Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers – The Game I Remembered

We’ve talked a few times on the Dorkadia Podcast about what was your first game that really gave you a thirst for more, and I could easily talk for hours on how awesome Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was back in the day. My brother came home with a stack of floppy disks from some computer fair, wrapped with a rubber band, most likely photo copied labels (we didn’t question the legality of the game), and we played on my mothers office computer. It’s a game with Voodoo murders that you need to solve, while you’re walking around as the snarky (and kinda creepy) Gabriel Knight in New Orleans, solving puzzle after puzzle. Nightmares for the character expose more and more plot points between sections of the game, the happy little chime Sierra gave you whenever you found a plot related item – I ate this shit up as a kid. I even made it through a maze of zombies in this game.

Original graphic pixelated stuffs!

I decided that I wanted to replay this game from my childhood – I remember it so fondly. I went to Good Old Games, plopped down $6 for it, and installed it in the time it took to get a beer from the fridge. I had a goofy grin on my face because I FINALLY got to see the intro video cinematic – something that I for some reason, had no patience for as a kid (probably because I thought they were just credits). But then something terrible happened – the game was this pixelated mess with halted movement by characters, and difficult to maneuver tools! What is this?? I played through the first two days and had to turn it off because it was clear I was remembering this incredible fun gaming experience through an adult lens. I’ve played modern games with pixelated graphics, but they still have a modern feel and design. This was just an older game that came t0o early – games now, even retro games are working under a common understanding of how games should work – something that was developed over years that this incarnation of Gabriel Knight didn’t  have the luxury of existing for.

Shortly there after, Charles pointed me to a press release where Phoenix Online decided to channel my inner childhood, and do a remake of Sins of the Fathers. I probably squealed, told Jon he could shove it with his criticism of Sierra games, and immediately emailed their PR contact for more info.

Old graphics…

I was lucky enough to have been sent a preview copy of the game, and I have thoroughly loved it. The intricate puzzles are still there, the cheesy lines from Detective Mosley, and the down right lecherous dialogue from Gabriel Knight himself is all in tact. They even threw in new puzzles to boot if you feel like you don’t need to go back and play a game from your childhood (which you’re wrong – you should totally go back and play games you haven’t touched in 20 years. It’s downright awesome!). While they don’t have the original voice actors, it’s enjoyable to listen to the dialogue of the new team throw out insults from the early 90’s to each other. Detective Mosley calling Gabriel a ‘weiner’ made me giggle more than once.

Here is the thing though – I love this game. I will defend my love for it forever. But I do not expect everyone else to love it.

vs. new graphics!

This is a 20 year old game, so i’m going to spoil one of the puzzles for you, so you get an idea of what this is like. So you’re Gabriel Knight, and you want to find the location of a crime scene, and the duder behind the front desk at the police station won’t tell you where it’s at. What do you do? You go to the park, where you happen to see a police man leaning against his motor cycle. He’s not telling you anything about any crime scene. So to get that info, here is what you have to do. Walk to the far side of the park, where there is a mime. If you get close enough to the mime, he will follow you! The challenge is if you get close to anyone else, he will leave you and follow them (and there are two roaming people in the park that will drive you CRAZY doing this). You need to get the mime to follow you all the way back to the police officer, whom he will interact with and the police officer will chase after him, abandoning his motor cycle. Leaving you free to operate the radio on his bike, and listen to the chatter about the location of the crime scene. These are the kinds of puzzles you need to solve in the game.

If you read through that and said “HELL NO” – then old Sierra games are not for you. If you like really not intuitive stories and puzzles, but a great tale being told and stories to tell your friends later? You should pick up this game. And if you played this game forever ago – do yourself the favor and get the remake (And it’s only $20) This is absolutely a brand new game, but it’s entirely the game you will have remembered playing!

PS: And i’m just throwing this out there for those incredibly select few folks out there that might have had this same problem as me! Did you play this has a kid, and couldn’t get past the Zombies in the cave? (And not just because you have an irrational fear of zombies like me?) I tweeted to Phoenix Online about how I could only beat it now that i’m older and they dropped this little bomb on me. If you had a fast CPU back in the day, apparently that level was bugged and the zombie speed was tied directly to your CPU speed! I WENT 20 YEARS THINKING I COULD NEVER BEAT THAT LEVEL AND TERRIFIED OF ZOMBIES ALL BECAUSE MY MOTHER WAS RAD ENOUGH TO GET US A FAST COMPUTER, AND NOW I CANNOT ENJOY POP CULTURE REFERENCES BECAUSE I’M SO DAMN SCARED OF ZOMBIES??!??!? Okay, My fear of zombies is most likely not to do with this. But still. They blew my mind over twitter with this. Had to call my mom and tell her what happened (and she had no clue what I was talking about. lol).