Oh man, I hope you’re ready for a big helping of BULLSHIT, because this game is about to go right down the toilet in terms of quality. Remember that interview I posted two updates ago, where the dev said that Jane Jensen wanted action elements? What if I said.. she got them?
By traps, he means the worst part of this already bad game. I want you to imagine something worse than the Big Bullshit Puzzle. Worse than the Bad Controls Puzzle. Worse than DATABASE MANAGEMENT or GEOMETRY MANAGEMENT.
If you’ve ever played Broken Sword 3, that’s pretty much the level of bullshit I’m talking about. Broken Sword 3 was a point-and-click adventure game that came out a few years after GK3 did. It has, among other things, QTEs and a forced stealth segment. I was never able to get past that stealth segment because of how extremely bad it was.
Get ready, because it’s almost bullshit time.
Insert Tim Curry doing the absolutely lamest excuse for a scream ever. I think even he realized that at this point, he was the only thing holding this half-baked excuse for a game together.
Welcome.. to the Bullshit Action Puzzles.
You’ll notice that Gabriel has a radio headset on. I don’t know how they’d expect that to work underground. There ARE ways to get radios working underground, but they rely on people placing repeaters and having line of sight between everything. We can use that radio to contact Grace to get information on most things we can look at.
You get absolutely NO hints about what to do here, so I’ll explain. What we need to do is touch every tile that has a sword on it. Tiles with the skull and crossbones are death, while any tile without a sword on it will collapse if we step off of it - you can step onto it safely, but it’ll cease to be a valid tile after that.
The answer here is a stupid pun. We’re playing as Gabriel Knight, so we have to move.. like a chess knight.
I kinda got partway through it and fucked up, but I’ll use the first image to show you what the solution is in case you decide to do this godawful bullshit yourself.
I don’t know how you’re supposed to figure out that you’re supposed to end up at position 27 instead of position 14, because I tried radioing Grace and looking and thinking at everything and there is ZERO indication that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Once we get through the door, it slams behind us and we get stuck in a room with a rotating disc and a pendulum.
You’ll notice that certain tiles have symbols on them. These tiles are the ones the pendulum will swing over. What we want to do for the quickest cycle is be on the blue tile to the left of that one with the circle on it.
This allows us to grab onto the pendulum when it gets close. This part is easy every time, as long as you know to go on the tile one left of the circle.
THIS is the bullshit part. It’s nigh-impossible to get good screenshots of, but basically Gabriel is holding onto the pendulum and needs to land on that small central pillar.
Figuring this out is bullshit, largely because of how the controls work.. or don’t. See where my mouse cursor is? This is where your cursor has to be in order to get the “jump” icon to show up briefly when Gabriel is on screen.
However, simply clicking it when Gabriel is over the pillar won’t work. Instead, you die. You have to actually time it when the pillar is swinging left and click a second or so early so that he lands on the pillar.
By the way, this is what happens if you die. “Retry” puts you at the beginning of the pillar room.
Now for another bullshit puzzle. The objective is to get the scale to balance. What we need in order to do that is to place three objects on the scale. The ones we’re looking for are the top-left one (an apple), the top-right one (an egg) and the infinity symbol in the bottom-left.
Oh man, I totally called it. I hadn’t played this game before, hadn’t read a plot synopsis even, but I called it from a mile away. My guess is that if you’re not doing a max points run and also looking at everything you might not notice the signs.
Shout-outs to the missing “to” in the subtitle.
Last night, when I went through the gameplay for this part, I started thinking about something on the way upstairs to bed. If consuming blood is all it takes to gain weird powers in this universe, how come there aren’t like, thousands of clones of Spider-Man from all of the people who wind up eating a spider in their sleep? What about people who eat black pudding or other blood sausages? Do they get pig powers? Strange urges to roll around in mud? Is this supposed to explain the world’s obesity crisis?
Also, this means that Emilio is a vampire, yet he’s not horribly mutated.
And honestly, how far does this go? Like, if someone cuts themselves while they’re shaving and a little bit of blood reaches their mouth? What about eating maple syrup, which is technically the blood of a tree? What about people who get a blood transfusion? Are they vampires at that point?
What I’m saying is that this makes zero fucking sense! Zero! None at all! Like, if there was at least some kind of dumb ritual involved or something that’d explain why none of the above scenarios would happen, but Emilio here just straight up drinks the blood.
I really, really wish they had just gone with the much simpler explanation of burning his fingerprints off with lye, like in Fight Club.
I love how Grace is just glaring at him like “You could’ve prevented all of this, you stupid fuck!”
God, Emilio is just a giant fucking dick! “Oh, sorry dead kid, I could’ve prevented this with my reality warping Jesus powers but I won’t, not mine to use, sorry!”
Let me tell you, if I had reality warping powers I’d have made it so this game never existed.
It’s funny because in the VO, you can tell that Tim Curry is getting increasingly fed up with this game.
… And the ancient order or whatever only thought to put that warning AFTER multiple deathtraps? Honestly, what was even the point of building this bullshit? The vampires can fly. All it really does is make it harder for us.
We also need to have Grace “look” at the statue of Solomon here. This is different than the rest of the game - instead of using the headset on the left-click verb menu (as I did to translate the text next to the statue) you have to right-click instead.
Emilio could’ve warped reality so that Gabriel has laser eyes and chainsaws for hands. Emilio is a fucking dick.
I’m not going to bother translating the other text in this room because it’s not worth points. Right away, you’ll notice a pair of gloves on a pedestal. We want the one on the right.
Over here is a second pedestal with a fire and a thing of water. What we need to do here is not at all obvious.
If you use the “automatically move camera to inspect” button, you’ll notice there’s something in the fire.
This.. leather glove apparently allows Gabriel to just reach in and grab it.
He puts the glove back automatically, which seems like a waste.
The only other thing in the room is this pair of statues. Gabriel is very on-point here. This is basically a Resident Evil puzzle - what we need to do is stick the piece of gold we got from the fire in the correct statue’s hand.
Hint: It’s not that one.
This causes Gabriel to go into a new room. Here’s our next objective, this pair of mirrors over here.
What we need to do is step on the pedestals and look in the mirrors.
The solution is to say you’re a zombie.
I have no fucking clue how you’re supposed to figure this bullshit out. It took me several minutes to realize what I was looking at, even WITH the guide. I was like “Where the fuck are the mirrors?” and then I figured out you have to place the gold first.
This opens up.. yet another pedestal. This is the last one of these.
I don’t know why Gabriel didn’t just bring a camera to document this shit.
There’s three buttons here - a sun, a demon, and a yin-yang. We want to press the yin-yang.
Welcome to the Megaman 2 Disappearing Blocks Puzzle. I’ll admit, I stopped recording once I reached Solomon’s room (had to go to bed) and then watched the any% speedrun. I saw this room and went “FUCKING BULLSHIT” almost immediately.
Jane Jensen apparently brought up the idea of kickstarting a Gabriel Knight 4. I hope to god it never happens.
Wait, what? How the fuck.. how the fuck did they get past the pendulum room? There were no stairs and the pillar was on the bottom floor!
Now, let’s say we do the obvious thing and use the “cross” verb on the bridge.
Yep. Too obvious.
What you have to do is manually walk Gabriel up to the space between the two pillars on the left side, which causes a series of yoku blocks to appear.
This is way more annoying than it looks - due to the way the game lags a bit, you can tell Gabriel to jump on a tile which will then disappear when he goes to actually jump on it.
Oh no, it’s one of those European fashion shows!
This absolutely looks like a JRPG fight is about to break out.
Gabriel tries to approach, but a force-field blocks his way.
Honestly, Montreaux totally should’ve just done it. There’s no reason for him NOT to - even Emilio admitted that if the baby isn’t a Super Jesus he can still get power from drinking the baby’s blood.
This entire section is timed, and the timing is fairly tight. We can back up slowly from the demon, but it won’t do us any good - after the timer runs out, he’ll just rush forward and kill Gabriel. We have exactly two options: use the Talisman or use the Dagger. We want to use the Talisman first.
This briefly stuns the demon, which allows us..
To climb that sarcophagus in the back. Now, why would we want to do that, you ask?
It’s so we can have Grace tell us what to do.
Well, isn’t that a convenient plot device? This makes ZERO sense to me. Montreaux is invincible behind his force field. He could’ve just killed the baby, drank the blood, and then just flown off while his buddies take care of Mosely and Mesmi. Instead, he sends this big stupid demon at us.
Showing it the Talisman stuns it again.
This allows Gabriel to cut its throat with the dagger. How you’re supposed to figure this out, I have no idea.
I love how Mosely has clearly seen the giant dead demon, and he’s still questioning the existence of vampires. Dipshit.
Oh look, it’s that crow from several title cards ago. Also that scene with the sarcophagus. I love how there’s technically spoilers for the game in the title cards.
Jesus just fucking exploding over here.
I have no idea what happens to that sword. It’s not the Schattenjager dagger, though I guess the gold handle could’ve been melted down into it.
Fuck you, Emilio!
Remember: When you’re done LPing what is probably Sierra’s worst adventure game after King’s Quest 7 and Gabriel Knight 2, you get to LP YIIK. That’s my next LP by the way. People voted on Twitter, so look out for “YIIKES!: Let’s Dunk on YIIK: A Plagiarism RPG” in the coming weeks.
Oh, so the treasure was Jesus’s corpse, just like in Steel Ball Run.
Begone, thot!
Is this loss? I feel like it’s loss.
965 of 965! We fucking did it! Max score run achieved! I’ll get to that speedrun.. probably in the coming week.
Points Breakdown:
Previous Update: 861 points
The Bullshit Chess Puzzle - 10 points (871)
The Even More Bullshit Pendulum Puzzle - 10 points (881)
The Somehow Even Dumber Scale Puzzle - 10 points (891)
Had Grace look at the Solomon statue - 2 points (893)
Picked up the glove and got the gold from the fire - 7 points (900)
The Mirror Puzzle - 5 points (905)
Placed the gold in the statue’s hand - 5 points (910)
Pressed the yin-yang button: 10 points (920)
The “Fuck Whoever Thought Yoku Blocks in a Point-and-Click was a Good Idea” puzzle - 10 points (930)
The Final Battle - 35 points (965)
Total: 965/965 points (100%)
Thanks for reading this godawful LP and sticking with me through 965 points of absolute bullshit. I’d like to thank noted vampire Devious Vacuum, noted not-vampire RJWaters2, whoever wrote the intro to The Dark Knight Rises, and Alf on the Sega Master System.