Let's Talk About Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

This time we talk about Sierra's point and click adventure Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
The next games are Dungeon Hack - and - Escape Velocity.
Thank you all for watching!
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[@ZagnutBar]

Re: "New Orleans", I still remember watching actor Dan Larroquette (a native of NO) explain on an old episode of the Arsenio Hall show that you can say it any way you want EXCEPT "New Or-LEENZ"

[@ZagnutBar]

N'awlins!

[@mattdherrick]

Thank you for this, I will defer to John Larroquette on this going forward, although it's the kind of thing I look up and swear I'm going to remember, but then panic and forget when it's time. I have a lot of shame about pronunciation.

[@ajeba98]

34:25 That's how the Sierra point and click and text games started and continued to evolve and the reason why I to don't play Sierra games also. I read that Roberta Williams got fan mail saying her games were too easy and she continually made them more hard and illogical. Not to mention there were dead ends in the games forcing you to reload a prior save hours before just to stump the hard core Sierra lovers.

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

I can see that being a draw for her base, but it slowly alienated everyone else.

[@TehDrewsus]

Oh this is cool. Let's play with brigands is doing a playthrough on this now!

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

I'll have to check them out.

[@Painocus]

I feel like during this period of third-person adventure games there was kind of a shift towards less trying to be just a series of puzzles with some theme and plot to tie them togheter and more attempting to be like a little world and narrative for the player to explore with the puzzles serving more as roadblocks to provide pacing. My go-to example of how this outlook influence puzzle design is the rubber duck from The Longest Journey. If you play the game just exploring and seeing what you can interact with the duck is just this running-joke-kinda thing that keeps popping up while doing other stuff until it eventually become part of a puzzle, if you are playing with the mindset of "ok, here is a puzzle, now I need to beeline it for the solution" then the duck becomes an annoying exercise in backtracking everywhere over and over after you find the puzzle that needs it and if you are following a guide the duck is just the list of places you have to suddenly go to in order for no in-game hinted at reason. Gabriel Knight sounds like it is in kinda an awkward position between that and the early Sierra style of "that didn't work, reload and try something else".

[@philip2862]

I might just check out a longplay for this one, I'm curious to hear the VO.

[@truckingwithatablet4489]

I know this is painful but you guys should try and compare the Gabriel Knight remastered since they change 3d and some other things.

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

This is why creators are told to never read the comments. :P

[@konasavage]

My friend's brother had a Tandy computer. It was such a novelty to play Sierra games there when the rest of us had C64s. I don't remember this title at all.

[@boopertime4282]

A heads up for people who love this game: it's worth watching the episode. I really love GK (even the second one!), but most of what The Lost Sectors dislike about it are things you probably dislike about it too.

[@derickrasburn36]

I definitely had some nostalgia goggles for this one, I was the guy that played this in High School and went to New Orleans at 25' with this game still in mind, but even when I played the 25th Anniversary remake I still noticed how bad the puzzle mechanics are. Aside from "shove every item in everyone's face," these games all function on a trigger event bottle-neck with a checklist which is endlessly frustrating... Meaning if... you need Grace to appear in your bedroom to apply the makeup you have to: 1)ask the Prof about Voodoo 2) Feed the fish 3) Flirt with the Heiress 4) Buy Cracker Jacks and 5) Find the Bungee cord. OR she won't. Part 2 "The Beast Within" is even worse, but to have to go through this arbitrary invisible checklist with no way to know what 5 unrelated events are to trigger the end-day-event is insanely poor Gameplay. Of course, the music, the story, the cinematic and the voice actors are all anyone remembers, but the lack of logic beyond uttering the line "What can you tell me about Voodoo" to every person on street totally gets a pass because of how fondly most people recall it.

[@davebeth2576]

I thought I saw you there! I went to New Orleans in 94 or 5 and I think that spurred my enjoyment of this game, just seeing the real places associated with the game.

[@derickrasburn36]

@@davebeth2576 For me it took a bit longer to get to NO. And I guess that does speak to the beauty of the atmosphere of the game. I was 17 in 98 when I played it and kept wanting to go to NO until 2005 when I finally got to go. I remember being amazed that the workers in Jackson Square were raking up wearing the same sun hats as the caretaker in the cemetery. As for Gabe, that first game is amazing in its delivery, but to be looked at by Pure Gameplay alone it doesn't really get out of its own way. Disjointed Logic and too many bottleneck trigger events hold it back, but that overture music still brings me back to a wonderful place in my mind.

[@Trusteft]

Sierra made and/or published far more games than the relatively few adventure games which is known for. I assume when you talk about not liking any Sierra games you are referring only to adventure games. Right? I am get it, I am not a fan of BS "sierra deaths". I really don't like them. Especially in the Space Quest series which jumped the shark. But there are a handful which are not too bad. For example my favorite, Leisure Suit Larry in The Land of the Lounge Lizards. AKA Larry 1. There are a handful of deaths, but they are very few and not THAT crazy. Plus IMO a fun adventure game. For those who don't know, Sierra made or published several other awesome games. Half Life (1). (and 2) The SWAT series. F.E.A.R. World in Conflict The Caesar series. Empire Earth 1 and 2 Evil Genius Nexus The Jupiter Incident Lords of the Realm series. Homeworld series No One Lives Forever series Arcanum !!!! Ground Control series Krondor series The Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires Manhunter New York Rise of the Dragon Red Baron Heart of China Aces Over Europe Alien Legacy Aces of the Deep Conqueror A.D. 1086 Detroit Space Bucks and many many more good games. As for Gabriel Knight series, at least the first 3 games, I never really really played them. I tried the first one, but soon stopped for other reasons than the quality of the game. I still have the series, though now only from GOG. Now about moon logic in puzzles in many adventure games, I totally get how it annoys you too. I don't like it either and yes many Sierra's adventure games had it. (I can't think of Larry 1 having them much though). About the icons, the GUI in the game and not figuring it out, well...that is your fault at least in part. These games usually came with extensive manuals and quick start guides which at the very least explained the GUI of the game. Oh come on man, you are not new in games. Door is open/close for decades, even before GK was released. The first game that comes to mind right now is Sabre Team. READ THE MANUAL! :) Yes it is nitpicking. I don't like to defend these adventure games because they mostly piss me off sooner or later, but the GUI thing is nitpicking. So you liked the narrator's voice a lot and you don't like Howard the Duck. OK, I will stop watching now as obviously this video is going nowhere for me. Thanks for sharing, see you on another video.

[@rusekamppelli4519]

This is one of those games that I enjoy for the story; I didn't mind using a walkthrough at some parts just to get to see how it resolves. I totally understand Chris's gripes about it though, I remember getting stuck for similar reasons. The UI is convoluted, the graphics don't make it obvious what you're supposed to click on, and often you just end up going through all the icons on every object to see if anything happens. The gameplay sucks, the story is great. That said, at least it doesn't have the continuous instakills or dead ends of previous Sierra games, so they did improve from their roots somewhat. And, speaking from some very unfortunate experience, compared to many of the other adventure released during this period, this game is very much a masterpiece, haha!

[@morn3502]

you guys every play, Planescape Torment or Disco Elysium?

[@davebeth2576]

So I watched the first 43 seconds... :( Seriously though, this game has it's flaws for sure. I still like it though.

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

Ha. Honestly, I like the story, I want a show about Gabriel Knight and this whole thing, but damn Sierra... just... stop being Sierra.

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

Honestly, you probably can watch this one. I've got my issues, but if nothing else, jump to 38:29 through 39:45.

[@davebeth2576]

@@ChrisFreeman_4Bit I watched the whole thing. Liking a game or having nostalgia about it doesn't mean that it can't be criticized.

[@ChrisFreeman_4Bit]

@@davebeth2576 True, but sometimes it's better to hang on to happy memories than try to revisit the past.

[@davebeth2576]

@@ChrisFreeman_4Bit This game, like every game, is a product of its time. The interface was a bit much, but most game developers reined things in once some sort of standards developed. You sort of need the outliers to show bad interfaces to understand the good ones. The repetitive narration was a problem, and still is, but the game was remarkable for its story, setting, and characters. I clearly like it, but point and click from that era isn't for everyone. Thanks for the discussion though! It was still entertaining! You probably won't ever get to them, but the 2nd and 3rd games in the series are both quite flawed as well.

[@yurikendal4868]

"bite into something sweet and sexy" I'll stop here.