Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
Developer(s)	Sierra Studios
Publisher(s)	Sierra Studios
Designer(s)	Jane Jensen
Series	Gabriel Knight
Engine	Sheep
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	NA October 5, 1999 EU 1999
Genre(s)	Point-and-click adventure
Mode(s)	Single player

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is the third game in the Gabriel Knight series of point-and-click adventure games by Sierra Online. The game was designed by Jane Jensen, Gabriel Knight's creator. In a departure from the previous two entries, the score is composed by David Henry, expanding on some of original composer Robert Holmes's themes. The game also sees Tim Curry return in the role of Gabriel, although the voices of other reoccurring characters such as Grace Nakimura and Mosely have been recast. It was released in 1999 for PCs and again in 2001 as a part of Sierra's Best Seller Series.

Each installment in the Gabriel Knight series has had a significant change in graphic design, with the first featuring computer-generated, partially rotoscoped graphics and scanned comic book art, and the second being entirely in FMV. Gabriel Knight 3 is the first game in the series to be in full 3D. Released shortly after the crash of the adventure video game industry, it could not match the critical and financial success of its two predecessors, and would be the last adventure game published by Sierra.

The plot of the game is set in 1998 from July 7th to July 10th and involves the kidnapping of an infant from a Scottish family of nobles, and concentrates on vampires, alongside the fabled legend of the Holy Grail; along with these are the historical elements dealing with the Knights Templar, the proposed conspiracies relating to the Freemasons and the Priory of Sion as well as Jesus.

Gameplay

Gabriel Knight is standing in the hotel lobby. The verb chooser is shown.

The game uses a basic point-and-click interface for most actions in the game, with a command bar appearing whenever the player clicks on a highlighted item with the left mouse key (such as a door or item, with options to look or interact with it). While the player uses the mouse to move and interact with the environment of each location (such as a hotel room), the player uses the keyboard to assume control over the camera, which can be moved around the location except during dialogue and pre-scripted sequences; the viewpoint moves independently of the player character. Whenever the camera is a sufficient distance away from the player character and they are not in sight, they teleport to a spot directly behind the camera, before making an appearance, to save time when moving around.

The game uses a 'Time' System for each segment of the game, in which players perform various actions, such as talking to someone in a location, and picking up an item, between a certain time-span, or a 'time-block' (such as the first one of 10am-12pm on the game's first day). Time does not move in this block, nor does the player have two hours to complete it, but rather moves when certain key actions, such as acquiring case-relevant information, is performed, at which point the game shifts to the next block, signalled by a ticking clock, where before moving into the next segment, the player can save their game; minor shifts can occur in a segment and are signalled by the same sound. When time shifts, characters in the game can shift to other locations and doing routines for that segment (such as having lunch). The game provides a simple Hint system, but its design is only for certain moments, in which, for both characters, it is used on the Region map, to highlight which locations to go to, while it also works with the major puzzle of the game, highlighting what the player can do to solving the riddles in it.

The game also uses a score system, traditional to Sierra adventure games like King's Quest. The score indicates how much of the game's plot the player has uncovered during the story. While the player must complete certain events to advance the storyline, other events, such as overhearing a conversation or recording info, are optional, but add more points to the score. While the score system gives some replay ability to the game, giving players a chance to try and get the full score, no reward is given for completing the game with a full score; the player can achieve a score out of 965, with actions having various point amounts from 1 to 25.

Plot

Four years since their last case (The Beast Within), Gabriel and Grace are invited to the estate of Prince James of Albany in Paris, a descendant of the House of Stuart, who asks the pair to help protect his infant son, Charlie, from bizarre vampire-like creatures he calls Night Visitors that have plagued his family. Despite their best efforts, the infant is kidnapped, and whilst Grace is left behind in an induced sleep, Gabe pursues the kidnappers to a train and is knocked out upon boarding. When he recovers a while later, Gabe find himself in Couiza, in the Languedoc region in the South of France, before a porter helps him get a taxi to a hotel in Rennes-le-Château. The following morning, Gabe contacts Prince James about his whereabouts only to learn he is to be replaced by James' men later in the evening and asked to investigate further until they arrive. Reluctantly, Gabe agrees, and attempts to find out why the kidnappers came to the region, quickly learning that a tour group arrived in town at the same time as him. Amongst them, his old friend, Mosely, from New Orleans, mentions that the group are in the area to seek out a hidden treasure in the region. During the day, he meets up with the other members around town and in the surrounding countryside, including the group's French leader, Madeline Buthane, a British Actress, Lady Howard, and her friend Estelle Stiles, Australian treasure seeker, John Wilkes, former Middle-Eastern tourist, Emilio Baza, and Italian tourist, Vito Buchelli, along with a local French priest, Abbe Arnaud, and Scottish Templar researcher, Larry Chester. While exploring the town and the valley, Gabe learns the kidnapping could have a connection to the Holy Grail based on two words he had heard on the train and later translates – "San Greal". When Grace arrives that evening with Prince James' men, Gabe tails both of his replacements, Mallory and McDougal, and witnesses both a heated accusation from them against Arnaud, claiming he was involved in the infant's abduction, and the pair giving Larry a Masonic handshake.

The next day, while Gabe searches the rooms of the tour group and the Abbe's church office for evidence, Grace partakes in the tour to uncover the Grail's angle on the case, with the group visiting various sites including a vineyard owned by Excelsior Montreaux, whose home is considered unnatural by her. The tour is abruptly stopped when they come across the murdered bodies of Mallory and McDougal at one of the valley's tourist sites, and when Gabe investigates, he deduces the men were killed in a gruesome manner while they had made their own investigations, with both victims drained of blood via slitted throats. After relaying the deaths to James, who asks him to continue his work, Gabe later visits Larry and reveals what he saw the night before, only to anger him and force Gabe out of his house, but not before he witnesses Larry setting up a wake-up call for that night. Under the guise of a journalist at Grace's insistence, Gabe questions Montreaux at his vineyard about the Grail, Templars, and viticulture, and notes an oddness in the manner he uses to discuss the matters, including wine. While he and Mosely head off for dinner later that evening, Grace makes an attempt to visit the town's local museum, and finds a document taped to the door that she overheard of during the tour, called Le Serpent Rouge. Grace manages to work out a number of the riddles before spending the rest of the evening with Wilkes, learning that he had uncovered, through a seismic survey, that there is a hollow under the valley, though leaves him when he makes a drunken pass on her. During the night, Gabe heads out to uncover what Larry wanted to do, and digs up a manuscript he buried behind his home, learning his true name as Larry Sinclair, and the topic of his work; a family tree linked to Jesus Christ. When he returns, a nightmare forces him to admit his feelings for Grace and the pair sleep together.

After Grace spends the early hours of the morning working on more riddles, Gabe reveals what he uncovered during the night, before ushering out Mosely, who takes a keen interest in the manuscript, and reveals to him what he did with Grace, much to his disgust. Following this, Gabe meets with Larry to discuss why the Freemasons are in the area when the latter learns of Gabe's connection to Prince James, before later discovering the murdered body of Wilkes near another tourist site, deducing that his recent findings had prompted someone to eliminate him after abducting him from the hotel. During this time, several individuals handle the manuscript that he had found; Mosely, Buthane, and Buchelli, with the latter burying it. Grace, who finishes solving the riddles of Le Serpent Rouge and pinpoints the Grail's location, recovers the manuscript, and all three are accused by her and Gabe of its theft, at the hotel. The latter deduces the role of all three; Buchelli is a Vatican priest, Buthane works for the French Internal Secret Service, and Mosely works now for the CIA, to which all three reveal their agendas for being in the area. Knowing that all three of them and most of the others – Arnaud, Estelle, Baza, and Howard – aren't involved in the kidnapping, Gabe soon returns the manuscript to James when he arrives in town, before having another meeting with Montreaux, although the second conversation he has with the vintner leaves him unsettled. Just as he takes his leave, Gabe has one quick look at Montreaux's garage and finds a black sedan within it that the kidnappers had used, linking him to the abduction, moments before one of them arrives and spots Gabe, forcing him to try to lose them.

Whilst he does so, Grace tails Emilio to a secret meeting with Prince James' assistant, Mesmi, behind the local church, while also learning about who left the document at the museum. After this, she meets with Emilio in his room, and learns the truth behind his visit to the area – Emilio is part of a group called the Magi, who have been protecting the bloodline descendants of Jesus, from a rogue group of theirs intent on absorbing the blood of the messiah for their own ends. Emilio reveals that a great secret lies beneath the valley that he intends to remove to somewhere else because of the danger posed to it by the rogue group, but upon learning of the infant's abduction, he was prompted to provide assistance to both Grace and Gabriel during their investigations. When Gabriel returns with what he found out, Grace reveals her own findings, while informing him the words he had heard were not "San Greal" but "Sang Real", meaning royal blood, marking Charlie as a descendant of Jesus. Backed by Mesmi and Mosely, Gabriel heads to the site containing the Holy Grail that Grace had located, and with her help, overcomes a number of deadly puzzles and traps.

During the time, Emilio discuss more about Jesus' life and the Magi's role to Grace, until eventually revealing a major truth to his identity - Emilio had been a devoted member to the messiah, but on the day he was crucified, Emilio had taken some of his blood, drunk it, and immediately regretted his actions. Baza had been forced to walk in secret anonymity, earning the name of "Wandering Jew", and having to watch those of the bloodline being targeted by the rogue group as a result. After passing the traps and tests, Gabe soon arrives to find Montreuax in the process of sacrificing the infant. Despite Montreaux's efforts in stopping him, include summoning the demon, Asmodeus, Gabriel defeats it, killing Montreaux in the process. Finding the infant unharmed, Gabriel discovers what the Holy Grail is, and uncovers the truth behind his lineage. Emilio soon arrives, and removes the Grail from the site, but not before its secret is passed onto James' son, marking his lineage. Upon returning to the hotel, the tour group, hotel staff and the Abbe await in the lobby, and quickly ask about what happened, learning of the child's safety. Although Buthane tries to flirt with Gabriel during the moment, he rejects her advances, revealing who his heart belongs to, but when he returns to his room, however, he finds that Grace has left, having headed out to follow her own path at the suggestion of Emilio, much to Gabriel's sorrow despite completing the case with her help.

Characters

Development

By the time work began on Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, it was already clear to the development team that it would be the final Gabriel Knight game. Jane Jensen remarked that "We were the last dinosaur on the block. We had until the game shipped, and then it would be over."^[1] Nonetheless, Sierra felt the series should move to 3D graphics to keep up with the times. The development team had little experience with or understanding of the format; when programmer Scott Bilas was brought on board mid-production, he was told that the game was nearly finished, only to find that the team had left out a number of features that were needed to make the game playable.^[1]

The team's struggles with the technology led to a number of delays. Alluding to an infamous puzzle early in the game in which Knight must use tape to get hair from a cat and use it to make a fake mustache, Bilas recalled, "It was terrible! There was something that Jane [Jensen] wanted to do that was just too hard, too expensive, too complicated to make it happen. I think our producer came up with the cat puzzle [as a replacement]. I'm pretty sure Jane didn't like it. None of the developers liked it, but we were really late and needed to get something in there."^[1]

Though she was satisfied by Dean Erickson's performance in the previous game, Jensen felt that Tim Curry represented the real voice of Gabriel Knight and opted to have him return to the role.^[1]

Soundtrack

The game's score was composed by David Henry, based on themes created by the series' original composer, Robert Holmes. In every Gabriel Knight game, the popular gospel hymn "When the Saints Go Marching In" can be heard, albeit in different remixes and forms. In Gabriel Knight 3 it can be heard in the San Greal Tavern in Rennes-les-Bains.

Reception

Gabriel Knight 3 received fairly positive reviews from critics. IGN said the game "proves that adventure games still have some life left in them" and provides "a welcome change for the action-heavy PC market" with "[an] excellent story and well worked out plot". At the same time, they criticized Tim Curry's voice-over, "a cold and over-exaggerated interpretation of the southern accent", and the switch to 3D which they felt "is not yet ready to depict the emotions and feelings in the way actors can".^[5] GameSpot attested the sentiments about Curry's "terrible acting job", calling the "fake accent and overly dramatic delivery [...] almost unbearable". The dialogue was also criticized, as were the puzzles, the latter which fortunately "get better as the story progresses". The story itself was more positively received, including "some excellent plot elements" and "fascinating" connections between fact and fiction.^[4] Adventure Gamers found some of the smaller puzzles "outright silly", but at the same time the vast Le Serpent Rouge "one of the best-designed puzzles in adventure gaming history". The storyline with its "interesting narratives" was called "epic in every sense of the word" and the game "ultimately a success".^[3]

Works with similar themes

• Anamnesis, a 1998 episode of Millennium
• Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
• Dogma
• The Da Vinci Code
• The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

References

External links

• Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned at MobyGames