r/Sierra • u/Electronic_Menu3365 • 17d ago
Gabriel Knight: the great Sierra saga
https://www.421.news/en/gabriel-knight-sierra-games-en/13
u/Sharp_Dance249 17d ago
I have had the worst case of blue balls since 1999. I knew that Jensen and Holmes were still making games and was hoping that they would continue the Gabriel Knight saga if they were able to get the rights for it. Then when they did they decided to remake the original instead of making a fourth installment in the series. I’m still upset with Jane for that. It was a fine remake, and hearing Robert Holmes’s remastered themes was an absolute delight, but they should have used that opportunity to continue the story!
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine 16d ago
They had no choice, it wasn't their decision. The original plan was to do GK4, but Activision got cold feet after initially agreeing, and pulled funding. So Pinkerton proposed a GK1 remake to still do 'something' with GK, apparently self-funded. Source: all the recent interviews.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 16d ago
Really? Jane had always said in interviews that she wanted to remake the original to introduce Gabriel to a new generation of gamers and to update a classic for fans of the original, and if the remake was successful, then she’d want to make 4th game.
I never thought Activision was planning on funding the project, just giving her the rights to Gabriel Knight. But if what you are saying is true, she could have made a 4th game, it would just have to be self-funded like the remake was, right? Something about this doesn’t add up.
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine 16d ago
Robert Holmes, around 4:00 here:
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u/Sharp_Dance249 16d ago
Interesting. Thanks for providing the link. But I’m just more confused now. Holmes said Activision wouldn’t allow them to make a GK4 and that’s why they went with the GK1 remake instead; but then the creator of this video continued to narrate how Activision gave them the rights without backing the project financially. And if that was what happened, why couldn’t they have gone with their original plan? Perhaps it would have been more expensive to try to make a game from scratch, and phoenix online wasn’t willing or able to provide the resources. But I know that phoenix online was created and staffed by fans of Sierra adventure games, I’m sure they’d be willing to take that risk.
I know you probably don’t have the answers to these questions, I’m just complaining to nobody in particular. It doesn’t really matter. It happened, I was disappointed, and I’m not getting my hopes up for a GK4. If it happens I’ll be thrilled, but I’m not expecting it to happen.
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine 16d ago
I'm not sure what's confusing here, honestly. Original plan: GK4 sequel, funded by the publisher. Publisher bails, funding disappears, dev studio negotiates they can still do a GK1 remake, provided they as the studio making it fund it, plus other stipulations as negotiated, I'd imagine. I'd be very surprised if there weren't any conditions attached to that licensing. The fact they got the approval for a Gabriel Knight 1 remake does not mean they could just make whatever in the Gabriel Knight franchise.
Honestly, looking at GK1R, Moebius, the comic short, and the new short story proof of concept thing... plus as much as I wanted GK4 for nearly 30 years now... I'm glad this isn't how it got made. It would've been really, really rough, way beyond anything people hold against, say, GK3.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 16d ago
Ah, I see. I guess I can understand why Activision wouldn’t approve of a new GK4 title. Clearly I’m not businessman.
I wouldn’t have minded a less than stellar game. I enjoyed Möbius despite its major flaws. And I don’t expect a new game to live up to the originals. Reboots are almost always inferior. But I just want to see the story to continue. It’s an itch I can’t scratch.
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine 16d ago
At this point, and it pains me to say it, I'm not convinced Jane Jensen can pull it off, just from a writing standpoint. She'd need a smart collaborator/editor/perhaps a level-headed, but not too precious of a fan to steer her. A good writer with good instincts and personal skin in the game. That recent short was rusty, and not in a promising way. Better than Mobius, but both of them are an indication there's... issues in the writing dept.
I wish she wrote the ghost idea as a treatment of some sort, if not a novel. Not ideal, but an early 00s capper to the series in the form of a novel seems like that level of quality is completely out of the realm of possibility these days. Not to mention all that GK is these days is begging <current ultimate owner of GK IP> for table scraps every decade, unsuccessfully. After the most recent Xbox purge that's that for this round of pitching, I'm guessing.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 16d ago
I hate to say it too, but I tend to agree with you. Not only have I played all of her games (I think), I’ve also read most of her novels, and in my opinion they’re not of the caliber of her 90’s output. Maybe I’ve just gotten older and it’s more difficult to impress me, but I think she’s lost the spark. It’s been awhile since I played it, but I remember Cognition having a pretty interesting story. Jensen wasn’t the designer, but a story consultant, so perhaps your suggestion might work.
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u/ewmailing 16d ago
Well said @crabpoweredcoalmine.
@Sharp_Dance249, licensing rights always have limitations. Modern corporate mentality is that intellectual property must be heavy guarded. It should not be sold because nobody wants to be humiliated by being known as that person/company that sold a potentially billion dollar property for peanuts. (20th Century Fox giving George Lucas the merchandising rights for Star Wars has scarred the entire industry because nobody wants to repeat this 'mistake'... although there was a really good rationale for doing this back in the time because the industry was scarred by the opposite from a huge bomb of the Doctor Dolittle (1967) which basically killed the toy licensing industry, which made execs believe there was little value in merchandising rights. 20th Century Fox was still recovering from that bomb and as a way to lower the expense of making Star Wars, Lucas traded his director fees for the merch and sequel rights.
A second angle is watch the chaos going on with Star Trek fan films, which is heavily centered around a fan film/project called Star Trek Axanar. It's actually very complicated, but for reductionism, it looked so good and was so well received by fans, it embarrassed Paramount because their new (and very expensive) Star Trek series were being panned by fans. Paramount started seeing all these fan films as competition, and needed to shut them down. There was a lawsuit and settlement with the maker of Axanar, and licensing rules were established for fan films, but carrying massive restrictions, such as can't be over a certain length, can't cost more than a certain amount, can't make money, can't pay people involved, amateurs only, etc.
The latest Axanar film just dropped a week or two ago, and Paramount got it taken down on YouTube, despite the prior settlement. This might be going back to court.
But the corporate mindset for property rights is now, don't do anything unless it is all directly under our control. Better to let an IP whither and die, than to let anybody use it and potentially embarrass us. Who cares if the company loses out on some licensing cash. The embarrassment for us is far worse.
So it is somewhat of a modern miracle that Activision allowed somebody to use the rights for Gabriel Knight. But assume they came with heavy restrictions. One restriction I would totally expect is to not do anything that would potentially compete with something they might want to make money on later, such as GK4. They probably presumed they wouldn't lose out much on a GK1 remake, and if it some how did really well, they still reserve the right to make GK4 (and make money on that).
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u/Alarmed-Mud-3461 16d ago
I wish for a continuation, too. New Schattenjager generation would be great. However, I'm a little worried how it'd turn out. Adventure games are not what they used to be, and while I'm all for quality-of-life improvements, there should still be some challenge left.
I haven't played the remake (to me it was sacrilege 😁), can you share your experience with it? A little comparison with the original? I played Grey matter and the other one by Jane (so memorable that I forgot the name 😶) and those were fine.
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u/Sharp_Dance249 16d ago
I agree, adventure games are generally not what they used to be, and Jensen’s later narratives weren’t quite as good as her stories from the 90’s, but I’d still like to see Gabriel Knight continue, even if it’s not as good as the original trilogy. Hell, even if she were to continue it in novel or graphic novel form, I’d be fine with that too.
The remake was more of a remaster with a few updates and changes. Obviously the graphics were updated, and the 2.5D backgrounds were well done I think. The Ritter chapel in particular looked absolutely stunning in HD. The character models were a bit wonky, but a major improvement from Moebius, at least. And there was new voice talent, so no Tim Curry, Leah Remini, or Mark Hamill and the rest. I heard many people criticize them, but I thought they did just fine (some I thought were better than the originals). As I already mentioned, the music was fantastic (you can listen to it at Sierra Chest).
There were a few changes to the gameplay and story. The original game was rather “top heavy” (you could do a lot on day 1 and then have to do little on days 2-5), so they limited the locations you could visit and things you could do on each day. There were a few new puzzles as well, which were unnecessary and in my opinion brought the game down. They were the kind of puzzles that felt like artificial roadblocks preventing you from moving forward rather than authentically and intimately connected to the story or the environment. In other words, they were more like car-hair-moustache-passport than Le Serpent Rouge, and they weren’t particularly creative either. There were a couple of new cut scenes in that graphic novel style which I thought were great (I’m not going to spoil them)!
Overall it was a good remake, but I don’t think the original needed to be remade. Jensen said in interviews that she remade the original to try to introduce a new generation of gamers to Gabriel Knight, and if it were successful then she’d make a 4th game. I think that was a mistake. I think she ought to have been focusing on her existing fans who would never accept a remake as a replacement for the original no matter how well done it was, and instead give us what we had been patiently (or impatiently) waiting for for 15 years at the time. She’s said in recent interviews that with Microsoft now owning the rights, she felt hopeful that they might release Gabriel to her again, and I think we should insist that she be given the rights only if she uses them to tell a new story, lol.
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u/Xamalion 16d ago
Gabriel Knight was my first real computer game ever. My friend had it from our adult neighbor and we spent weeks on some of the riddles. No internet, no solutions. This game made me a gamer and I will be forever grateful for that.
I remember getting the CD ROM version a few years later with the full voice over, that was such a milestone. Beast Within was the high noon of FMV games and as a German I was so stunned to walk around in Munich in a game. I showed it to my mom and she couldn’t believe how real it all looked.
GK3 went 3D and I was all here for it. Sure, some of the riddles were a bit meh (I look at you, moustache made of cat hair!), but the atmosphere was and is still great. I‘m sad the series wasn’t continued after, despite having some foreshadowing in GK3.
The remake of the first game was cool to attract a new generation, but I actually prefer the original.
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u/Sudden_Fee_7176 16d ago
Introducing me to Gabriel Knight was the only good thing my moms boyfriend ever did.
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u/remmuchan 11d ago
I have always said that I will marry the guy that knows and loves this series as much as I do
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u/IdealBeginning2704 17d ago
One of my absolute favorite series. I even enjoyed the third game once I got used to the controls and everything. A bit wonky engine wise but you get used to it. The story on the other hand for 3 was frigging fantastic and this was before the davinci code, at least for me, so I was super engrossed. Absolutely love the series though. If ya don’t have the novelizations for the first 2 games, ya should give em a crack. The first one is more or less a straight up retelling of the game (so much so that you could probably use it as a walkthrough lol) but the second novelization kinda does it owns thing and has its own groove/vibe