Yes! ;)

ok!

Sure!
(Although I won't continue playing until monday, but that's not really a big deal :P)

In Detail: The Wheel

As you may have noticed, for Day 10 I put up a non-spoiler chapter image, choosing to go instead for a gorgeous artwork that shows Gabriel clutching the newly-acquired talisman to his chest. For the same reason, that's saying to avoid spoilers as much as possible - Day 10 is pretty shocking, and full of twists and turns -, I'll describe Day 10 central location under spoiler tags.

Spoiler:

As soon as the elevator in the church brings you to the Hounfour, save your game. Day 10 has some time-sensitive actions and also presents many different ways in which you can reach a premature end for Gabriel's adventure, so it's good to save early in the chapter and keep the save. This pivotal save, in fact, will also allow you to experiment with the chapter, because Day 10 is a very rich day and the Hounfour is full of things to do - many dangerous and even lethal, mind you, but all of them extremely rewarding from an adventuring point of view.

Let's start with something that many players often miss (and that is even foreshadowed in The Beast Within first chapter): Room 1 contains the sect's treasure and the series canon has it the Gabriel literally plunder it, hiding in his coat many bundles of money and ingots. So, go ahead and rob those ruthless dastards (you can take the money three times, mind you)!

Another frequently missed thing is getting the sect's log from the Cartel Business Room (which nets you 2 points). To achieve a perfect score you will also have to unlock and enter the Body Room (Room 11), which gains you another point. Notice that the room is empty - aside from the obvious (and dead) occupant - and you can only examine its various trappings, without actually taking or interacting with anything.

With this being said, let's get to the fun stuff: have you tried to get the key from Dr. John without distracting him first? To play the drum message wrong for three times in a row? To "save" Grace without setting Mosely up? To talk to the animals in Room 10? To try and rescue said animals? To walk behind the screen in Room 3? To give the talisman to Tetelo instead of Mosely? To use the dagger instead of the talisman? And just for a nice retort, have you given the wolf disguise to Mosely?

And, finally, have you discovered the two possible ending? Of course, only one of them is canon (Gabriel tries to save Malia), but to discover the second ending, the bad one, you will have to use the knife on Malia when she's hanging over the crevasse or to try to leave the area without doing nothing. The final cutscene is very different in this case.

Real-Life Locations: Voodoo Hounfours

Temples and ritual places of Voodoo are called Hounfour. At their center, one can usually find a high pole (the poteau-mitan), which is the gateway the Loa use to enter the world of flesh, and an altar, ofter decorated with snakes motifs. On the altar is often placed a cage containing a real snake, which serves as a channel for the Loa's power. Vévés dedicated to the Loa that has to be summoned are often traced on the floor in many circular patterns, often with chalk, clay, brick dust, goofer dust, earth and even salt.

The ceremony includes ritual dancing and chanting, often centered around the Doll (or Mare, or Horse), the man or woman that the Loa will possess, or, to use the proper Voodoo terminoly, ride. The ceremony is always held by a Houngan (a male priest) and/or by a Mambo (a female priest), depending on the Loa to be summoned, since every divinity favors a certain sex (when not a cross-gender adept). Sacrifices were common in the old days, when a sheep or a dog, a chicken or a rooster were often ritualistically killed and their blood collected to appease the Loa.

If you want to read an interesting article about the rituals of voodoo, the real-life practices of today's Hounfours and the more common misconceptions about the religion, I strongly suggest The Hidden Face of Voodoo, one of the articles that enrich the Gabriel Knight 4 Campaign.

Day 10 in the novel

The gold medallion with its battling dragon and lion hung under his T-shirt. It felt heavy and warm on his chest, like a living thing. It felt good, but frightening, too.The weight of it wasn't something one could get used to, or forget.

Jane Jensen, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Roc 1997, p. 360

From deep in the bowels of the earth a voice called in a bellowing rumble. The room began to shake in a massive earthquake, the lights flickered once, twice, then went out. He clutched at the floor in terror, found himself sliding across its surface like a pebble skipping across the top of a pounding drum head. There was a horrible crack! and the stone table split in two. The floor beneath it split as well, the edges of the earth pushing upward. A chasm was opening up and out from the center of the hounfour [...]

Jane Jensen, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Roc 1997, p. 396

I had a few questions about this chapter.

First off, why

Spoiler:

was the Hounfour under Jackson Square park? I guess I missed some of the hints for this, because it seemed to come out of the blue for me.

Second, when Malia is dangling over the cliff above the abyss of fire, etc, where did said abyss come from?! Did the Earth just magically open up? I wonder what regular people outside the Hounfour thought. :P

I really liked this chapter, getting to kick ass with

Spoiler:

Mosely

. :)

Spoiler:

When Gabriel looked out of the plane window, you could see that Jackson Square looked like a wheel-within-a-wheel. This would then suggest that the temple is below it. There's nothing around the park to suggest there's a secret passageway, but there's St. Louis Cathedral - an old church, which may harbour secret/hidden passageways.

Well, I died at least dozen times in the last chapter, but I managed to finish it with only one peek in the hint book. I don’t mind dying in different ways, although Dear John sure makes a gory mess. Couldn’t have done without the booklet, or I would still be desperately scribbling wild messages on tombs. :frusty: My final score is 338 out of 342.

I have often wondered why so many adventures have uninteresting, uninspired or just rotten endings. Must be the writing and the dialogues, because both endings here were satisfying. I have mixed feelings about Jane as a writer but she knows how to tell a story, her dialogues are realistic and they touch a cord. (The ending in GK2 was great too, maybe even better.)

Spoiler:

I’m actually glad that Malia is gone. It’s hardly fitting for an honorable Schattenjaeger to get involved with a powerful underground cartel exploiting people, and Malia has no excuse. She was not “ridden” by Tetelo while she was running the family business.

Other stuff, off the top of my head:

Dad’s painting is back at the beginning of Day Ten! Gave me quite a shock. Grace does go way beyond the call of duty, doesn’t she. It’s a nice touch, but if I were Gabe I would be annoyed, not grateful. Wonder where she got the money... not from Gabe, that’s for sure, or he wouldn’t be confessing his feelings of guilt over not paying her. :)

Spoiler:

Nice hint from the plane, about the location of the honfour. Not good enough for me though. I’d missed the clue in the confessional (hardly my fault, when Gabe is blocking my view of the hole :P), so I wandered around Jackson Square forever, hoping something would happen.

I love how you can still talk to Mosely about the old topics and get a new, highly appropriate response, for instance when you try to insult him. Or you get the response “don’t start with that again, I already got a headache”. :) When you try to use the phone in the bedroom, the narrator tells you that 911 can’t help Gabe now. Hehe, she got that right.

Spoiler:

Trivia: When Gabe picks up the second robe in the store room, he says “a robe for prosperity”, whereas the subtitles read “a robe for prosterity”. I take it Gabe’s got it right, makes a bit more sense in the context of the other room full of goodies.

“What are you doing here?” “We thought the room was empty.” Man, that’s a lame excuse, one that Dr. John should not have accepted. And why aren’t they at least pretending to be real participants, they are not even dancing with the rest!

It bothers me a little that the snake bracelet served only one purpose: making Crash talk. If a mask and a tattoo are all that’s needed to take part in a ritual, what’s the bracelet for.

Sins of the Fathers will be added to my top twenty. The hard part is deciding which game has to go.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2025/gk1finished.png

(I don't have a slightest idea where to get the other 11 points.)

Day 10:

Spoiler:

I don't know exactly if it's an easter egg, probably not, but there's a funny cutscene when you "play" too much with those Hounfour drums. :)

My first time in a community playthrough, it was very fun to play it again, and read your thoughts about that wonderful game, guys. Thank you very much Andrea, you led a hell of a playthrough!

You're welcome :D And thanks, I had a lot of fun with the playthrough.

Anyway, later tonight I will post my overall thoughts on the game.

Finished.

Scored 341 out of 342. No idea what/where the other point is I'm missing.

Anyway, thank you Andrea, for leading this playthrough and for your informative and insightful information. Hopefully soon you'll be able to lead a playthrough for The Beast Within. ;)

Wow, I missed that completely, but now that you say it, it makes sense. Thanks! :)

I agree about

Spoiler:

Malia. I thought it was a little over cliched, maybe, that he always falls for the bad guys, even in GK2. ;) I don't know how they would have handled it if she survived.

I TOTALLY missed Grace buying the painting back! I guess so much other things were happening, I totally missed it! :crazy:

And it also bothered me about the bracelet. I thought we'd have to use it sometime.

Haha yes, I STILL haven't played GK2 because I considered there may be one some time at the end of this one and would like to follow a playthrough for my first turn of it.

But it was a great playthrough - my first one and a most enjoyable one at that :D

EDIT: Fantasysci5! You are already feeding me spoilers for GK2?! :(

Erg! I'm sorry, it was supposed to be in those dang spoilers, too. Hope it didn't give too much away. :frown:

I didn't participate in commenting for the community playthrough until now, but when GK1 came out on GOG I grabbed it up right away and played through it last week.

As others have said, I don't think this game has aged at all. The beauty of the conversation format, the writing, and the voice acting, as one example, make this game always engaging. Then there's the meaty-ness of the storyline (historical facts, backgrounds given to the characters) combined with the story being grounded in a rich sense of place, all of which Andrea has been highlighting with her informative posts, that I haven't really found elsewhere in gaming. Add to that the flexibility of the writing: Jensen is able to provide humor, suspense (and shock), as well as poignancy. I could go on an on about how great this game is.

Thanks for all the great posts guys. It's been a pleasure reading through the thread.

Finished with 339 points. Good enough ;)

I've always wondered about the painting. Was it deliberate or an error? I've always thought the latter, since as far as I can tell there's no clue as to why it would be there.

Tetelo's powers:

Spoiler:

Did she really stop a bullet there?
Did you see those hand gestures she made after Grace and Mosely leave? There's a blueish aura around them, and just for a fraction that aura appears around Gabe's head, making him move toward her.
That's one formidable enemy.

If you use the old "look" icon on the painting in day 10, Gabriel remarks that Grace must have bought it back with her own money. I can't remember if this point is ever completely settled later on, perhaps it's in the novel?

I never looked at the painting on day 10 :D Too caught up in the moment, I guess. Still, while a good example of little details that add atmosphere and character to the game, it's a peculiar action by Grace that in my opinion is passed by too fleetingly. Since the painting was so important earlier on, its reappearance should be given more importance.

Fair point, but I suppose that there is so much else going on in this day, including that sense you're about to meet the "final boss!", so probably Gabriel is too caught up in that to give the painting much thought.

From the player perspective it's easy enough not to notice the painting is there at all I suppose, with Grace gone, the mysterious note from Malia and the unexpected visitor in the back!

I don't think I've mentioned it before but the Grace/Gabriel relationship is hands down one of the best in adventure gaming, if not gaming in general. Coming into the last day reminded me of this when the stakes are suddenly raised to a different level after Grace's disappearance. There may have been close calls (or in some cases, actual calls) with death, but THIS time I really feared for Grace. For me as a player, the game soars at this point. It almost felt like Gabriel was taking her for granted, and now it may be too late to change that...

Not having played 2 or 3 I look forward to seeing the development of this relationship possibly more than any other factor. Though it will be a pity to see a different face/voice to her name, not to mention Gabriel's :frown:.