But all wasn't perfect. Some of the puzzles were more obtuse than they should have been. As with many adventure games, Sins of the Fathers had numerous head scratchers with solutions that couldn't be reached by rational methods of deduction. For example, who could have guessed that a gift certificate taken from the bookstore's cash register was supposed to be traded for a hot dog that was needed to enlist the help of a tap dancer? Some aspects of the game were about as convoluted as an M.C. Escher print. And if you were stuck, you were stuck, since you weren't allowed to advance a day unless everything was solved. A built-in help system, akin to that offered in The 7th Guest, would have been a great addition.

Sins of the Fathers collected numerous critical accolades for 1993, including Computer Gaming World's prestigious Game of the Year award. It served as the vanguard for numerous traditional adventure-horror games to be released in subsequent months, though none of its contemporaries were as good. I-Motion secured the license to Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper role-playing game (perhaps explaining why the unlicensed Alone in the Dark series dropped allusions to that mythos after the first game) and produced two titles in the style of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction: Shadow of the Comet (late 1994) and Prisoner of Ice (mid-1995). Neither was particularly engaging. The first hampered a great story about Halley's Comet and the return of the Great Old Ones to Earth with poor graphics and tedious exposition, while the second foolishly blended frozen Lovecraft-influenced monsters with insidious Nazis. Another adventure in the same mature vein was I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, an adaptation of a famous short story by acclaimed author Harlan Ellison. Although the game mechanics were nothing special, the subject matter addressed human frailties in an unflinching way.

Gabriel's world never looked better than in the third adventure.

Two sequels have been produced in the Gabriel Knight line. The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery was produced at the same time as Phantasmagoria (see below) in 1995 and used the same full-motion video as that of its sister title. It was very successful at the time, though in hindsight, the move to real actors was a mistake that limited gameplay and made the entire affair seem much like a cheap B movie. Howeverm Jensen returned with an intriguing plot dealing with German werewolves: Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned came out in late 1999, with attractive 3D visuals replacing the videotape. It was a return to the style of the earlier game, complete with a haunting Jensen tale of vampires and the mystery of Rennes le Chateau. Although the game was a hit, there is still no word on whether another sequel will be produced.

 

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