Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers – 20th Anniversary Edition

This will be an honest review that tells you the truth: this game is not the real Gabriel Knight. I love the first/original/real Gabriel Knight game from 1993. That is one of the best adventure games of all-time. The 1993 game nailed the #1 most important feature of Gabriel Knight: the tone. The 1993 game has a tone of gritty, terrifying horror. Its world is dark, murky, and depressing. Those are the traits that Gabriel Knight's theme demands. This 20th anniversary remake from 2014 utterly ruins the original's tone. In the remake, the world is no longer dark, gloomy, and horrific. Instead, it looks like it belongs in a different universe, such as Barbie or My Little Pony. The remake version's colors are always super bright, rainbow-y, sunshine-y, and happy. Obviously, that is fatal to the theme of Gabriel's Knight story, which is a supposed to be a creepy murder mystery that centers on voodoo and demonic spirits. The bright tone also undermines the central premise of Gabriel's character: he is a lonely insomniac who is overwhelmed with financial problems. Here is an example of how this remake wrecks the tone. In the remake's park scene, one of the narration's lines is: "people seem to be enjoying themselves despite the lack of sunshine." While that line displays as text (and/or is read by the narrator character), the game’s graphics contradict it absolutely. The graphics represent the world's most super sunshine-y day. The remake version also ruins the #2 most important feature of Gabriel Knight: voice-acting. The original game featured legendary actor Tim Curry as Gabriel, and other characters were also played by top tier actors like Mark Hamill and Michael Dorn. The remake replaces all of them, mostly with bad actors. Instead, they could have literally just copy & pasted the voice files from the original into the remake. In conclusion, the real Gabriel Knight is nowhere to be found in the 2014 remake version.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is legitimately one of my favourite games of all time. Decades later it's perhaps a little hokey - but it's got this great flavour and theme that was rarely matched in it's heyday. Moody, dark - but with a little levity to make an interesting game with great story, characters and presentation. Fast forward to the 25th anniversary remake. And to put it in a single word - my issue with the remake - is that quite frankly, it looks and feels.... cheap. Badly made. The models have awful "Sims" like movement, the voice acting is significantly worse, and a lot of what they've remade just feels like a bad imitation of the original. Even assets remade by the same artists (Robert Holmes) don't have the same punch as they did. When you put it against other remasters like Secret of Monkey Island, Full Throttle - or even the VGA fan remakes made by groups like Infamous Adventures and AGDI - it feels unfinished. Certain aspects of the game, for instance, the backgrounds, are lavish and well rendered - if a bit ill fitting for such a brooding piece of work. But for some reason important assets like the game models themselves are dreadful. And the thing that bothers me more than anything else about this is that people tend to get drowned out by people who seem happy with what they got, even though what they got isn't really much better than the original. I'd go so far as to say that despite being strictly a lower resolution of game, the original had far more character and polish than this utterly unloved, paint by numbers high res remaster. Play the original instead. It might not be as user friendly, or as 'shiny' - but it feels a heck of a lot more like a game made by a team of talented people at the peak of their art than this pile.

I was on the fence about buying this remake, because some of the early reviews by web critics were harsh. Well, I'm glad I ignored them and played the game for myself, because it's great and I enjoyed it a ton. The most important thing about this game is...that good writing doesn't age. Gabriel Knight had a great script and compelling characters in 1993, and none of that has changed in 2014. Some reviewers have complained that Knight's character is politically incorrect and jerky, but to me this is a strength of the game; he's more like a real person than a squeaky-clean superhero. Meanwhile, the supporting cast is great and the plot unfolds in a very compelling way. So, five stars for the writing then. And I have no problem with the technical aspects of this game either. The graphics are a big step up from the original version. Some reviewers have claimed that the VGA graphics of the 1993 game are superior, but that's a deeply nostalgic point of view that I can't agree with. To me, the remake shines because it makes New Orleans look more like the real N'awlins. And characters who were blobs of pixels in the original now look like people. How is this not an improvement? Meanwhile, the soundtrack - which was always awesome - sounds even better in its remastered version. I don't even mind the new voice actors. Yes, Tim Curry and Mark Hamill are gone. In their place, we have perfectly competent new actors who underplay their delivery a bit more. I don't mind this change a bit. In fact, the new actors might even be better because they're less hammy. Really, the only downsides to the new version are a couple of minor glitches. Twice while I was playing, Gabriel walked through "solid" objects. And one of my save game names got scrambled. To me, these are minor teething troubles for a newly released game. And I made it through the whole thing without more serious obstacles popping up. In short - it's great. Maybe better than the original, or at least, just as good.

Why would you want to play a version of this game without Tim Curry?

I bought this by accident a little while back when I was buying all the games and played it a bit to see if I liked it before returning it. I did not. A remake needs to improve upon the original enough to justify it's own existence. I'm not some kind of retro fangirl and think most games really benefit from a modern update. This game however not only fails to improve, it is a major step down. The original game is pretty near flawless and all this seems to do is smooth out the graphics and give us new voice actors, so let's discuss. The graphics look decent enough but there really is nothing wrong with the charm of the old pixel graphics. Attempting to change this isn't a terrible thing but it certainly doesn't add anything and actually removes some of the charm of the original. The voice acting. This is the BIG one. The original voice actors are perfect embodiment of their characters. Michael Dorn and Mark Hammil are perfect and Tim Curry as Gabriel is flawless. The new voice actors have a lot to live up to and quite obviously don't reach the same height. But they are actively bad. Particularly the actor for Gabriel. He is grating on the ears and the dialogue is painful coming from him. The final verdict is just go play the original. It's one of the best examples of Sierra's point and click games.