The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery - PC (1995)
Meanwhile, Grace decides that she's wasting her time back in America and flies off to Germany, only to find that Gabriel has left his castle for Munich. Frustrated, she sets off on her own research, slowly uncovering the mystery of Ludwig II, the "last true king of Bavaria", as the locals call him. Ludwig II was a bit of an eccentric, often dismissing foreign matters in favor of living a lavish fantasy life, and constructing castle after gorgeous castle. The government tried to declare him insane and remove him from power, but Ludwig was later found mysteriously drowned in a nearby lake. Whether it was murder or suicide, nobody quite knows, but it's a long standing national mystery in Germany. Grace is determined to prove that werewolves were somehow involved with Ludwig II, and ends up discovering a long lost opera composed by Richard Wagner, a longtime friend of Ludwig.
Chapter One begins with the player controlling Gabriel, then the view alternates between Grace and him for the next few chapters, until their stories and paths meet in the sixth chapter at the end. The game is spread over six CDs, generally one chapter per CD, but there is some disc switching for certain scenes. Apparently the original design documentation called for eight chapters, with at least one of them putting the player in control of Ludwig II, as he tries to hide the opera scrolls, but unfortunately was cut out in the planning stages due to budgetary constraints.
The Beast Within runs on the same engine as Phantasmagoria and uses many of the same techniques. Every interaction is shown with full motion video, which accounts the number of discs. By default, the video is interlaced and looks rather ugly, but a fanmade patch can disable it. (The screenshots in this article were all taken with the interlacing disabled.) There are still some compression artifacts, but in general, the video quality is actually pretty good. The less said about the CGI werewolves, though, the better.
In most of the scenes, you don't directly control Gabriel or Grace, although they're present on the screen. Instead, you simply click on an area to investigate it or walk to a different screen. The backgrounds are all high res photographs, which look fantastically gorgeous - it may as well be a promotional device for the German tourist industry, because like the New Orleans feel of the first game, The Beast Within completely nails the modern German atmosphere. In spite of its visual splendor, it still feels like there's a strange disconnect between the characters and the scenery. There isn't nearly as much to interact with or comment on, leaving each screen feeling hauntingly beautiful yet depressingly empty.
Of course, the major factor of any full motion video are the actors, and this is where The Beast Within hits some shaky ground. The main characters certainly look the part, and the acting, while not stunning, as it least competent, but they don't really feel alive compared to their personalities brought by Tim Curry and Leah Remini in the first game. If anything, they feel much more restrained, particularly Gabriel, who isn't as boorish as he used to be, but also not quite as lively. Still, in an era where most FMV games barely surpassed high school drama level, The Beast Within is relatively decent.
The problem more lies with the issue of direction and pacing. There's a reason why exposition scenes in TV and movie are brief - it's because watching talking heads discuss various issues for ten minutes straight just isn't all that engaging, especially when there's no music. When using live action, you need SOME kind of dramatic tension, especially when there's so much video, and it just isn't here.
Like the first game, you need to spend a lot of time interrogating various people. There aren't quite as many topics to dig into, because that would simply require far too much video, but that's ultimately for the better. When you're just reading text and listening to voice acting, you can click through the dialogue to speed things up. You can't do that with video - you either watch the whole scene or skip it entirely. (Thankfully, this is one of the boons of the game - there's an FMV scene with almost every action, but they can be easily bypassed with a single click.) There's no text either, although another fanmade patch has added it, at least in the Windows version. At least you can still record each conversation for later playback.
The bigger problem, though, is that large parts of the game are simply hunt n' click fests. There's one whole chapter where you play as Grace, simply walking around museums and looking at things. That's fine, but the area layouts are quite confusing, making it extremely easy to miss one of the many, many triggers. If you miss even one, you can't proceed, which is liable to drive anyone nuts, as you comb and recomb the same areas over and over, trying to find the one semi-visible part you missed, and then interrogating the same people over and over in hopes that new conversation topics have popped up. There's a vague hint system which lets you know which locations still have tasks to be accomplished before you can move on to the next chapter, but it's still easy to feel frustrated and aimless. A few of the puzzles can get quite difficult, especially one early on where you need to splice together a very specific set of words to create a hidden message.
The final chapters are far more dramatic, and include a wolf hunt through a darkened forest - which, despite its tension, is little more than a "choose the right path or die" sequence - and a rather bizarre real-time puzzle/strategy segment where you morph into a werewolf and need to hunt down your opponent in an enclosed space. It's actually pretty cool, considering the whole segment takes place from the first person perspective, complete with off-colored visuals.
Robert Holmes returns to supply the score, along with some additional helpers. Many of the themes will sound familiar to fans of the first game, but they've been arranged for orchestral quality, and all sound fantastic. The highlight is the "lost" Wagnerian opera, which is certainly an accomplishment. Despite its high quality, a huge majority of the game is played in silence, with only sound effects and character voices. Indeed, the most impressive is the opera scene, which tries to mimic Wagner's style. It's only one act of it, so it's obviously pretty short compared to a real opera, but it's impressive to see the lengths that Sierra went to make this feel authentic.
In spite of its pacing issues and apparent hollowness in the scenery, The Beast Within still manages to be engaging. Jensen is clearly enamored with the subject material - German castles and the conspiracies surrounding them, long lost operas, werewolves - and even though it can be slow going, the mystery itself is well written enough to be engaging, as long as you have the patience for it.
MP3s Download here
Main Theme - Prologue
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American Cover
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The Beast Within
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery, picks up roughly a year after the end of the first game. Gabriel has moved to his family castle in Germany, and is living off his first successful book: "The Voodoo Murders", starring one "Blake Backlash". His family reputation as demon hunters is soon revealed, and the local townspeople beg him to investigate a series of mutilations. They appear to have been caused by wolves, so naturally the blame lies on a pack of wolves that escaped from the local zoo. Further investigations, however, reveal the entanglement of a local hunting club, a secret animal smuggling ring...and, most intriguingly, werewolves.
Gabriel Knight
The hero, once again. Played by Dean Erickson.
Grace Nakimura
Grace takes a much more active role in the sequel, although she doesn't interact with Gabriel until the end of the game. Played by Joanne Takahashi.
Baron Friedrich Von Glower
A wealthy baron who runs the hunting club. He sees much promise in Gabriel and they share many of the same interests - primarily, wine and women. Played by Peter J. Lucas.
Baron Garr Von Zell
A prominent member of the hunting club that begins to resent Von Glower's attention to Gabriel. Played by Richard Raynesford.
Kriminal Kommissar Leber
Gabriel got a lot of help from the local police department back in New Orleans, but the Germany police department, led by Kommisar Leber, isn't quite so cooperative. Nevertheless, their goals are more or less the same - to catch the culprit behind the wolf killings. Played by Nicholas Worth.
Opening - Chapter 1
Transformation Aria
Woldcam
