King's Quest 4-6 following soon
Since the addition of Activision (by which we mean Sierra) titles to its catalogue of classic PC games, Good Old Games has become one of the most worthwhile game retailers online. This week, another Sierra adventure game makes its way into the shop, with an announcement of more -- two wildly different styles of point-and-click adventure game. Today, you can get Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within for six bucks (warning: it is an FMV game). In the same announcement, GoG noted that a pack containing King's Quest IV, V, and VI is coming soon, as is the strategy game Call to Power 2.
GOG.com gains Activision games
In its continued quest to unearth some of PC gaming's finest relics, GOG.com has announced a new deal with Activision Publishing Inc. -- in the context of purveying point-and-click classics, that means Sierra games! The first two games to be added to GOG's DRM-free lineup are role-playing favorite Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura; and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, the first outing of Jane Jensen's caustic-witted writer and detective. Both titles are priced at $5.99. More classic titles from Activision's vault are expected to be added over the coming weeks. With Gabriel Knight star Tim Curry leading the charge, anything can happen.
Jane Jensen's Gray Matter bumped to 2008
Jane Jensen's Gray Matter has been unexpectedly delayed from Q4 2007 to Q1 2008, according to a listing by publisher Anaconda. Gray Matter marks Jensen's return to her point-and-click roots after an extended hiatus (her acclaimed Gabriel Knight series ended in 1999) -- but apparently her return won't happen as soon as we'd hoped.In Gray Matter, players become both recluse widower Dr. David Styles and his part-time-street-performing assistant Samantha Everett, as the pair investigates the eerie results of their strange experiments. "Gray Matter tackles questions concerning the nature of reality and the power of the human mind in constructing the world we take for granted," promises Anaconda.[Via Blue's News]
Jane Jensen to unveil next adventure game in Leipzig
It's certainly taken her long enough. Indeed, one can only assume that after writing and completing the excellent Gabriel Knight trilogy of adventure games for Sierra, Jane Jensen was somehow imprisoned in a small room with naught but a couple of random objects at her disposal. After combining every single item with every other one in her possession, she must have finally attained to freedom by combining the giraffe-shaped balloon with the priceless fabergé egg.Since her dramatic escape, Jensen has been hard at work on Gray Matter, a new adventure set to debut at the Leipzig Games Convention later this month. Published by dtp entertainment (they're staunchly opposed to capital-ism, it seems), not much is known about the game aside from a fourth quarter 2007 release. Carsten Fichtelmann, marketing director of dtp, seems pretty confident that Jensen, "a real star of the adventure gaming scene," will be a great asset to the team. "We are very happy to be working with her on her new project, Gray Matter, bringing the adventure gaming genre forward once again."Many would argue that bringing the adventure genre forward would result in it bumping its head against a sealed coffin lid. A great article on Old Man Murray once suggested that the genre had committed suicide, largely motivated by the kind of puzzles found in Jenson's own Gabriel Knight 3. In one infamous puzzle, the protagonist had to create a disguise using a ridiculous combination of masking tape, maple syrup and a cat. In other words, a contrived act of following "daredevil of logic Jane Jensen as she pilots Gabriel Knight 3 right over common sense, like Evel Knievel jumping Snake River Canyon." She's undoubtedly a superb storyteller, but let's hope that she utilizes her own gray matter more effectively when it comes to puzzles this time around.
