The second in the Gabriel Knight series, this one switched to full-motion video, which was all the rage at the time, but it is one of the few games I've seen that pulls off the transition really well. The story (which, as you might expect, involves werewolves) sees Grace and Gabriel travelling to Germany to uncover the truth behind a series of brutal murders.
VTM: Redemption is an excellent action-RPG set in the VTM universe. You play a young crusader named Christof who is turned during the Middle Ages and subsequently buried unalive for five or six centuries. Christof's mission is to find some way to redeem both himself and his lost love Anezka. Along the way, he joins forces with (and does battle against) representatives of many of the clans found in the game fiction. As Christof and his companions level up, their blood pools and the different clan-related blood abilities they can access increase. Unfotunately, unlike in Troika's 2004 follow-up, in Redemption, the player does not get to choose the protagonist's clan (he is made a Brujah). Nevertheless, Christof's story and the characters he meets are compelling and the gameplay is quite good. This is one of those underrated gems that you might have missed the first time around; if so, grab it.
While the graphics will look a bit rough on modern machines, the characters and story more than compensate in the opening game in a trilogy by Jane Jensen. The story follows the titular character as he seeks to uncover the truth about a series of murders and his own family history. The story is set in New Orleans, where Knight uncovers a voodoo cult. This is a terrific old school adventure. I still can hear Tim Curry's lazy Southern drawl in my head as he speaks of himself; he leads a cast of excellent voice actors. This gem was followed up by The Beast Within, the only game in the series to feature FMV, which was all the rage at the time, and I think one of the few games to make it work really well. If I recall correctly GK 2 came on a whopping 6 CDs and had an equally compelling story that followed Gabe and Grace's efforts to investigate werewolves in France. The third title, Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, was less well-received than the previous two (I think the heyday of adventure games may have passed--at least for that period in time), but still told a compelling story that will be very familiar to readers of Dan Brown. I hope Gog gets them all.
