Gabriel Knight 4 - blog

As posted by Angelwwolf, the moderator of VUG’s Gabriel Knight forums:

“Activision has made a decision. Most Sierra forums will be taken down this month or the next month. It looks like we are losing our GK forum along with all of the other classics.

In addition to that, a whole range of game servers will also be taken down. The titles that will be transferred to the AB forums are Crash, Spyro, Ice Age and Prototype, basically the Sierra franchises which AB will continue to publish. Other highly active forums may also be transferred, but they have not yet reached a decision on that. “

Well… it’s time, then, for the Gabriel Knight community to find a new home.

That’s why we’ve decided to make the GK4 forum active, to give it some new shape and prepare it for those who want to continue the community.

Please register (if you’ve not already done so) and help to bring the forum alive, so that the wonderful spirit that united those who love these great games will remain burning bright.

There’s exciting news for all lovers of the Sierra games.

Collector’s Sierra Help Pages can now be found at the website http://www.sierrahelp.com, together with having its own forum whose specific purpose is to help with technical problems related to playing the Sierra classic games.

This comes in the wake of VUG making the announcement that it plans to close the classic game forums (including the Gabriel Knight forum) at VUG forums.

But fear not… We have news that should mitigate that particular loss.

But for now - please bookmark the Sierra Help Pages and remember to keep checking back here for the latest updates.

Another estimable language has been added to our campaign site - Norwegian.

Thanks to the FANTASTIC work of Torgrim Mellum Stene, the site’s main pages can now be read in Norwegian, a Germanic language that contains striking echoes of its earlier Germanic origins. English speakers, by the way, are often not aware that linguistically English itself is a Germanic language. It holds within it very strong remains of those roots, although of course it’s been subjected to the strong influence of French - and Latin, and Greek.

This means that, if you’re an English speaker, you may find some Norwegian words and sentence structures hold an uncanny familiarity for you. Try it - check through the home page, the Why We Need GK4 page, the Who IS Gabe Knight? page, the How You Can Help page, the Our Aim page, and more - to enjoy this latest translation.

And don’t forget to brush up your Greek, your Italian, your French, your German, your Spanish, your Portuguese, your Hebrew, your Czech and your Russian by reading through our site’s translations, courtesy of our admirable volunteer international translators who also have a deep love for the Gabriel Knight series.

GK4Campaign’s Ingrid Heyn: I had the privilege and fun of interviewing Robert Holmes, well-known musician and composer of the music for the GK series. While many of you will already have read the article based on that interview, we’ve got something special for you now - the FULL INTERVIEW with Robert Holmes, published for the first time.

Enjoy!

Italian company Adventure’s Planet announced that it has reached an agreement with Vivendi to re-release The Beast Within before the end of December 2006 (this was changed to February 2007). The re-edition of the Italian version of the game will be Windows XP compatible and will bring all the game on a single DVD instead of 6 separate CDs.

Perhaps this is a sign that something started to move; perhaps it is just a fair contribution to our cause. One think I know for sure: I will buy it.

UPDATE!

You’ll find the link for the new game RIGHT HERE.

FEATURES

- Windows XP
- Pentium or Amd Athlon
- 32 Mb Ram
- SVGA video card
- Soundblaster compatible audio card
- DVD drive

THE GAME WILL AVAILABLE FROM FEBRUARY 2007. IF YOU BUY THE GAME IN PREORDER YOU WILL PAY THE DISCOUNT PRICE OF 17.90

From the darkly prolific mind of creator Jane Jensen comes the next Gabriel Knight Mystery: The Beast Within. Now we find Schattenjager, or Shadow Hunter, Gabriel and his assistant Grace Nakimura deeply embroiled in a murderous mystery that unravels half a world away.
lay as both Gabriel and Grace as they are dispatched to Munich to solve a series of mutilation murders thought to be the work of werewolves. Gabriel confronts his own demons while Grace traces an historical mystery, that of the strange demise of Mad King Ludwig II. The hunters become the hunted, and the only hope for deliverance lies in the most desperate of schemes…

In June 2006, Robert Holmes was kind enough to grant us an interview, and from that interview sprang forth this article.

Read about Robert’s current work, his thoughts on composing music for computer games, his musings on what might be in the future for Gabriel Knight 4… and much more.

This is definitely one of the best online magazines available for computer adventure games - Adventure Lantern. The imagery’s nice - a lantern shining in the darkness - and it seems delightfully coincidental that the image which we, the Campaign, chose for the GK4Campaign site features Gabe in that memorable pose, standing beneath the light of a street lantern.

The vivid impression is that of colour, light, dogged determination, courage in the face of the night.

Ah, but enough philosophising… This month’s (September 2006) Adventure Lantern magazine is now available for download, and it includes not one, but TWO features on Gabriel Knight. One is a review of Gabriel Knight 3, written by Thaumaturge who’s a long-time fan of the GK series, a devoted adventure game player, an excellent writer and a semi-recent member of the GK forum.

And the other is an article written by me (Ingrid Heyn) concerning the powerful use by Jane Jensen of similar elements later used by Dan Brown. But whereas Dan Brown’s use isn’t garnering him any LITERARY awards, however popular the Da Vinci Code novel is, Jane Jensen’s outstanding writing is something else again. For the full story, go on… read this month’s Adventure Lantern. You can download it as a pdf file, and print it out if you prefer a hard copy.

It seems almost impossible to believe… but according to this article, Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter is finally going to be made. The publisher is ANACONDA/dtp, a European game company.

For all fans of Gabriel Knight, rejoice… This is wonderful news!

With Gray Matter given the go-ahead, the prospect for GK4 does indeed… seem… even brighter.

Gray Matter is mentioned as being intended for release in the fourth quarter of 2007. All GK fans are urged to keep an eye out for this.

This is an exciting development which we’ve had in the works for a while. The campaign site now has several translations available - so far it’s German, Portuguese and Russian in addition to our standard English.

Now bear in mind, this doesn’t mean EVERY page is translated… because we have too many pages to make that realistic. But the main pages either ARE translated or WILL BE translated.

They include: Our Aim; The GK Story So Far; Why We Need GK; How You Can Help; GK4 Current Status; Who Is Gabe Knight.

Our translators will be credited in our Acknowledgements page (expect to see the names listed this week), but so far we have to thank Claudia Martins for her excellent work on the Portuguese translations; Eyewitness for doing all of the Russian translations (I’m still working on coding the pages, but the translations themselves are done); Elli (Morgana Luzifer) for a third of the German translations; and me for the remaining German translations.

We’re expecting the French translation quite soon - thank goodness I won’t have to do it. (I feel decidedly “translated out”.)

If there are any volunteers for translations into languages not yet listed, please let me know. Your willing help will be valued.

A tender curl of fog caresses a tree of hope standing in the Garden of Possibilities. As it entwines itself with the subtlety of a snake and the sweetness of a dove, it can be seen that there are words upon the fog, words written at first vaguely and then, as warm light spills from a nearby lantern, more strongly…

They are thin slips of words, curving, winding. They are words of strength that whisper, but it is no serpent whispering to damnation, but something that is almost ghost-like. It is the Ghost of Games That May Yet Be.

All of this is merely a poetic way of saying…

—————-NEWS——————!

Ingrid Heyn, the Project Co-ordinator of the Gabriel Knight 4 Campaign, was recently interviewed by Thaumaturge, for the excellent online computer game magazine Adventure Lantern. (This is a URL you should bookmark - the magazine is issued every month, and is pixel-packed with fascinating and well-written reviews, interviews and information.)

Download your copy of July’s Adventure Lantern now; the GK4campaign interview is in this month’s (July’s) release. Don’t forget to email as many people as you can - give them the link to the magazine, and get them enthused by it all.

We’ll see Gabe rise up yet.