Review of Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned by emric

it’s a complex, intelligent and immersive story that is expertly told and structured by the amazing Jane Jensen. The very beginning was just a touch slow, but thereafter just kept getting better and better until the amazing climax.

Thankfully, Tim Curry is back as Gabriel Knight in this 3rd game of the series (he wasn’t in the 2nd one). but i’m even more glad they didn’t do another full-motion-video game (like the 2nd one was). I would’ve been happiest if they’d returned to an updated version of the 2D style of Gabriel Knight 1, but instead they opted for full 3D environments and characters—and this was the only thing I didn’t appreciate about the game.

I’m not totally opposed to 3D games, but the technology of the time this was released (1999) had not progressed to the point where it was possible to make an attractive looking 3D game. There is nothing visually in this game that I could call even remotely beautiful. The characters have a distinct lack of polygons and therefore look very blocky. The environments are also very blocky and the textures are sometimes downright ugly. They’ve done the best they could I guess, but I would’ve preferred a 2D experience.

The interface controls are great tho and the puzzle design—especially the ‘le serpent rouge’ geometric stuff—was outstanding!

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Time Played: Over 20 hours