Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is a point-and-click adventure game, developed and published by Sierra Studios for Microsoft Windows, and released in 1999. The sequel to 1995's The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery and the third title in the Gabriel Knight series, the game's story focuses on the lives of Gabriel Knight, an author who is descended from a family that combats supernatural evils, and Grace Nakimura, a student who assists Gabriel, as they become engaged in a case that involves tracking down a kidnapped infant by vampires that is connected to the Holy Grail and Jesus. The setting is based on a real-life conspiracy theory about a hidden treasure, and involves elements of history and myths surrounding the Grail, vampires, and the Knights Templar.
Unlike previous installments, the game was fully rendered in 3D with a far greater level of puzzle solving and exploration, and featured a score that expanded upon some of the piece used in previous titles. Due to a return to animated scenes, Tim Curry returned to reprise his role as the voice actor for Gabriel; the character of Grace was recast a second time. The game was the last to be published by Sierra in the wake of the crash of the adventure video game industry, but was not a commercial success as its predecessors. It however managed to receive mainly positive reviews from critics, with two of its puzzles receiving polarising feedback on their construction – one for being frustrating, the other for being well crafted.
The game was released as part of Sierra's Best Seller Series in 2001, and re-released for GOG.com in 2010, and Steam in 2016.
Gameplay
Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned is a point-and-click adventure game, played from a third-person perspective. The story is divided into chapters that cover a three-day period of several time blocks, which play out in a linear fashion and places players in control of one of the two playable characters – while Gabriel handles the initial block of chapters, most alternate between him and Grace. In each chapter, players must complete a set of required actions in order to progress the story, but may do so in a non-linear fashion, allowing them to explore locations and conduct optional actions that provide background and context to the game's story and events. In some chapters, completing certain actions will causes changes during that chapter in other locations - these are indicated by the sound of a ticking clock. Each chapter features a variety of locations that the player can visit, some of which are accessed via an overhead map which uses a hint system to highlight key locations that have actions to be performed for that chapter; additional sites become available as the game progresses. As with Sierra games of the time, a running score is used to keep check on actions, both required and optional, that players have completed (i.e. acquiring an object needed for a puzzle).
Interactive objects are highlighted when the cursor is moved over them, to which doing so activates an action bar of "verb" commands that can be conducted by the player. Actions can involve things such as examining an object/person, picking up an item, or talking to a person. As with previous titles, players store items collected in an inventory, and can examine them, use them, combine them, or make them an active object for interactions with other items or people. Conversations with people range from those who provide brief words on things and those who need to be interviewed on topics. For interviews concerning questioning someone for information, an action bar of "verb" topics appears, which can range from asking about a place or object, learning about the person themselves, or questioning them on something they learnt. However, conversations cannot be reviewed after they have been done, as with previous games in the series.
Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned allows players to have full control over the camera's positioning and angle, allowing them to examine a location in detail; the camera is only fixed during cutscenes, close-up shots of objects, and conversations. In addition, if the player's character is not in view, they will spawn someone off-camera near to the current position of the viewpoint. At certain points in the game, players can make use of a laptop for scanning in and comparing evidence, conducting research on topics, linking evidence and items to marked down suspects, and for tackling one of the game's central puzzles. In some situations, the player must overcome a dangerous situation or risk occurring a game-over moment, forcing them to retry, restart the game, or restore a previous save.