"Shadow hunter Gabriel Knight returns to solve a werewolf case"

Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within is the second game in the incredible Gabriel Knight series of graphic adventures. The first game featured Gabriel as an author and book shop owner in New Orleans who was struggling to find work, until he read in the newspaper that a number of mysterious voodoo murders had occurred in the city; as an author he decided that this would be an excellent subject to write his next book on, and decided to get involved with discovering the people responsible for these murders. Playing this game was an absolute joy as it handled the strange happenings with a mixture of humour and fright that works exceptionally well. Many people (myself included) were of the opinion that no game could match the brilliant atmosphere and superb attention-to-detail displayed in the original, but then the second game in the series: Beast Within, appeared.

Beast Within is completely different in style to the original, but still remains an inventive and thought-provoking graphic adventure which in some cases is even better than the original. The game starts with Gabriel in Schloss Ritter, which was the castle in Germany he inherited after his uncle, Wolfgang, was killed by zombies in the previous game. A knock is heard on the door of the castle and Gabriel opens it to discover a group of villagers outside, who have come for the Schattenjager (a fighter of supernatural powers). They explain that one of their friends was killed by a werewolf recently in Germany, and request that Gabriel helps them solve this mysterious case. He agrees, and sets off at once for the Huber Farm in Germany.

The immediate thing that many fans of the previous game will notice is that the graphics have changed considerably. Gone are the animated characters and artistically detailed locations and instead in it's place we have Full Motion Video footage of real places and live actors throughout. This style is not unknown to adventure games: 7th Guest used it, as did Toonstruck partially, but it is a very risky move to take as the emotion of the game relies completely of the competency of the actors. Fortunately, Dean Erickson does very well as Gabriel, featuring a range of emotions that really seem to portray well some of the horrifying or humourous occurrences that feature frequently in this adventure. Joanne Takahashi as Grace also does a superb job of acting, and her jealousy at Gerde and eventually shame seems very real.

Control, as with the original game, takes place entirely with the mouse, with the difference here being that the control interface is made even more simple. The original required players to select a command action from the top of the screen and apply it to various objects or characters within the locations, while Beast Within has no command actions, and only a mouse pointer which can be used to interact. Moving the pointer over an object and clicking may have Gabriel pick it up and add it to his inventory, or it may give a detailed description. While clicking on many of the characters in the game will bring a close-up of the person along with a number of conversation topics that players can choose to talk about. At the bottom-right corner of the screen there are three icons which give players the option to open the inventory and interact with the items picked up so far, a button to view the cutscenes and a button to listen to previous conversations with characters.

Puzzles are again designed very well, neither being too obvious or too difficult to solve, giving hints when necessary but remaining hard enough to be challenging for a while. While to start with most of the puzzles simply involve picking up objects from one location and using them with people or objects in another location, these become more rare as the game progresses. One such puzzle that deserves special mention here is the Klingmann tape puzzle: Gabriel wants to see the wolves at the zoo, but the caretaker Thomas won't let him. Talking to the owner of the zoo, Klingmann, reveals much the same train of thought, but players can still talk to him about a variety of subjects. After returning to the Huber Farm, Gabriel can view the tape made by talking to Klingmann, and players can then splice the words into an order from Klingmann for Thomas to let Gabriel see the wolves.

In terms of sound, the characters voices obviously fit the characters themselves perfectly due to them being actors, but some here deserve a special mention. Xavier, the infuriating man at the Hunt Club in Marienplatz who uses his whiny, arrogant voice to stop Gabriel entering the Hunt Club at every opportunity; and von Zell, who seems infuriated with Gabriel and is constantly yelling at him rudely. Needless to say both of these characters are interesting to talk to because of the voices they use and their attitude toward Gabriel, which seems realistic enough to make these characters seem genuine. The music is also superb, especially in dramatic situations such as the run through the forest near the end of day 5, where fast-paced music is used to drastically increase the game's atmosphere. Though the actual style of the music hasn't changed much from the previous game, it is still used in all of the correct places at the right pace.

Other parts of the game feature not so much puzzle-solving, but instead a series of dead ends caused by not having done something previously in the game. More often that not these dead ends are solved by visiting previous locations, looking at absolutely every object and talking to every single character about every possible subject. This is something that may be frustrating for players wanting to progress quickly through the game, but others may appreciate the fact that the designers have wanted them to see everything in every location before moving on. An example of this is in chapter 4, where Grace visits the Neuschwanstein castle, where a tour tape is available which gives descriptions on the various rooms and objects in the castle. Though the tape doesn't have to be played everywhere, the tape does have to be played in exactly the right places, and all of the correct objects must be looked at to progress onto the next section of the game.

The game features two playable characters: Gabriel and Grace, set over six massive chapters. It was said once that over 1,000 photographs were used to create the massive amount of locations featured in the game, which range from a zoo and a farm in Gabriel's scenarios to an old town and various museums in Grace's scenarios. All of these locations have had incredible amounts of thought put into them, not only in their design but also in really bringing out amazing atmosphere to the game. The woods outside of the Hunting Lodge in chapter 5 are is by far one of the scariest environments yet seen in any Gabriel Knight game, especially when you consider that an enraged werewolf is chasing Gabriel though these woods ready to jump out at any moment. Though containing a vastly different style of graphics and control, it still retains the fright, mystery and brilliant story that made the original so great.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/04, Updated 07/15/05