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Old games had such a low resolution so can anybody really claim they looked realistic? I think you had to use your imagination quite a bit to really get a clear image of what things looked like. This has lead to the current state where different people have formed different images in their head.

To me it looked liked the first Gabriel Knight game was inspired by Pointillism. This was probably done mostly due to the huge pixels. If you look at the cover box or the comic you should get an idea of what style the game wanted to aim for and I belive this is what they’re trying to do with the remake. I think the graphics is reminiscent of oil paintings from the Romantic period which should suit the game great if you think about story and theme.

I think today Spears’s style rendered graphics would suits better than Nielsen’s illustrations for GK.

You mean Ruskin Spear? So you want less realism and more like Cognition? Can’t say I agree on that one. 

EDIT: Oh, now I get it. You compared the comics from the first and third game. Still, Cognition looked much closer to Ron Spears illustrations than the GK remake seems to look like IMO.

I posted a recent interview she did on another site. She specifically mentioned some location from the book that have been added in, like the outside of the police station and how she has written new puzzles for that area.

about 1:22.

It’s not the best interview as he talks too much rather than getting Jane to talk.

RockNFknRoll - 24 March 2014 10:08 PM

What’s wrong with wanting the same game? The game already exists and is already a classic. There was no demand for a new GK1. It stands to reason than an “update” should be just that, not a total philosophy change in design.

That said, nowhere did I say they had to just make the exact same game. But the differences in style I pointed out are very big. There’s a lot of middle ground between real-life and fantasy I would willingly concede.

But we all understand the reason behind this remake: to interest new people so that new Gabriel Knight 4 will become possible. Pleasing the same old gamers won’t do the trick, even if they’ll instantly buy the remake. I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of change was a pure marketing decision. Although I fail to see it as fantasy setting. Just some comic touch, along the lines of latest Batman installments.

RockNFknRoll - 24 March 2014 10:20 PM

Henke - 24 March 2014 12:19 PM

Old games had such a low resolution so can anybody really claim they looked realistic? I think you had to use your imagination quite a bit to really get a clear image of what things looked like. This has lead to the current state where different people have formed different images in their head.

To understand what they were going for, you kinda had to be there. Back then those WERE “realistic” graphics. That was also the mindset of the time in a lot of games, the cartooniness was often just a side effect of poor graphics, and not necessarily an artistic vision. There wasn’t “pixel art” in those days, that was just the most advanced you could get. Everyone wanted “modern graphics” not retro. Retro would’ve been a ridiculous idea. You could argue that the fact that GK2 went for straight-up real actors underscores that perhaps they were on a quest for more and more life-like game experience.

A lot of games around that time were starting to use “digitized graphics” which were basically shitty sprites that were based on images real actors. Think Mortal Kombat II. Sierra was among this, think Police Quest 4. GK1 fits more in that mold than it does in the KQ mold. But I wouldn’t necessarily even go so far as to say they were thinking it looked fully real, but the lighting and vibe of NOLA during the first half of the game is very naturalistic at the very least. The stores were lit like a typical novelty shop. The police station was a cold, boring police station. Gabriel’s book shop was a charming mom-and-pop, but it didn’t have magical fairy dust trickling in from the windows. Nothing is really exaggerated beyond what you’d find in real life. The sky was blue. Not majestic purple and orange with a disney sunset. It was all very much set in the “present-day” (90s) and was meant to lay a foundation of realism with a slight seediness. This sets the stage for the story to turn to the supernatural later. All the GK games basically follow this formula when you think about it.

You must have misunderstood my post completely. This must come as a huge shock to you but I “was there” at the time (or a year later to be more precise). I don’t get the whole “retro” thing you’re talking about here. When you say “cartooniness was often just a side effect of poor graphics” you’re basicly saying the exact same thing I said.

But I still don’t get your reasoning behind “realism”. What games from the early 90s do you think had the same style as the GK remake have today but with lower resolution? What current games have realistic graphics in the same vein as you imagined the GK remake to look like?

Doom - 25 March 2014 07:04 AM

But we all understand the reason behind this remake: to interest new people so that new Gabriel Knight 4 will become possible. Pleasing the same old gamers won’t do the trick, even if they’ll instantly buy the remake. I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of change was a pure marketing decision. Although I fail to see it as fantasy setting. Just some comic touch, along the lines of latest Batman installments.

Well if they really want to interest new people(and make Gabriel Knight 4 become possible)must redesign gameplay as an action ag like TWAU or at least like Cognition but never a p&c like BS5.