The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

1995 · Point-and-Click Adventure · PC/DOS

About The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

The Beast Within (1995) is Jane Jensen's full-motion video sequel to Gabriel Knight, in which Gabriel hunts a werewolf around Munich while Grace uncovers the secret of King Ludwig II and Wagner, Computer Gaming World's game of the year.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery in Depth

Novelist Gabriel Knight, now living in his family's ancestral castle in Rittersberg after the bestselling success of The Voodoo Murders, is still adjusting to his role as the latest Schattenjäger, or "shadow hunter", when locals ask him to investigate a death they blame on a werewolf. In Munich, he finds evidence of an animal larger than the escaped zoo wolves the police suspect, and is drawn into an exclusive hunting club led by the charming Baron Friedrich Von Glower, whose members believe humanity should revive its lost animal instincts. His assistant Grace Nakimura, arriving uninvited, researches the Black Wolf that terrorised the region centuries earlier and discovers that Ludwig II suffered from lycanthropy and worked with Richard Wagner on a lost opera meant to force a werewolf's transformation.

It is a point-and-click adventure, mostly third-person, split into six chapters played alternately as Gabriel and Grace. Required actions can be done in any order, optional ones add background, and a running score tracks progress. Unlike the first game, the cursor is context-sensitive, and players can replay unlocked movies and review earlier conversations or Grace's notes. Dangerous situations can lead to a game over.

Making The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

Sierra developed and published the game, built entirely in full-motion video with computer-generated scenery and filmed in California in mid-1995, with Erickson as Gabriel and Joanne Takahashi as Grace. Jensen gave it a more involved plot than its predecessor because FMV "limited the interactivity we could do", and said it badly overran its modest budget, leaving "the Sword of Damocles" of cancellation over her head for 18 months. It was the fourth best-selling US computer game of January 1996, and with the first game sold 300,000 copies by 1998, though Jensen was frustrated, saying she expected top ten "and it was - for about a week", blaming its Christmas Eve launch. Critics acclaimed it: PC Gamer US said it "sets a new standard", Computer Gaming World called it "a graphic adventure benchmark" and named it 1995's Game of the Year, and GameSpot and PC Gamer US named it the best adventure of 1996. Gabriel Knight 3 followed in 1999.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery Trivia

Jensen recast Gabriel because she felt Tim Curry, who voiced him in the first game, did not look the part.
Dean Erickson studied Southern dialects to play Gabriel and recorded all his voice-overs in a single day.
Director Will Binder rarely allowed more than two takes of any scene.
The paintings in Neuschwanstein's Singer's Hall were changed in the game to fit the plot.
Composer Robert Holmes wrote a scene from a fictional opera, "Der Fluch Des Engelhart".