What a Night

Today is June 23, otherwise known as St. John’s Eve, a holy day that celebrates Saint John, the Baptist. In Catholic churches it was a pretty common day to hold mass, but over the years has decreased in popularity in the United States. However, St John’s Eve is not only a holy day just for Catholicism, but many other peoples around the world as well, due to its proximity to the summer solstices and the midsummer celebration. The day is also associated with the voodoo culture within New Orleans in which voodoo practitioners keep the traditions of famous voodoo priestess Marie Laveau alive, and hold religious ceremonies.

The date sticks out to me so much because of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, one of the lesser known (but still popular in certain circles) Sierra titles. Gabriel Knight was something of an off-beat creation for Sierra, instead of the usual humor, or tongue-in-cheek story telling, it was a serious detective story, that plays beat-for-beat like the schlock novels of the 70’s and 80’s that the creator, Jane Jensen, clearly was a fan of and tried to emulate. Gabriel Knight came complete with cheesy romantic dialogue, bouts of intense gore and horror, and characters that feel like they would be more at home in a soap opera than in a computer game. It was a fascinating turn towards the more mature side of gaming for Sierra, and it is pulled off wonderfully largely based on its unique setting and the amount of research that went into it.

The story beings centering on our titular hero, Gabriel Knight, waking up from a horrible nightmare, full of blood. strange rituals, and himself being hanged. This morning (June 18) marks a complete week--the 7th day in a row--that Gabriel has had this dream. Gabriel, and his assistant, Grace, both try to wave off his nightmares as a side effect of all the research he has been doing lately. You see, Gabriel is both an unsuccessful author and owner of a grossly unpopular used bookstore. Out-of-luck, and suffering writer's block, Gabriel has turned his attention to a string of murders in which the victims are discovered with their hearts cut out of their chest, hanged from trees, and surrounded by remnants of mystic circles. These murders--known as the Voodoo Murders in the local newspapers, are what Gabriel decided to make the subject of his next book, and has an in on the case because of an old friend of his, Franklin Mosley, who is a detective in the NOPD.

Through the course of the next 6 days, Gabriel, and the players along with him, travel all across the local scenery in New Orleans, and learn everything they can about voodoo culture, and the recent string of murders that seemingly are connected to it. This element is where the game shines and becomes something truly unique, as everything is expertly researched and crafted, and you honestly will learn a whole lot about New Orleans and voodoo. If you were ever curious about the culture and history of New Orleans, or about voodoo culture and its history then this is the game for you! Jane Jensen and her team crammer in so much detail that it almost feels like you might be playing an edutainment game, but only almost, because this is actually fun.

Most importantly though, this setting just sets Gabriel Knight so far apart from everything else. We’ve seen fictional murders before in many places, The Big Apple, Chicago, California, Vegas, London, Japan, and even the far flung future, but you never really see that many mysteries tackle (United States) Southern society before. Gone are the big skyscrapers, fedora with trench coats, and fast talking, that most people associate with the genre. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father is a different beast all together. Much like the cult classic film Fargo, it’s an incredibly refreshing change of locale for mystery fans. Throw in how equally refreshing the supernatural elements are—elements that are solely unique to American culture, and mostly misunderstood, or not even well known by many people, and you can see why Gabriel Knight is so special. Instead of the typical vampires, werewolves, aliens, and other monsters-of-the-week that most detectives would take on, our lovable lout and self-described ladies’ man Gabriel faces a whole underground society of voodoo practitioners that may expand into every pocket of influence and control in New Orleans, from the crime families down to the daily workings of the police officers out on the street. 

Not only is New Orleans incredibly in-depth but Gabriel himself is too. Throughout the course of the mystery Gabriel not only discovers more about voodoo, but also himself and his own family history. Gabriel eventually comes face-to-face with the reasons behind his own nightmare, and uncovers the curse that has haunted his family for generations. You learn all about the Knight family, and how it started, why they settled in New Orleans over 200 years ago, and what they left behind from their ancestral home in Germany. There’s tons of depth to the story that really explores the cast of characters. 

Armed with the knowledge that these murders go way beyond just being random killings, and now with his own personal attachments to the case, things begin to take a turn for the worse for Gabriel. It becomes increasingly clear that Gabriel and maybe even Grace may no longer be safe from the voodoo sect in New Orleans as strange happenings begin to occur. First, the Voodoo Murders case is very quickly closed, almost as if someone upstairs is pulling strings to stop people from poking their noses in it. Then there's the man standing watch over Gabriel's bookstore who refuses to leave no matter what Gabriel does to chase him away. Worse yet a direct warning is sent to Gabriel when he comes in one day to find a featherless and bloody chicken in his store, withering in pain, and screeching for mercy. A very obvious that has been issued to Gabriel. Checking his mail, Gabriel learns that his detective friend Mosley has been coerced out of pursing tis case any more and is even on the run now, trying to solve the Voodoo Murders in secret on his own. Everything is finally coming to a head, and Gabriel checks his newspaper. June 23, St. John's Eve. Today's horoscope, life or death! 

More or less June 23 is the midpoint of the the game, and things only pick-up from here for Gabriel, as the adventure truly beings now. It’s a crazy ride, that I really recommend full heartedly for everyone who hasn’t played it yet to pick up. I won’t go into any further details about the plot since it would ruin the ending, but it’s an ending that’s definitely worth seeing, as well as hearing too. The Gabriel Knight games all feature beautiful soundtracks by Robert Holmes, that’s chilling, suspenseful, and all around classic. They are perfect soundtracks for games like this, and can easily be enjoyed outside of the games as well.

There are two versions of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father out there to consider. The original 1993 release of the game runs off of the old Sierra SCI engine (“Script Code Interpreter” later called “Sierra’s Creative Interpreter”). The sprites and backgrounds are all classic pixel art, and the game play is what you would expect from Sierra’s golden age of adventure games. The other version of the game is a 2014 remake aptly called Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father 20th Anniversary Edition, which was created using the Unity engine, and had the original creator of Gabriel Knight, Jane Jensen, supervising everything in the project. This version plays almost identically to the original—with the only minor game play tweaks being a new hint system, and some changes to the puzzles in the game. Otherwise it plays just like the original ’93 game, with the same kind of point ’n’ click mechanics, just this time, it is all rendered in 3D.

The 20th Anniversary remake while not the definitive version per se, is a faithful remake (right down to keeping the plot set in 1993, so none of those pesky cellphones and internets mess up old plot points), that is equally as enjoyable as the original version, so ultimately it will really come down to personal preferences on which version of the game you would like to play. 

The pixel art of the original has a certain charm to it that just makes it timeless, where as the remake has beautiful backgrounds but uses 3D models that are a bit stiff and almost look like, The Sims, at times. But to play devil’s advocate, examining everything farther really reveals no matter what avenue you may look into, there are certain advantages and certain disadvantages to each version. The pixel art is classic, yes, but it is also created for a smaller screen, and even while you can enlarge it for modern aspect ratios, the content on the screen is less than what you can have in a modern game.

One of the main points driven home in a lot of the developer notes for the remake however, is how much emphasis and work was put into making the backgrounds bigger, and bringing more life to them. There are more things to look at in each frame of the remake, and this by large is what makes the remake appealing looking. Throw in remaking all the previous pixel art cutscenes that had very limited animation into full blown motion-comics, and some nice effects with the lighting, and it’s easy to see the positive side of this Unity based version too.

The original ’93 release of the game features an absurdly huge star studded cast of famous Hollywood movie and TV actors. Seriously, look at this cast! That’s right, those are the acting chops of Tim Curry in the lead role of Gabriel, which is blow your mind levels of awesome. But that’s not all either, as there’s Mark Hamil, Michael Dorn, Leah Remini, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the list goes on. The cast is superb and there’s no wonder why for many people the original star cast is one of their main reasons why they prefer the 1993 version of the game over the 2014 remake. However as shocking as it is (please hold your gasps for later), voice acting has come a long way in the past 20 years. The idea of wanting to create a new dub for the remake isn’t exactly an unreasonable endeavor, especially when you consider the high cost of royalties that may be involved for the previous cast of actors, as well as the absolutely unfortunate reality of the original recordings for Gabriel Knight being destroyed in Activision’s acquisition of Sierra, and thus the audio can never be restored or remastered for the remake.

The remake has a rather competent dub, and doesn’t even try to deviate much from the original performances. Most of the actors are trying their darnedest to match the mannerisms and vocal range of their previous counterparts, to various degrees of success. It’s a bit mixed, and some minor characters especially came out a bit lackluster, perhaps directionless, but over all, the dubbing is up to modern standards for the most part, and sounds good. 

Jason Victor, the new actor for Gabriel, has a noticeably more Southern accent than British actor Tim Curry did, and it is honestly a bit distracting at first. Humorously so, actually! It’s no stretch to say Jason comes off as someone with a “Proud Southern Gentlemen” persona. His voice actually makes me remember an old episode of the TV show, The Office, where Michael Scott (Steve Carell) does a terrible Southern drawl all episode, and thinks everyone from the South ends their sentences with “I do declare”. Funny thing though, is that Jason more or less nails Gabriel down to a Tee. The Southern accent is perfect for a man who comes from a family that has a long relationship with New Orleans, and Jason puts on quite a fun performance to boot. It may take some time to adjust to the accent, which is honestly pretty rare these days to hear in entertainment media, but once you get over the whole culture shock of it all, Jason Victor really is a better fitting Gabriel than Tim Curry ever was. Or at least I think so.

No matter what version of the game you play though, you are in for a really good time, so I say pick whichever one sounds the most interesting to you. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father is a point ’n’ click adventure game must, and even all these years later, stands as a fantastic story. Eerie, dark, and mature, the game was nothing like its competition at the time, and even with some stellar mature adventure games that have come since, Gabriel Knight still stands among the greats. The amount of research, planning, and originality that went into creating this game is simply awe-inspiring. The mystery of the Voodoo Murders are still to this day one of my favorite mysteries in gaming, right up there with The Tale of The Girl in the Back (Oh don’t worry, we’re gonna talk about Famicom Detective Club some day!), and Blickwinkel (And yes, I also plan to talk about Ever 17 again too). If you consider yourself a mystery fan and haven’t played Gabriel Knight, then do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy of the game. You won’t be disappointed unraveling the mysteries this game has to offer.

The original 1993 version of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father is available for Windows PC at GOG.com.

The 2014 remake titled, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father 20th Anniversary Edition is available also at GOG, as well as Steam, and other online game retailers. 

One Year Later—Reflections of Bravely Default’s Ending: What the heck actually happened here?

[Warning due to the very nature of this piece there will be spoilers galore. If you have not finished Bravely Default and want to experience the ending of the game for yourself without anything spoiled, then come back later after you have completed the game]

Last year Bravely Default: Where the Fairy Flies came out with a loud crescendo. It was rewarded accolades abound, and was the talk of the town. Naturally considering it was such a big launch and that we live in the 21st century with compulsive social media and other entertainment news outlets not getting spoiled would be hard if you didn’t play the game right away. So of course … I wasn’t playing it right away. 

Don’t get me wrong, this was not for a lack of interest in the game, in fact, I pre-ordered the big limited edition set months before the release date, so I had the game right from the get-go; I was just, for a lack of a better word, busy. The inevitable pretty much happened and more or less as the months trickled on the entire game became spoiled for me against my will, but not even in a way I could have predicated. The talks of accolades soon turned into talks of bitter disappointment, and before I knew it I had heard probably a million times over about how badly the game ended and how it was grossly misjudged and even overrated.

Maybe I was saved a bullet having learned what the ending was already and seeing that most people hated it. A reasonable man would have probably stopped there, however, I am not reasonable, so I ignored it and still played the game like the psycho that I am. It was honestly a remarkably fun experience, though, that hit all my not so guilty pleasures when it comes to RPGs. From the second the first AR video played where Angès addressed you, yes you—the player, I was sold. I always loved games that find ways to incorporate the fact that the player is there as an active participant and not just a passive watcher. It is a very unique story telling element that I truly believe only games can pull off successfully (more on this shortly).

From there I found four great chapters that were both engrossing and long. I grew to love Bravely Default a lot and that’s what began to worry me. Deep down I knew that when Chapter 4 finally comes to an end, I would see with my own eyes what everyone hated. I was nervous, cautious, and even a bit scared that what would come next would ruin the previous 57 hours of fun I had with the game. When Chapter 5 finally did come, I found myself humorously writing on Twitter about it. You could say I willingly tried to just make the best of it and lowered my expectations.

You may be asking yourself now, what exactly happens in Chapters 5-8 that people hate so much? Well near the end of Chapter 4 you have successfully defeated the Empire and cleared out the majority of the bosses in the game, as well as awakened all four Crystals and traveled pretty much everywhere on the world map. Normally the game would have been finished and the credits would roll, but yet, they don’t. Instead you find yourself in a bright light only to be awoken in your bed on the very first day of the game—essentially looping the whole game back to the very beginning. Without much idea on what else to do you and your party decide to just reawaken the four Crystals again, and can choose to fight optional souped up versions of all the Empire’s previous bosses again, as well. It does not stop there, though, as it happens a total of five times—with each loop bringing you closer to the end, but still being essentially the same game over and over and over again. 

It’s natural to think this won’t sit well with some people since it creates so much busywork, but the game does accommodate you by allowing you to keep your airship from the very beginning of each loop, making travel real short. In fact most loops could probably be finished in 30 or so minutes if you rush through and ignore fighting all the optional super bosses again and again, which honestly is what I did. All in all, for being the final 4 “chapters” of the game, Chapters 5-8 are really very short, and depending on how much of a glutton you are for punishment (i.e. how much you want to fight the same bosses over and over and over again) the length can vary. If you were like me though, these chapters probably only take up 1/8 of the game’s actual length. They really are over in probably less than 3 or 4 hours.

So did this ruin Bravely Default for me? Well … when I began Chapter 5 I was very cautious and a bit dismissive initially. I found a little voice nagging in my head that if they really wanted to loop this game so darn much that they should have saved us the time and just implement a montage. The voice eventually subsided in my head, though as I went farther, and after a while the ending of the game began to click for me. As the ending progressed I realized more and more what the writer, Naotaka Hayashi (most well known for his previous work on the visual novel Steins;Gate) and Silicon Studio wanted to do, and how closely it tied the player themselves into the game. 

The looping process gradually reveals to you—the player, that Airy, your guide throughout the game, was only using the heroes to complete her own ends, and that awakening the Crystals in fact doomed your world. As you looped over and over again you were traveling to parallel worlds and linking them to the previous world, and by doing so dooming these worlds as well. Each new parallel world gave the player, slight insight into this fact. They start gradually, but grow more and more obvious as the looping process goes on. Eventually when you reach Chapter 6, the game goes all out and even gets cheeky with you, as the title screen changes. The subtitles now show in both red and white; WHERE THE FAIRY FLIES, and then slowly the red letters fade away, thus making the subtitle another hint: Airy Lies. 

This entire process, the looping with more and more gradual hints, the cheeky title change, and the characters stupidly repeating the same action while us, the players, bemoan them for it; they all represent a literary device known as dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is probably most well known in the English speaking world for the Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet, in which, the audience knowns that the characters Romeo and Juliet only pretend to be die, but under the false pretense of actually believing the other dead, kill themselves for real. It’s a tragedy that could have easily been avoided had the fictional characters known the information that the audience did.

Carefully crafting a new take on the literally device of dramatic irony is what I believe Hayashi and his team were trying to accomplish with Bravely Default’s ending. Instead of just settling for simply crafting this device through traditional means however, I believe they tried to craft it through the actual gameplay itself. The disconnect between the player and the game that you feel at the ending through all the looping of events becomes a unique experience that challenges the player to want to communicate to the characters; to want to tell them to stop looping, to want to tell them to not trust Airy, to want to reach out to them. It creates the desire, nay, the need, to communicate between the audience and the game, which is what happens to audiences when dramatic irony is effetely being used. I believe this use of literally device is an important part in the experiment that was Bravely Default's creation. To elaborate we will need to move beyond the looping and look into the events that happen in the Final Chapter. To better explain this I need to make a small detour first though, so hold on, I promise it will pay off. 

Typically, most games have elements that make no sense by our real world logic, but we are willing to ignore, since, these elements help shape the gameplay. It’s usually something simple, like why Mario can only run right or left in his 2D platforming games, when we all know there’s a bevy of other directions Mario can go. Or better yet, when side characters tell the main characters to “hit the A button” even though we know, in this story world there are no A buttons, and this information is only there to facilitate the player. These elements that by a story stand point don’t make sense, but by a game stand point do, actually become explained towards the end of Bravely Default with the reveal that each cartridge (and digital copy) of the game is actually another parallel world, and that each time someone plays the game, they are just another of the billions of parallel versions of the heroes going through parallel journeys. Why can you use the 3DS’ friend system to summon your friends to help with combos in battles? How can your streetpass function bring new villagers to your virtual town? All explained. It’s the interaction of parallel worlds, and saving all these parallel worlds, all the other copies of the Bravely Default games, is your final quest during the end of the game.

Through the disconnect created with the looping i.e. dramatic irony, and tying together all the gameplay elements into actual story elements, Hayashi and his team were able to do something truly unique with their ending. It's an experience that connected us, the players, to the Warriors of Light. It was a connection of different worlds, both in the fact that all the Bravely worlds are connected, and the fact that, our world too, is connected with those Bravely worlds. When the game is finished, and the player is no longer needed, we become disconnected, as it is revealed that our force, our use of playing the game on our 3DS, is what kept Tiz alive from his obvious doom that he would have faced at the beginning of the game like his entire town did. With the player finally putting down the game, Tiz passes on, and finally dies. No longer having the other soul--us players--to help control his body.

Having finally finished Bravely Default, I feel the ending may have been a bit misjudged. Or at the very least, that people might have taken to it more harshly than they should have. The ending of Bravely Default is an interesting experiment on how video games can tell unique stories—stories that can’t be told in any other medium. However, I don’t think that gives it a free pass either, as this unique style of telling the ending is pretty demanding of its player, and equal parts repetitive to boot. The frustration brought from, and desire to just speed through chapters 5-8 are duly noted, and are perfectly acceptable complaints as well. It’s also a shame that after 40-50 hours invested in the game, you are suddenly forced to now invest in this demanding ending that is a dramatic shift from what the game was like previous, and on a technical level can be seen as padding with recycled resources. Losing interest or starting to hate the game is something I can’t blame anyone for, honestly. 

This ending … is not for everyone. There are many flaws and shortcomings to what Hayashi and the team did for the ending, but all the same, I found it fascinating. I’m not sure what may be in store for Bravely Second and beyond (if the series can go on to a third entry that is), but the ground floor that Hayashi set with the first entry for the series is something strange and kinda magical. It’s a game that’s one part a nostalgia trip for old Final Fantasy fanboys, and one part experimental video game story telling.