Adventure Gamers - Forums

lol what.. “gabriel spots an ad for sam the jeweler, it says sam hangs out at the napoleon house” Theres got to be a better way to handle that.. other than suggesting sam took out an ad in the paper to have people visit him in the napoleon house about work… lol

edit: ahhh it gets even better! Sam still tells you he’s retired! Yet apparently took an ad out in todays paper to have people bother him at a bar.

IMO, all the restructuring makes things much more awkward than they were.

tomimt - 04 July 2014 06:05 PM

How’s the overall voice acting quality?

its not particularly bad, and not particularly good.
mosely - ok
dr john - fine
grace - so so, sometimes sounds stiff
narrator - sounds like someone trying too hard to do that accent
gabe - kind of all over the place, sounds sort of like the original

I played around with the beta for some time but this is clearly not the best way to experience Gabriel Knight for the first time so I’ll continue the original.
Also not very fond of the voice acting.

I just finished the first day of the beta. I had very low expectations, so I was actually pleasantly surprised. The animations and character models are definitely a step up from Moebius. I thought the talking portraits were OK (though they could tone down the head-bobbing a bit) and several of the backgrounds are gorgeous. The voices are fine, not as good as the original cast but still competent enough. I also really like the added close-ups (with additional hot spots!) that were absent in the original.

The cut-scenes are in a style similar to Cognition. They looked good in that game and I think they look pretty good here too. I’m glad they didn’t attempt the Moebius style, with fully rendered scenes, because the team clearly isn’t capable of that (yet).

I understand that they streamlined the structure of the game. It’s a bit silly that some locations are randomly closed when you don’t need to access them, and it does remove the sense of freedom and exploration from the original. But I think it was a wise choice commercially.

There are some graphical glitches that I really hope will be fixed before release. Also, the game could use some optimization like all other POS games: it takes over a second to load the next room. On the other hand, Gabriel doesn’t pause for a whole second before interacting (like Malachai in Moebius often did), even with the graphics turned up to max.

IIRC, some assets were made by a team at Vivendi, and not by Phoenix Online. I don’t know if what I’ve seen so far comes from Vivendi or if POS has finally improved a little from their previous efforts. I hope they have.

All in all, I think it seems like a reasonable representation of the original. The writing and the story are as good as always, and deserve to be enjoyed by modern gamers too. I don’t expect this to be a critical disaster like Moebius.

Thankfully, Gabriel Knight has never been a sacred cow to me the way it is to some other fans, so I’ve been able to enjoy this one just fine so far.  I do agree that the streamlining and added linearity seems unnecessary, and I really strongly dislike that sort of thing on principle, but in general, the core experience is still preserved and updated quite nicely.

I finished messing with this beta. I just can’t imagine reactions here if Monkey Island special editions were given a similar treatment.

I only hope that we won’t see GK4 done by this studio or Jane Jensen as a main designer. She should restrict herself on writing a story and not “streamlining the experience”, in fact butchering the original game.

It seems that Lucas syndrome is widespread, I really couldn’t believe this would happen. I expected maybe weak technical features, but this is horrible.

Lambonius - 07 July 2014 12:43 PM

but in general, the core experience is still preserved

Except its not. The time shifts have caused a number of dialogue options to not make sense. St johns eve and the hunt for a crocodile mask just come out of nowhere. And the way they introduce the napoleon house is just bad.

I don’t understand how Jane can write and create three brilliant games GK1/2/3 (with amazing stories and characters, dialog etc etc) and then go on to make consistently subpar games. It’s such a shame

zane - 07 July 2014 05:06 PM

Lambonius - 07 July 2014 12:43 PM

but in general, the core experience is still preserved

Except its not. The time shifts have caused a number of dialogue options to not make sense. St johns eve and the hunt for a crocodile mask just come out of nowhere. And the way they introduce the napoleon house is just bad.

This preserve argument sounds like PR talk i have heard from them AAA guys ruining old franchises from new Hitman to new Thief, as a cover up for instinct/see through casual mode.

aaroncarney - 09 July 2014 10:23 AM

I don’t understand how Jane can write and create three brilliant games GK1/2/3 (with amazing stories and characters, dialog etc etc) and then go on to make consistently subpar games. It’s such a shame

Writers Block??? People run out of juice, its common with other developers too in AAA scene. (Molyneux comes to mind)