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	It's about the blood. by Edward Umheiser (10/2/99)

Introduction
Ok, I'll admit it right now. I never actually got to play the original Gabriel Knight games. I guess I'm just not into the adventure genre, probably from the fact that whenever I think adventure… I think of Myst, and that makes me think of a puddle of puke. So you can see why I never had the courage to pick up the first 2 installments of Gabriel Knight when I saw them so nicely lying there next to Myst and Riven on the EB shelves. Although now, I really regret doing so, because I was no way in store for the amount of fun a game of this type can provide. Hell, I was even scared to take the task of previewing Gabriel Knight III, thinking I would be bored out of my mind. I didn't have much experience playing adventure games in the past, except for playing a few of the old Police Quest series (also made by Sierra). I can't say they were bad games, but I'd much rather be blowing the brains out of an undead soldier, than filing police reports, wouldn't you? However, GK3 puts a twist on the traditional adventure game, and makes leaps and bounds over its predecessors.

Although I don't have a background on playing the other 2 titles before this, you certainly don't need to have played them before to get a grasp of what's going on in the game. You (Gabriel Knight, a self-centered man with one big head of hair) are first introduced with a great looking cinematic, showing off what happens to you one dreary night, as you are on a train. You basically start off chasing 2 men, carrying a large piece of luggage. At first you really don't understand what is going on, as you end up losing them in the dark after the train stops in an unknown place. As you manage to stumble off, an officer noticing you're lost helps you into a hotel, where you awaken the next morning. This is where your venture starts.

You find out that you are in a small rural town in Europe named Rennes-le-Chateau (a real place). Although its not heavily populated, the inhabitants there have a strangeness of their own. Everyone keeps to themselves, as if hiding some great secret. And indeed there are. As you try to recover the pieces of exactly what happened the last night, you bump into a tour group, setting out to find some kind of treasure. I don't want to give more away, although the story has more twists and turns than a full-fledged novel (which is pretty much true, as Jane Jensen, a master storywriter has created the story for GK3). The whole game is spread over 3 days (and there is one CD for each day). Each day is broken up into time frames. Although time itself won't pass unless to continue the story line, it helps to establish mood, almost like the chapters in a book.