Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a point-and-click mystery adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line, written and directed by Jane Jensen and featuring the voice talents of Tim Curry, Mark Hamill, and Michael Dorn among many others. The game was remade in a 20th-anniversary edition with updated graphics and voice acting in 2014.

Plot
The story follows Gabriel Knight, owner of St. George's Books and a struggling mystery novelist who researches a killing spree in New Orleans dubbed the Voodoo Murders. While going deeper, he finds himself a target of the killers, and learns many secrets about his family's past.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Excellent voice acting for its time with each of them giving pretty great performances, which makes sense given the cast who are all still working in a lot of cartoons and the like nowadays.
 * 2) Excellent graphics for its time, with gorgeous retro visuals that give I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream a run for its money.
 * 3) Lots of different ways to interact with objects, like picking them up, using them, inspecting them, and even, in some cases, talking to them. You can even do the same with Gabriel himself.
 * 4) An actually interesting story that takes a much darker and more mature direction as the game progresses, with plenty of differences from most point-and-click games around the time. It has more graphic violence and a legitimately disturbing atmosphere that avoids being cheesy, largely due to the quality of the direction and voice acting.
 * 5) There's plenty of legitimately funny moments as well which avoid being contrived or dumb, and become less frequent as the game goes on and becomes much darker.
 * 6) Likeable characters, like Gabriel himself who's a witty and clever man who develops to be more serious and devoted to helping others over himself.
 * 7) Lots of interesting and unique puzzles, some of which are optional and increase your overall game score, unlocking new things. They also aren't too frustrating and actually make sense while encouraging the player to think and solve them themselves.
 * 8) Actually manages to put in some educational value that fits into the story. Unlike Carmen Sandiego, it's less about traveling all over the world and more about learning voodoo culture and it's origins.
 * 9) The 20th Anniversary Edition, directed by Jane Jensen herself once again (and her studio, Pinkerton Road Studios), adds in new puzzles and story beats while also improving literally everything, better graphics, sound design, and voice acting. It also has hints you can unlock over time if you ever get stuck on a puzzle.
 * 10) A comic book prequel, written by Jane Jensen herself, once again, which explains the origins of the villain and how Gabriel's ancestor, Gunter Ritter, caused the catastrophe inadvertently all that time ago.
 * 11) Every day has a new horoscope which gives vague foreshadowing to what will happen to Gabriel, building up suspense even further as a result.
 * 12) Cutscenes are done in a pretty nice and good-looking comic-book style.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Though it gets better over time, some of the earlier moments can still be pretty cheesy, which feels a little first-draft like.
 * 2) Some of the voice acting in the remake can be a little hit or miss, even if it's mostly pretty great.
 * 3) Gabriel's relationship with Malia feels a little rushed as she kind of hates him at first but quickly loves him. It also becomes a major plot point, which leaves something to be desired with its earlier game (no pun intended).

Trivia

 * 1) This is the first ever video game to have a usage of the F word spoken by a character audibly and uncensored.
 * 2) Gabriel's book store is actually a real location, located on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

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