When I talked about Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, I mentioned that the series would be a microcosm of the point-and-click adventure game genre, all being released in the 1990s. Between the release of Sins of the Fathers in 1993 and the game's second entry, The Beast Within in 1995, a lot had changed in the PC gaming space. Adventure games were still relatively popular, but were slowly becoming anachronistic with the rise of first-person shooters such as Doom and other fast-paced, action-oriented games.
Technology was also accelerating; the success of Myst and The 7th Guest ushered in three trends that began revolutionizing the PC market. The first was their use of CD-ROM technology, which became the gold standard for gaming for over a generation. You had increased graphical and audio fidelity, which created new, 3-D spaces that could be rendered with more realism than 2-D sprites or pixel art. Finally, it was full-motion video, or FMV.
FMV is seen as a major drawback to most games in the 1990s, with both PC and even console, with the ill-conceived Philips CD-I, having a glut of titles using FMV, but not really making a game out of it. It quickly became apparent that FMV would be mostly relegated to cheesy B-movie shlock at best, with games such as Sewer Shark, Mad Dog McCree, Corpse Killer, and others falling into the role of justifying the barest form of game around the FMV footage.
Between 1995 and 1996, Sierra jumped onto the FMV train but would have a lot more success with it, with mostly memorable hits like the Phantasmagoria games and Police Quest: SWAT all shifting to FMV usage that was very well received. The Beast Within would be one of the major releases by Sierra to be based heavily on FMV technology, essentially shooting a whole movie for the entire game, and it is often considered one of, if not the greatest examples of the use of FMV in a video game.
The Beast Within stars Gabriel Knight, finding success after he writes a book about the Voodoo Murders from the first game, living in his ancestral home in Germany. Gabriel is also taken up the mantle of Schattenjäger, or Shadow Hunter, a revelation learned in the previous game. Much of the game is Gabriel reconciling his new role as a Schattenjäger; slowly gaining more responsibility for the work he was born into, over his mostly aloof behavior seen in the first game, all the while dealing with a new problem that has plagued the nearby townsfolk near Munich: a werewolf. Gabriel, along with his assistant Grace Nakimura, goes on separate investigative tracks to uncover the mystery of the wolf attacks near Munich, which sees Grace caught up in the hunt for a lost opera by composer Richard Wagner, and Gabriel in an elite hunting club led by the mysterious but friendly aristocrat Friedrich Von Glower.
There are a lot of ways The Beast Within could be seen as a major departure from Sins of the Fathers, and of course, the presentation is one of them. The gorgeous, comic-book-style pixel art has been fully replaced with FMV movie sequences, meaning a large cast of characters would be filmed in small sets or green screens to mimic in-game environments. Almost all of the environments are based on real-life locations in Germany, utilizing photographs with some digital alterations to make them work in the point-and-click space.
This allows for less creative freedom for the visual design, which instead opts for a more realistic approach with environment composition and digitalization. That said, there are moments where the camera angles of the compositions attempt some visual cinematography; walking in the streets of Munich in particular comes to mind, you see Gabriel from afar as he passes several archways onto a new scene. It is an unnecessary visual flair, but a welcome one.
The change in presentation necessitated a change in gameplay too. The cursor is now context-sensitive, which means the player will interact with a specific location on the map to see something, or comment in some form about what it is. Items can still be collected and examined, but need to be made an active item before they can be used on interactive objects.
This makes The Beast Within fall into the category of a pixel-hunt type of point-and-click adventure. Sins of the Father had those too, but due to the visual style, it's less egregious, allowing for more diverse interactions. The Beast Within scales back the puzzle difficulty a bit, instead focusing more on an "interact object here" type of design philosophy to progress through the game. This is probably The Beast Within's weakest aspect - fans of super-detailed puzzles will be heavily disappointed, and also be frustrated by a few that fall heavily into the moon logic category.
The most baffling puzzle is the cuckoo clock puzzle, which is so illogical it's amazing that it even made it into the game. You must purchase a cuckoo clock from a random store, hide it in a specific planter in a specific building, just to distract a character long enough for them to leave an area they are guarding. It is nonsensical in a frankly annoying way, and The Beast Within has a few puzzles like this that kind of leap in logic to the ridiculous.
That said, there are also amazing puzzles as well, some of which even use the FMV and audio to great effect. One early puzzle has Gabriel trick a zoo employee into letting him into a wolf enclosure by splicing together snippets of dialogue from an interview with his supervisor, which requires you to create a believable dialogue sequence. This puzzle works well because not only does it uniquely utilize the format, but it is also grounded in realism that lends itself to the tone The Beast Within is going for.
Well, as real as a story about werewolves tied to German history is. Jane Jensen once again weaves a solid underpinning for the narrative of The Beast Within. Yes, it involves werewolves, but also brings in historical ties to King Ludwig II and Richard Wagner from the 19th century, combining the three elements almost seamlessly in a climax at a German opera that works better than the ending of Sins of the Fathers.
Plot-wise, this is strong, but narrative-wise Jensen takes the themes of The Beast Within and makes it a more personal growth arc for the main characters. Gabriel is trapped between his old self, the more swarmy womanizer, and his new identity as a Schattenjäger. He cares for those around him but often struggles to shake off his perceived notions of freedom before the Voodoo Murders that we glimpsed at in Sins of the Fathers. His friendship with Von Glower is the primary counterpoint to this, with Von Glower being a hedonistic figure who values his freedom and his desires, but longs for a direct connection, even in an intimate way.
There is a bit of queer-coding in The Beast Within between Von Glower and Gabriel, one that Von Glower clearly has affection for Gabriel but knows he cannot act upon it. It adds a sense of tragedy that the themes of repression over freedom boil it down to a tale of duality of humankind. Do we all have a beast within, so to say, or are there lines we should never cross because we are rational and human?
A lot of these themes dovetail into the game's other great strength: the acting by the cast. The Beast Within is arguably the best lineup of actors and actresses in an FMV game, which is saying something, as Hollywood-level actors like Christopher Walken, Clive Owen, and John Rhys-Davies, and even Tim Curry, have several FMV projects before. Curry, ironically, is not in The Beast Within, despite voicing Gabriel in Sins of the Fathers. The new cast was chosen mostly because they embody the visual look and persona of the characters shown in Sins of the Fathers, but it is a really good lineup of relatively unknown actors, including an influx of authentic German actors in smaller roles, that provide a lot of authenticity.
It is the core cast of Gabriel, Grace, and Von Glower that steal the show. Von Glower is played by Polish-American actor Peter J. Lucas, who brought a nuanced and complex performance to this aloof German aristocrat who seems to be hungering for something more fulfilling in their life. Grace is played by Joanne Takahashi, who comes across as strong and somewhat jealous at first, but slowly morphs into one of the most grounded and sentimental parts of The Beast Within. Takahashi as Grace brought a heart to the game's narrative, while keeping her somewhat sardonic edge and skilled investigative abilities from the first game intact. Grace is also playable in half of the game's chapters, becoming the foil for Gabriel by the later sections of the game that also mirror the primary themes that are at play here.
Gabriel, however, is played to near perfection by actor Dean Erikson. Erikson, in interviews, noted that he couldn't match Tim Curry no matter how hard he tried, so he instead went with a more subtle interpretation of Gabriel and his character, playing up this duality theme of his swarmyness while intermixing his growing responsibilities as a Schattenjäger. Erickson comes across as a charming individual who uses finesse in most of his interactions, with a wry smile on his face as he talks his way out of a situation. Erickson also gives Gabriel vulnerabilities in a way that Curry didn't in Sins of the Father; there is a tension in the performance where Erickson tries hard not to show weakness, but realizes by the end that doing so is more of a strength to build a human connection.
While Curry returns as Gabriel in Gabriel Knight 3, Erickson is perhaps the unsung hero of the franchise, and dare I say, the better actor for the role. His portrayal was not bombastic and heady like Curry's, but endearing and subtle. For the more mature themes and set pieces found in The Beast Within, it fits perfectly with the narrative tone. Erikson also has amazing chemistry with Takahashi and Lucas; all of the actors bring their A-game to their performances, which makes the interactions in Sins of the Father severely lacking.
This had to be the case, as The Beast Within ran over budget and schedule during the 18 months it took to produce. All of the actors were given 1 to 2 takes to perform a scene, with few exceptions. Most of the cut-scenes were also done in a studio like a play setup, with narrative voice-overs done in a single day at a sound studio by the actors. Music is not as present in The Beast Within either, though Robert Holmes does return and re-creates a fictional opera in Wagner's style for the game's climax, which is the highlight of the game's musical score by a mile.
The Beast Within was not a major success commercially when it was released, at least sales-wise. In the adventure game market, it was a smash hit, though Jensen and her team were hoping for more mainstream appeal with the FMV being a major selling point. Hindsight, though, has been kind to The Beast Within, which many consider to be one of the best FMV games ever made, and arguably the best game in the Gabriel Knight trilogy. For my money, I agree with this sentiment. Despite the weaker puzzles and some frustrations with navigation, The Beast Within is engrossing in a narratively mature way, utilizing technology of the day, as gimmicky as it can be, to create one of the most enthralling supernatural mysteries for a video game. Its acting is solid, its themes are subtle but poignant, and overall, the package is a high watermark for point-and-click adventure titles, one well worth playing even today.