Gabriel Knight III - Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

Well, here it is. The third and probably final episode of - in my opinion - the best adventure game series ever made. Since the release of the first episode back in 1993, the name of Gabriel Knight has become synonymous with great gameplay, beautiful music and gripping, occult mysteries.

Story

Gabriel and Grace are living in Schloss Ritter preparing their minds and training for the next case. One day they get an unexpected invitation to spend the weekend at the mansion of Prince James Stewart of Albany. Little do they know that the invitation isn't for the current Ritter heir, the charming writer and his friend; the Schattenjäger and his assistant are the ones invited.

It turns out that the Stewart family has suffered from severe anemia for centuries. They gradually seem to recover, but the sickness always comes again. Sometimes within months, sometimes years, but it *always* comes again. Medically, they seem to be fine. The only unusual marks they all have is two little pinpoint scars on their neck.

Prince James has suffered from his 'night visitors' long enough, but the reason he called Gabriel is not his own well being. Our duty is to protect his infant son - Charles - from... VAMPIRES!

Opinion

As always, there's much more to this story than the introduction suggests. There are some heavy religious leads and the words 'Blood of the Sacred' in the title of the game aren't just a simple coincidence either. Jane Jensen has again created a story so gripping, it will have you shaking for days even after you've finished the game.

As you can no doubt see from the pictures, the game has moved to a new 3D environment. There are many arguments about how well true 3D suits adventure games (personally I tend to prefer the traditional 2D look), but the designers of the game made it work this time. The controls are very simple, really easy to get used to and fortunately the writers haven't used this new feature to create puzzles by hiding a couple of pixels worth of an object under a big rock or anything.

Another very important feature in an adventure game is the ingame music. All I can say is, if you liked the music of the first two episodes, then you're going to love this. They kept some of the older themes, and have written a bunch of new ones too.

This is definitely a classic adventure game. Whether or not it can breathe some life into this forgotten genre remains to be seen. The writers did their part, now it's up to us.