Gabriel Knight - Heartless, Heartless, You Think it's Gonna Fill This Empty Soul

Written by Michael

How I feel every morning. 

So, last time I underwent a hazing initiation ceremony to become a chosen one, just like my uncle, and it seems, practically every male above me in the family tree.  We wake up, sore, and think it might have just been a dream... but then we notice the large brass key at the foot of the bed, the same one that was given to us in the sequence,

I’m pretty sure I know where that key is used.  Wasn’t there an oversized keyhole just next to the bed to another room?

Characters in video games visit libraries much more often than regular people do, at least here in America.

Through the door on the left of the screen, with the message engraved in stone, is the library that Uncle Wolfgang had mentioned he was using for research.  There are many shelves with books on many topics.  I pick a shelf at random, and eventually find a book with a topic that seems familiar, the People’s Republic of Benin.  I read that book, and learn about the powerful tribes (including the Agris) that existed before slavery devastated the area, and then the book recommends I read another title, “The Primal Ones” by John Roots, to learn about these tribes.

Well, glancing around at another shelf, I find a section for books on sociology, and hey, there’s that book!

Yes, we’re going to repeat this process a few times -- read one book, be referred to another, read that book, be referred to another....

In this book we learn that this area of Africa is known as the Red Basin because of the amount of bloodshed between the xenophobic tribes.  We should consult a different title to learn more: “Ancient Roots of Africa” by Earl Lee Days.

Yes, read that name out loud.  Jane Jensen, really?

This book places some of the blame on the early sun worshippers in the region, and sends us to ANOTHER book: “Sun Worshippers” by A. Curate.

That book talks about the sacrifices done on behalf of the powerful sun gods, and refers us to the book titled “Ancient Digs of Africa” by Seymore Shards.

Really, these author names feel more like a Space Quest game at this point.

This book gives us something useful.  The most fascinating archeological site in this part of Africa is 50 miles south of the capital of the People’s Republic of Benin, a great snake mound in the Red Basin.  What makes this one so interesting?  Well, it’s a smaller snake ring within a larger snake ring, which is thought to have housed an ancient temple.

Hey, my dreams are interesting enough to be written about in books!

Ring within a ring, you say?  Or perhaps a wheel inside a wheel?

This book doesn’t refer us to any others, and Gabriel wants to hold onto it, so it seems we are done here for now.  No other books on the shelves hop out at me.  I leave the library and head downstairs.

Now you’re speaking my language.

Gerde greets us as we come down the stairs, and tells us that a hearty breakfast is in store for us.  But, as she is still sitting there peeling potatoes (I suspect enough for the whole village) I decide to talk to her.

I show her the book from the library about the snake mounds, and tell her I think Wolfgang went to Africa.  She’s a little shocked, but then offers to help us book travel to get there.  “You have money for the plane, Ja?”

Of course we do, as long as our name is Mosely.

People in this industry are known for their love of coffee, 

She makes the call and she insists we have breakfast before we go.  Gabriel is okay with that as long as some coffee is involved.

This line of poetry was a hint that I didn’t catch until writing this blog post.

Hey, we made it!

Oh, wait, this is what we were looking for.

So, if we did our research right, this is the tribal home of Tetelo’s people.

As we walk in, we enter a room that has drawings on the wall (artwork from the ancient sun worshippers) and etched stones set in crevices in those walls.

I think this game was inspired by one of my early childhood favorites.

Looking at the etched stone, it has a whole bunch of squiggly lines on it.  I’m guessing snakes.  There’s 10 on here.  And the stone isn’t nailed down, so I grab it.

 The next room is very similar, with another tile.  I try to push the tile rather than pick it up, and I’m given a hint as to how I’ll be solving this series of rooms: “If Gabriel wants to relocate that tile, he’s going to have to take it first.”  Except this one is stuck in place, so I cannot take it.  This one has seven squigglies on it.

I try some inventory items on it to try to pry it loose, like the hair gel and the dagger, but alas, no luck.

I continue around the rest of the rooms.  Some have tiles laying on the floor, some in the walls, and one other isn’t removable.  One room has a stone rod on the floor that I collect (“It’s shaped a little like a snake.”).  Some rooms have mummies scattered throughout.

I notice something -- the rod looks to be the same size as the hole in the middle of these stones.  I try inserting it into one of the placed stones on the walls, but nothing happens.  I’ll need to replace the stones, I suspect.

 So, as I make my way around the rooms, it seems I’m walking in a circle, because eventually I return to the room I started in.  I have picked up ten of those stone tiles, each with a different number of snakes drawn on them, ranging from one to eleven, with the exception of seven and twelve, which were stuck in the walls 5 rooms apart.

A circle with numbers from one to twelve?

I walk back around the outer ring, and replace the stones around the twelve rooms in number order, going clockwise.  When I finish, I suspect my next step is to insert the rod into the hole of one or more of the stones.  I was thinking I had to either do a specific one, or all of them, so I saved the game and just started trying them all.

Had I gotten the hint from the start of day poem, I would have known which one to go to directly.  I have to go back through my screenshots to see if I missed any further clues.  But it turns out that the proper choice was number three.

Understatement.

When I insert the rod into the hole, it awakened all of the zombies on all of the screens. 

Ugh.  This ends up becoming a damn arcade sequence.

I’m not going to do a blow by blow, but you need to walk clockwise, avoiding zombies.  One screen, you have to dart between two of them, another you have to fake in one direction, divert his attention, and then get to the door.  Another you have to grab a hanging vine and do a Larry Laffer-worthy swing.

If you get caught by one of the zombies, he pins you down and starts eating out your heart.

I died many, many times.  I’m not sure how much of it was emulation speed related, and how much was just the inclusion of a &^%^&*%*(%^*  timing and reflex-based arcade sequence in an adventure game.

Eventually, I make my way through a few screens and find an older man fending off a bunch of zombies.  It’s our Uncle Wolfgang!  He directs us to try to continue through the doorway in that room while he is still managing to keep the zombies at bay, but it won’t last long.  I find the switch to close the door and transport us into the inner sanctum, and he jumps in with me as we escape the zombie horde.

I’m sure you know all about his heart.

In the inner ring, we walk in with Wolfgang.  As we walk, he has to frequently pause to grasp his chest and walks hunched over a little.

Hey, I missed it too.  Guess I’m not really that qualified.

Wolfgang is impressed with our progress so far, and seems okay with passing the torch onto us.  We continue into the next room.

Long story short: worshiping while offering sacrifices to gods almost always gives you power.  Life hack.

There’s a table here that likely used to be used for sacrifices, with a lot of ancient drawings/writings around the base.  Uncle Wolfgang translates it as the instruction manual, told as a story (“A tribesman discovers the snake mound hidden in the jungle... He manages, after some time, to find the secret entrance to the inner wheel...”)

The table might be able to be opened but needs to be reconstructed.  It’s meant for collecting a human heart.  We grab those rods from the wall and shove them into the base.

All of this is in the quest to get an idol that is likely inside.  We still can’t open the table, though, without the sacrifice of a human heart.

After a pep talk where our Uncle tells us that we need to take over the family business and fight evil, Wolfgang sends us over to the zombie body on the other side of the room, suggesting that it might do the trick to use its heart.  Gabriel hesitates: “Will that work?  Doesn’t it need to be... fresh?”  Wofgang says not to worry -- he might just have a trick up his sleeve.

As soon as I walk to the other side of the screen and plunge my dagger into the zombie, Wolfgang sacrifices himself over the table.  We’re too far away to stop it.

And then the screen cuts over to the French Quarter,

Because there’s a hot servant in the castle?

And the supernatural forces show their faces again.

 

As this day ends, so shall this post.  It feels like we’re almost done now.

Score: 293/342

Session Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Time: 13 hours 15 minutes