Gabriel Knight - Witchy Woman

Written by Michael

Kids really don’t read books enough anymore.

Unfortunately, real life has kept Zenic from continuing with Gabriel Knight as originally planned.  We hope things get squared away, and we look forward to his return with his next scheduled game in 1994 (or perhaps even earlier). 

As has been the habit with Morpheus before, if anyone wishes to change their score guess for Gabriel Knight, or hasn’t made one yet, you can do so by commenting either on this entry or the introduction post, as long as you do so before I post again. 

My history with this game?  I played it once, about 25 years ago, before tackling the third game in the series.  I remember absolutely nothing, other than I vaguely remember visiting a cemetery at some point.  So, I’m starting fresh.  I owned the jigsaw-shaped box, and it got damaged during one of my many moves at the time, and eventually lost.  I’m sad about that, since there’s a collector’s market still to this day for that unique package.

Message received.

In that introduction post, we hadn’t gotten further than the opening video, which is more of a slideshow of mood-setting images more than anything.  But one thing that wasn’t done in the last post was to talk about the graphic novel that accompanied the game.  Zenic was worried about spoilers, but when I read the game manual, it stated that the graphic novel was required reading.  So, I’m studying that first.

In the comments of the introduction post, Laukku thinks it's too revealing. But I think the best way to evaluate the game is to play it the way most people would have back then. Reading the manual seems to be that path. I suspect the story would have been fully animated today, but was not economical to do back then.

It’s a rather lengthy story -- a little longer than I expect a comic book story to be, but it’s chock full of story.  I don’t know how much of it will be relevant yet, but I look forward to finding out.  It starts with a tale about a village hiring Gunter, who is a Shattenjäger, which translates to “shadow hunter”.  His role here is specifically as a witch hunter.  He comes across a village slave, brought to the land by the mayor, whom he befriends and they learn about each other.  While her slave name is Eliza, her real name is Tetelo.

“In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness.”

In one of their many encounters over the weeks, he tells her more about the legacy of his profession, being the shadow hunter.  She follows up with one of the most effective pickup lines in history:

“A white man would not understand.  It is called zinstgi - the unbidden.  When a man and a woman are brought together by the universe, they have no choice.  There is always a reason.  A child must be born, a village saved... to fight it is a living death.”

She then removes her clothes, and they end up in bed together.

A few weeks later, the mayor demands a progress report, where he learns that Gunter believes it is the work of African magic, perhaps a small coven of practitioners.  The mayor uses some strong language to suggest killing all the persons of color in the village, but Gunter talks him down.  But the mayor does seem to hint about the hunter’s nighttime activities.  “Art thou sure this is not simply an excuse for spending so much time in my slave quarters?”

Gunter says no -- it’ll take just one more night, as he has set a trap.  The mayor seems to be happy to see the back of the hunter on his way out.

Angel in the streets, devil in the sheets.

Plot twist -- the trap catches himself.  But then he discovers, as we probably should have expected, that Eliza is the witch. He helps her escape as the men he has employed catch the rest of the coven.  We learn that Eliza/Tetelo’s father was a shaman who used dark gods to give his tribe power.  At one point, the gods demanded the soul of his daughter, Tetelo, as a price for protection.  Father tried to fool the gods, and they weren’t happy about it.  So Tetelo is out for revenge to the slave traders who stole away the survivors of the tribe.

Gunter, understandably, wasn’t happy about being deceived.  “Hah!  Thou knew it was thee I sought all this time, and thou let me love thee.”  He walks away.  Meanwhile, the rest of the village have the captives tied at the stake, ready for a classic witch bonfire. They assume that Gunter is still hunting for the one that got away, the female leader.  After some thought, Mayor Crodwell realizes who the female slave was and goes looking for her.

At that same time, Tetelo uses magic to call on her father, asking to be released from tribal loyalties.  Dad has some advice, though.  “You must destroy this man that tempts you!  His kind will only despise you in the end!”

While Tetelo is being prepared to be burned at the stake, she again reaches out to the gods to summon help, including a snake.  But just a few frames earlier, Gunter kills a snake.  Are they one and the same?  Gunter uses his talisman and empowers her.  The captives go free, start attacking the village, and are joined by the remaining slaves. 

Until the final images, Tetelo confronting Gunter, about to strike.  He might have saved her, but it was after his betrayal to her.  She blames him for unleashing the dark magic within.  “You have made me my father’s daughter.  Goodbye, witch hunter.”

I’m on fire.

The story ends there, but seems to transition well into the video introduction.  

Before this game, he had a few bit roles.  After this game, Director Vance’s career grew.

St. George’s Bookstore

Where the last post left off was just after the intro graphics, showing a paperboy riding by and delivering a newspaper seconds before Grace approaches the front door of the bookstore, picking it up.  Inside the shop, the scene starts as Grace is answering the bookstore phone, a lady named Lolita trying to reach Gabriel on the phone, he grunts himself away from the call.  Grace introduces us to her opinion of her boss right away: “I’m sorry, but Gabriel is a lout... I mean, he’s out.  Yeah, if he ever comes back, I’ll tell him.  You know, you could do better.  I know I don’t know you, but you could do better.”  All said within a few feet of him.  They definitely have a comfortable working relationship.

After hanging up the phone. She asks if he looks so groggy because he had another nightmare last night.  Us, the player, already know this to be the case, as long as we watched the intro.  But he simply says, “Sort of.”  

It seems that Gabriel is researching a book on Voodoo, and Grace blames the research for his dreams.  She shrugs it off again, and she delivers to him a handheld tape recorder he had ordered.  “I can’t wait to see what human rights you violate with this one.”

She then tells us about some resources she found for his Voodoo research, a nearby drugstore and a museum.  So those are definitely spots we’ll need to visit.

Even though we’ve just talked a lot, I think there’s more.  There’s two different talk icons detailed in the manual, one for quick banter, and another for interrogation.  I use the interrogation one on Grace; the manual tells me there’s 15 main characters I’ll be able to interrogate over the course of the game, and Gabriel will be using the tape recorder to keep records of those conversations, so even if I wasn’t taking screenshots every 3 seconds like a dedicated TAG reviewer, I’d still be able to look back on certain conversations for info I may have missed.

I’m treated to a view with both portraits, and as we talk, they are animated as well.  There’s a list of topics in between Gabriel and Grace, and I start exploring them.  We talk about voodoo and the murders, but since I haven’t done much investigating yet, there’s not much new.  I ask about herself, and learn a lot.  She’s a recently-graduated college student with a masters, taking a break before going for her Ph. D.  In her spare time, she practices Tai Chi and does oil painting.  This is meant to just be a summer job, she implies.  

She’s good at deflecting his pickup attempts, but in true 90s fashion, I suspect she harbors a few feelings for her older boss underneath the deflections.  Still, though... “How come we haven’t gone out yet?”  “I’m still waiting around for that lobotomy.  Soon as I get it, I’ll let you know.”

There’s an interrogation option, asking about Grace, “Just tell me anything at all.”  It’s a lesson for the game, you need to keep clicking this until the responses start to repeat.  There’s other items in this room that strategy will apply to as well, when we get there.  Oh, and asking her about the phone messages.  The first couple are throwaways, so a novice gamer might struggle until they get to the meat and potatoes.  We learn that we need to go to Grandma’s house to look through his father’s items.  Also, a gentleman named Wolfgang Ritter called from Germany, but Gabriel isn’t eager to return the call -- remember, long distance calls used to be expensive -- so he said he’d wait for a return call.  His friend, NOPD Detective Mosely called, saying he’d left some photos for him at the police station, and that his mother’s maiden name is Humphrey.  I suspect that will be a password for something.

The manual said I would interrogate 15 characters and showed a screenshot with only 15 tapes, this one doesn’t match.  We’ll see how the game goes.

After I exhaust all the topics, I check out the tape interface, just to see what it captured.  Useful.

I now divert my attention to the rest of the bookstore.  There’s lots of books, of course, and looking at different shelves gives different descriptions.  I find three books I’m able to read.  I get some points for reading a book about snakes.  Grace tells me about how medieval stories about dragons and giant worms were really based on snakes.  While Gabriel shrugs that off, I soon disagree and pay attention, because of another book I found, a German poem.  I don’t understand a word of it, but the third book I find is a German to English dictionary, and reading through it, some of the words match up with the poem, like the words for “three” and “dragons”.

This painting belongs in a museum.

Let’s put two and two together here -- there’s a painting on the wall, behind where Grace sits.  Gabriel’s father painted it, it has three snakes coming from a skull.

I don’t think this is a coincidence.  Was his father a voodoo practitioner?

Looking around the room, I also grab a heavy magnifying glass that used to belong to my grandfather and a pair of tweezers Grace uses in book restoration. 

I also see the newspaper on the counter just delivered this morning.  I pick it up and read it.  

Or so they claim.

In case it matters, although I suspect it doesn’t, today’s date is June 18, 1993.  A thought occurs to me: that was roughly my last day of 9th grade.  I’m glad I didn’t celebrate that down in “The Big Easy”.

I can also grab a cup of coffee and drink it, but I suspect it’s just a fun animation and does nothing for gameplay.

Also in the paper is the horoscope; it seems Gabriel is a fellow Aquarius.  “Potential storms ahead.  Proceed with caution and do not get involved with anything new at this time.”  Um... guess we should stop playing this game right now.

In the back room, behind the curtain, is Gabriel’s living quarters.  Basically, a studio apartment with a fridge but no stove.  Lots of interesting things to look at and examine, but only two of them are colored differently to stand out: a flashlight and a telephone.  The flashlight I take, the telephone I can use, but since I haven’t been given anyone’s number yet, I’ll skip it for now.  In the bathroom, I take some hair gel from the medicine cabinet.

New drinking game: anytime we play a Sierra game with a telephone we have to dial as a plot point, we take a few shots.

Back in the main room, I grab my coat and leave.  “Gabriel didn’t eat anything for three weeks after splurging on that coat.  He has a thing for black leather.”

Stepping out of the door brings us to a map, with several destinations available at this time:

• Napoleon House

• Jackson Square Overlook

• Jackson Square

• St. Louis Cathedral

• Historical Voodoo Museum

• Dixieland Drugstore

I decide on the police station, to follow up on Mosely’s phone call.  Grandma can be next, once I figure out where she lives.

I leave, Full Throttle style.

Laissez les bons temps rouler

At the police station, I look around, and notice a few unnamed officers behind the scenes and a desk sergeant.  Also, a photocopier, which I expect I’ll need at some point since it’s a clickable item.

I interrogate the sergeant, and while he won’t reveal anything to me, he does have the envelope left for me by my detective friend.

Inside the envelope are two photographs.  One is from a crime scene, a voodoo murder victim.  Another is a younger picture of Detective Mosely in uniform, when he had just graduated from the police academy.  I wonder what we will be using this for.

I don’t see anything else to do at the station right now, so I leave.  I decide to go back to the bookstore, to show Grace the crime scene photo, to see if she can help.

He’s probably a gay florist, but they don’t overdo the voice acting to make it offensive, as might have been the case in past games.

I open the cash register, and find a gift certificate for the bookstore inside.  Maybe I can bribe someone with that?

As I prepare to talk to Grace, a neighboring shopkeeper comes in, asking to buy my father’s painting.  Two of the dialog tree options are basically no, while the third asks him for an offer.  I choose that one, just to see the response, but Grace intercedes.  

When Bruno leaves, I show Grace both photos.  She isn’t interested in the photo of Mosely, whom she recognizes, but she’s revolted by the crime scene photo, so that ends that conversation.

I’m going to stop here for now.  It wasn’t a long gameplay session, but a long post nonetheless.  Game plan for the next session:

• Go to Grandma’s house

• Visit the two locations Grace told me about (Drug store and museum)

• Try to find the crime scene Mosely is at right now

Maybe that’s the right plan of action, maybe it isn’t.  Time will tell.

Score: 16/342

Session Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes