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've been an adoring, extremely forgiving fan of Jane Jensen's work for many years. I WANTED TO LIKE THIS SO MUCH. But honestly, even after Kings Quest 6 through to Gabriel Knight 3 - even after the cat-hair-mustache puzzle - I was willing to give this an awful lot of room. What makes all of the other games good, aside from a hugely different and amazing storyline that was really a big deal at the time - was the style. Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 especially had wonderful style - it oozed out of every pore the game had. Even now I find Gabriel Knight 1 (the original) quite easy to show without shame to friends. But this - this is just so lifeless. There's no style here - and the style of the GK remake is pretty lacklustre too. Jane Jensen said on her own forums that she thought the story was more important than the engine - I'm sorry, but she's just plain wrong. It breaks my immersion. The character animation is awful, and the voice acting is just abysmal. The actual interface isn't so bad - but I was just so unimmersed by the time I got there that I found myself turning off the game very early on. I helped Kickstart the Pinkerton Road group. I wanted this to be a magical reinvention of Jane Jensen's genius. But perhaps I had rose tinted glasses here. The story does still appear to be there - but it's clouded over by terrible, unforgivable execution. PLEASE LISTEN, JANE. This is ruining your recent games, I know you have a budget to work to - but be more picky!
