by Pete Davison

To say that The Beast Within was “eagerly anticipated” would be something of an understatement. After the glowing critical reception of Sins of the Fathers, the first Gabriel Knight game, the pressure was on Jane Jensen and her team to match, if not better, the compelling story and endearing characters of the original game.

So when Sierra revealed that Gabriel Knight’s 1995 second outing was to be a full-motion video “interactive movie” similar to Phantasmagoria, enthusiasts of the first game were somewhat wary. After all, Phantasmagoria’s reception earlier in the year had been somewhat mixed, with some reviewers praising it for a move closer to a “true interactive movie,” while others slated it for its relative lack of interaction and challenge compared to Sierra’s earlier adventures. Fortunately, those fears proved to be unfounded. Despite running on the same engine as Phantasmagoria and being heavily reliant on video sequences to present the unfolding story, The Beast Within proved to be a worthy addition to Gabriel Knight’s saga.

In a 2007 interview with Gamasutra looking back on the series as a whole, writer Jane Jensen commented that despite Sierra co-founder Ken Williams’ hesitance to develop the Sins of the Fathers - he memorably warned her that he believed “no-one wants to play something dark and depressing on the computer” - the original game proved such a success that she was immediately asked by the company to work on a sequel. Jensen, now filled with confidence for her new franchise, noted that she now felt able to “push Gabriel’s ‘bad boy-ness’ or internal darkness to its limit.” This confidence certainly showed in the ambitiousness of the sequel’s story, taking in werewolf mythology, cannibalism, latent homosexuality, the mysterious death of King Ludwig and a lost Wagnerian opera (actually composed by Jensen’s husband Robert Holmes).

In fact, so ambitious was the game’s story that it went over budget due to the expenses of filming the live actors. One entire chapter, where the player was to take on the role of King Ludwig in a flashback sequence, was cut completely, while two other chapters were merged together. Jensen remained philosophical about the necessity of the cuts, however, noting that “it’s not so much that it ‘went over budget’ as it was that we didn’t realize how much it would cost when we started out.” Indeed, even in its released form, the game ran a million dollars over its original three-million-dollar budget. This may not sound like much in today’s market, but in 1995, games costing millions of dollars to develop were big news.

Fortunately, these budget problems didn’t affect the game itself. It proved to be a huge critical success, with Computer Gaming World giving it its Game of the Year award for 1995 - a notable achievement, given the fact that many other well-known, high-profile games (including Westwood Studios’ Command and Conquer) were also released during this year.

“It did make a very positive impact in the market,” noted Jensen. “I remember that Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly gave it extremely positive reviews. That was definitely the height of the ‘computer games and Hollywood will merge’ craze. It was a heady time. But that didn’t exactly happen.”

So how exactly was The Beast Within different from its illustrious predecessor? Well, aside from involving the same characters and “Schattenjäger” mythology, almost everything. The interface, instead of using Sierra’s traditional verb-based system, was a simpler “intelligent cursor” system, where the mouse pointer would change its appearance when moved over hotspots. This made the actual experience of playing the game simpler and friendlier to casual gamers. Jensen herself is a firm believer in the casual-gaming industry, noting in an interview with Edge Online in 2009 that while “adventures may be dead for young males… with the emergence of the casual gaming industry, things are changing.” And the simplification of the interface doesn’t mean that the puzzles are any less fiendish, of course - they are just as mind-bending as ever, with a wonderful challenge revolving around Gabriel’s iconic portable tape recorder springing immediately to mind as one of this game’s best examples.

The interface and presentation of the game weren’t the only thing that changed. Gone was the star-studded voice cast of the original, with Tim Curry’s portrayal of Knight in Sins of the Fathers being replaced by a rather more understated performance from Dean Erickson. Erickson’s performance is solid, however, and his co-star Joanne Takahashi as Gabriel’s long-suffering assistant Grace, who plays a much more prominent role in The Beast Within that she did in Sins of the Fathers, gets Grace’s particular brand of curiosity, thoroughness and playful jibes at Gabriel’s expense just right. It takes a short while to adjust to the new representation of Knight - especially if you’ve just played the first game - but after a short while, it stops mattering. Erickson is Knight, and just like in the first game, despite his character flaws, he’s a lovable rogue that you want to stand with until the mystery is solved. (Fans of Curry‘s performance, however, will be pleased to note that he returns in the third game of the series.)

Jensen had mixed feelings about the series’ evolution from 2D art to full-motion video and later to real-time 3D in the third game. “It would have been nice if we could have just stuck with one basic technology and focused on just making each game better in terms of story, puzzles and art,” she noted in her interview with Gamasutra. “But that’s not the way the business works.” Despite these hesitations, however, The Beast Within remains her favorite in the series. “I’ll always love [it] for its dark, romantic story with King Ludwig and Wagner and the Bavarian setting - and for the actors. They were wonderful.”

The “Hollywood meets gaming” full-motion video era was, to many, a dark period in gaming’s history, with style very much being prioritized over substance in many cases. The Beast Within, on the other hand, proved that it was in fact possible to use then-cutting-edge technology and still combine a wonderful story with excellent gameplay. Today, the entire Gabriel Knight series represents an opportunity for modern gamers to see some of the industry’s master storytellers at work, and a chance to play that rare thing - a game that is genuinely for grown-ups.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Jensen’s comments are taken from Gamasutra’s May 2007 article “Playing Catch Up: Gabriel Knight’s Jane Jensen” and Edge Online’s January 2009 article “The Making Of… The Gabriel Knight Trilogy”