Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

About Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993) is Jane Jensen's Sierra adventure in which a struggling New Orleans novelist researching the "Voodoo Murders" discovers his family's past as supernatural hunters, voiced on CD by Tim Curry, Leah Remini and Mark Hamill.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers in Depth

The story runs over a linear sequence of chapters, one day each, with a set of required actions to move on, but within a chapter play is largely non-linear and optional actions add background to the story. In Sierra fashion a running score tracks actions completed, and failing to escape a dangerous situation ends the game. Instead of a context-sensitive cursor, the player picks verbs from an icon bar, Walk, Look, Ask, Talk, Pick Up, Open/Close, Operate and Move, and inventory items can be selected as icons to use on the world. Talk gives brief exchanges, while Ask lets the player question main characters on general and specific topics, and a Recorder replays past conversations. An overhead map moves between locations, and a hint system points to where required actions remain.

Gabriel Knight, a horror novelist who runs a bookshop in New Orleans, is drawn by nightmares to investigate a string of killings dismissed by his childhood friend Detective Frank Mosely. With his assistant Grace Nakimura he learns of voodoo and a German great-uncle, Wolfgang Ritter, and finds the murders match those committed long before by Tetelo, a voodoo practitioner executed by his ancestor Gunter Ritter. The trail leads to Schloss Ritter in Germany, where he learns his family were Schattenjägers, "shadow hunters", and on to Benin before a final confrontation beneath the French Quarter.

Making Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Jane Jensen, who had worked on King's Quest VI, created, wrote and directed the game, and her husband Robert Holmes produced it and composed the music. She recalled that Ken Williams gave designers full freedom: "Nobody told you what to do with it. If it didn't sell, then you wouldn't do another game for him." Midway through, Sierra upgraded its engine to SCI32, and Jensen wrote that the team "fought bugs and snafus for six months" but still hit its Christmas date.

Sierra released it on CD-ROM and floppy disk on 17 December 1993, with a comic-book prequel in the box. Computer Gaming World's Johnny L. Wilson wrote that its opening "was the first time I've actually experienced fear when viewing a computer game", and critics praised its story, voice cast and graphics. It was not a big commercial hit: PC Gamer said Jensen's hope for King's Quest-sized success fell short, and it and its sequel had sold 300,000 copies together by December 1998. The Beast Within followed in 1995, Jensen novelised the game in 1997, and her studio Pinkerton Road remade it for its 20th anniversary in 2014.