Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within help

[Lambonius]

Against my better judgment, I just bought the game from GOG.  I'm starting the (surprisingly large) download now.

Anything Cez likes this much must be trouble. 

[Cez]

To me, there's nothing that can be done to improve this game. Even if the acting could have been better, there's nothing about it I'd change. It's a masterpiece as it is and there's nothing about it to be improved.

But, then again, you are talking about my fav game ever. There is a story here beyond it just being an awesome game. Everything about it to me is perfect because it has become such an iconic game for me. I've been replaying it recently (last time I played it was more than 13 years ago or more), and it's such a joy to rediscover the little things I had all forgotten about.

[Cez]

Against my better judgment, I just bought the game from GOG.  I'm starting the (surprisingly large) download now.

Anything Cez likes this much must be trouble. 

heh. Enjoy it!

[Lambonius]

Well, I'm excited to give it a go.  I had to stop watching the longplay after the player solved the first puzzle...even if I am apprehensive about the acting, I would be doing myself a disservice to just spoil the whole thing by watching someone else play it.  So I'm going to play it and see for myself.  

[dark-daventry]

To me, there's nothing that can be done to improve this game. Even if the acting could have been better, there's nothing about it I'd change. It's a masterpiece as it is and there's nothing about it to be improved.

But, then again, you are talking about my fav game ever. There is a story here beyond it just being an awesome game. Everything about it to me is perfect because it has become such an iconic game for me. I've been replaying it recently (last time I played it was more than 13 years ago or more), and it's such a joy to rediscover the little things I had all forgotten about.

I think there is room left for improvement, but these are minor improvements. I'd leave the acting as is, really. The first thing I would tackle would be the interface. Quite frankly, I find the interface to be rather repulsive in appearance. There's so much wasted space that it's a shame. If they reduced the size of the bottom half of the screen, and moved the menu button to a better place (and actually labeled it), then the interface would be better. Besides that, there's not much I would change. But we must also keep in mind that we're looking at this game many many years after it was made; the improvements we may suggest may not have been possible back then. I think, for it's time, the game was truly a masterpiece. But looking at it years later with the technology we have now (and coming from one who only first played it just a few days ago), we see things to improve that may not have been entirely possible back then.

[KatieHal]

I haven't played many FMV games, but I've watched LPs of a few, and of them I (so far) think GK2 did the best with it. Which may be the same as saying it suffered the least from it, but..YMMV. I think the story really is the best selling point of it in any case, and the gameplay a very close second.

Amusingly, the one scene where Gabriel DOES walk across the whole thing I couldn't stand because it took so long. (The street in Munich)

[dark-daventry]

I haven't played many FMV games, but I've watched LPs of a few, and of them I (so far) think GK2 did the best with it. Which may be the same as saying it suffered the least from it, but..YMMV. I think the story really is the best selling point of it in any case, and the gameplay a very close second.

Amusingly, the one scene where Gabriel DOES walk across the whole thing I couldn't stand because it took so long. (The street in Munich)

Well, you can fast forward. If you move the cursor up, a fast forward symbol appears.

[snabbott]

But hey, they all look alike right?

Oh thank goodness you said that, Lamb, now I don't feel so bad--I can never tell you IA guys apart!

[Lambonius]

Ok, I have to admit, it's getting interesting, plotwise.  I just started chapter 3.  The acting is terrible, but you get used to it after a while.  One thing I've noticed, the game seems SUPER linear so far.  Similar to a Telltale game, there seems to be only a limited number of places and options to choose from per chapter, and as far as I can tell, you have to do pretty much everything to advance the plot.  I'm beginning to wonder where the usual "optional" objectives are, and why the game even has a point system...

But I do like it so far, believe it or not.  The photoshop-esque graphics grow on you after a while, though the acting as I mentioned is pretty consistently bad throughout.

(Posted on: March 24, 2011, 09:40:55 PM)

I'm also curious...can you die in this game?  I haven't been saving at all (until I turned off the game, I mean)...because it doesn't seem like anything's dangerous yet.

[KatieHal]

You can die, but there aren't all that many deaths if I recall correctly.

And yeah, the game is fairly linear, but the plot's plenty twisty and detailed to make up for it, I think. It's been long enough that I forget where any optional puzzles might be. Glad to hear you're enjoying it!

And some of the bad acting is quite fun in an MST3K way after a while "And if you don't like then that's just TOO DAMN BAD!"

[wilco64256]

I don't really remember exactly how much optional stuff there is, but it's definitely possible to come up short of the full score.

[dark-daventry]

[spoiler]The game starts to split a bit in the later chapters. It's entirely possible to end the game one whole chapter early by making one click of the mouse. If you do so, you'll miss points and miss an amazing final chapter, but it goes to show you how good this game is; one click and you can conclude the game much earlier than intended.[/spoiler]

[Cez]

wait, you can?

[Cez]

You get optional points for looking at some stuff. One thing off the top of my head is looking at the newspapers in some chapters. I think some of those aren't necessary to finish the game. Also later, in the museums, I think some stuff is optional.

The game does open up a lot in later chapters. It's a big game.

I don't think the acting is that bad. It's much better than Phantasmagoria's. Although that doesn't say much lol. But it is some of the better acting in a computer game from that time. The actor playing Von Glower and some of the other club members are good, and aside from a few mishaps, I don't find Grace all that bad.

But yes, the most interesting thing about this game is the story. It's absolutely freakin'  fantastic, and a very, very, very long tale if you map it all the way from the beginning.

[Blackthorne]

This game is tedious.  It made me want to rip the hairs out of my arm with tweezers.


Bt

[Lambonius]

This game is tedious.  It made me want to rip the hairs out of my arm with tweezers.


Bt

Hahaha...I wouldn't go so far as to say that.  Personally I've found this one to be much more interesting than GK1, regardless of the fact that it seems (so far) to be much more linear.  The story in this game picks up and gets interesting much earlier on than in GK1, so that's a plus.  The major downside so far is that a lot of sections are basically just clickable movies that require the player to press "unpause" every so often to continue the animation.  Every conversation plays out like this, and they do become somewhat tedious after a while.  The tedium is enhanced by the unnatural and awkward facial expressions that the actors (especially Gabriel) tend to assume right before these pauses.  Really breaks you out of the game, in my opinion.

The puzzles are great though...very logical.  They are the type where real world logic totally applies, which is pretty neat.  Getting into the wolf pen at the zoo and getting the attention of the police chief investigator at the crime scene stood out as being particularly clever and logical.  For both of those, it was just a matter of, "ok, what would I do in this situation?"  And lo and behold, that was the solution.  Nice.

[KatieHal]

It does have the benefit of not needing to introduce you to Gabriel Knight and his world like the first game, but gets you to the action quicker, yes.

DD, I'd also be interested to know how you can end the game a chapter early (without it just being 'die!), if you want to put it under a spoiler cut.

[Blackthorne]

The game would work better, for me, in a tradional adventure game setting as opposed to the FMV.   Like you've said, the acting isn't so great.  My favorite?

They're talking about wolves and the old German guy goes "Ja, that is bad."  Great delivery.


Bt

[snabbott]

Somebody should do a MST3K-style Let's Play.

Edit: I just noticed that Katie made a similar comment.

[Lambonius]

The game would work better, for me, in a tradional adventure game setting as opposed to the FMV.   Like you've said, the acting isn't so great.  My favorite?

They're talking about wolves and the old German guy goes "Ja, that is bad."  Great delivery.


Bt

Haha yeah.  I think this game would be really cool redone with hand-painted backgrounds and characters.  I even think you could keep a lot of the acting the same.  A lot of the over-acting would be more tolerable if it was just voice-acting for animated characters.