While this may very well be the golden age of gaming, some things will never make sense to me. For example, we’ve been getting remakes and redux versions of games that are less than 10 years old left and right, but most gaming classics that actually deserve a real, worthy remake aren’t even planned to be getting such treatment. It was great to hear then, that the very first adventure of Gabriel Knight is going to be remade with modern computers and technology in mind. It has been twenty years, so this remake is completely justified from my point of view. While I have played the original title, I never finished it, so this was my chance to redeem myself as far as point ‘n’ click gaming classics go.
While the storyline is pretty much exactly the same as it was two decades ago, I’d like to avoid spoiling it nevertheless. There is a fair amount of people who will be playing this game and this will be their first chance of meeting Knight properly, and alienating that many readers is something I’m not comfortable with. Now, with all that settled, let us move onto the game itself!
New Orleans. 1993., we jump into the boots of a down-on-his-luck writer Gabriel Knight, who casually exchanges witty comments with his secretary Grace. A regular skirt chaser, if you will, but also apparently a pretty good writer. Lately however he’s been having trouble sleeping due to strange nightmares. These have led to a writer’s block, since we writers are of the cuddly sort, and Gabriel is now just wandering around, annoying Grace and looking for clues on how to begin his research into a series of strange ritual killings newspaper keep reporting about. That’s the setting, and the way the story develops further is too good to spoil, so I’m stopping right here. It’s an origin story of sorts, as we all know Gabriel becomes quite a badass detective as storyline comes to its end. All in all, it’s a very much timeless setup – one that has aged nicely, and will certainly be interesting to just about anybody. There are some additional goodies for the series’ veterans too, but we’ll talk about that a bit later.
As Gabriel makes his way through some very impressive recreations of old environments, you’ll notice the UI growing on you. Honestly, it’s one of the most complete and helpful interfaces I’ve seen in adventure games so far, and it’s difficult to find anything wrong with it. All the locations have a fair amount of interactive hotspots, too, what with all the containers, drawers and stuff. Gabriel’s commentary is delightful to listen to, also, with his southern accent. It did sound weird to me at first, but it quickly grew on me. His isn’t the only voice-over I found pleasant, either – nearly all character are charming in their own way and I’m pretty sure the dynamic duo that is in the center of this saga will gain a massive following after people play this latest version of the Sins Of The Fathers. The game isn’t lacking in content, that’s for sure. All of the original stuff is reworked and ready to go, and there are some new puzzles added for good measure too. What surprised me the most is the simple logic these follow, while being intricate enough to demand attention and a thinking head from its players. This is one of those games that want you to really, really think, and aren’t afraid of making you work to move further along the way. Thankfully, most of these puzzle sequences play out well, without any strange or overly convulted schemes necessary to mow them over. While playing, you’ll probably notice a strangely familiar soundtrack looming over your head – those are the original themes, albeit reworked for the purposes of this re-release. They’re awesome.
As you may have noticed by looking at the screenshots, Sins Of The Fathers is a particularly nice looking game. I was surprised by the fact that most 3D models fit in nicely with the masterfully drawn 2D backgrounds. However, this will require the highest anti-aliasing settings from your rig. Then again, this title isn’t a particularly hardware-intensive one, so we gamers with average computers (I’m running it on a laptop with a quad core i5 and an mid-range Nvidia card) don’t need to be frightened of it. There are some issues with the visual presentation I cannot ignore, though. While beautiful in most environments, some simply look very dated. The park you’ll visit at the beginning of the story pops out the most, since there are no dynamic shadows on characters for some reason. Also, while the “casual” character animations look better than in most modern adventures and are pretty natural (drinking coffee, putting on a coat, for example), they will jitter at times, breaking immersion in the most obnoxious way possible. Yes, I am aware that this game isn’t one that requires extreme levels of immersion and all that, but it would be nice to see it running without these hitches.
As I mentioned before, the game is filled with a bunch of additional goodies, such as interviews with Jane Jensen and art concepts that are sure to bring the game’s development closer to the fans. An addition everybody will greatly appreciate. There’s a graphic novel implemented into the main menu too, which serves as an intro to the actual game. It’s of very high quality and I can only recommend you guys to read it after the sixth day of the game. For purposes of being protected from potential spoilers, of course.
To summarize, Sins Of The Fathers is a more complete remake than most others, and is just as important for a newbie adventure gamer as it is to a veteran clicker. If you’re into Gabriel Knight and would like to see more remakes of this amazing series, buy it! If you’re not sure whether you’d like the character or not, buy it and see how awesomely developed the dude is. If you didn’t want to play the original game due to it being too dated, buy this release! No, seriously, this is a great game with only a couple of minor hitches that may be easily patched in due time.
