More than 20 years after its initial release, the classic adventure point-and-click game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father will be re-released, according to a tweet from series creator Jane Jensen that was then picked up by Polygon. The re-release is scheduled for mid-2014 to be released on Android, iPad, Mac, and PC.
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was originally released by Sierra On-Line on December 17, 1993. The game follows Gabriel Knight, a novelist interested in several voodoo-inspired killings in his hometown of New Orleans. The deeper into the mystery he goes, the more Gabriel realizes that he has a personal connection to these crimes, as well as a duty, passed down from his family heritage as a Schattenjäger or “shadow hunter.”
The game featured the voice of Tim Curry as the titular character, and spawned two sequels in 1995 and 1999. All three games in were designed by Jensen, who formed the Pinkerton Road Studio in 2012 with her husband, composer and musician Robert Holmes, in order to “focus on story-based games for PC download, iPad, and Android tablets.”
For the upcoming Gabriel Knight re-release, Jensen is licensing the rights to the game from Activision, which owns the rights to most of the Sierra On-Line catalog including Gabriel Knight. The Sins of the Fathers re-release will remain true to the original game, but Jensen is hoping that it provides the spark to encourage Activision into pursuing a new Gabriel Knight game.
The re-released Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers will feature updated HD graphics along with new art, but the gameplay will remain mostly the same (with some tweaks to accommodate for tablet controls). Unfortunately the original voice tracks were not available, and re-hiring the original voice actors would be almost impossible. (Beyond the costs, Curry suffered a stroke in 2012 that has made speech difficult for the actor.) A new cast will be brought in to re-record the audio.
