A NOVEL DIRECTION

HOW GABRIEL BECAME A COMIC BOOK AND LITERARY PROTAGONIST

Given the literary ambitions of creator Jane Jensen – she has gone on to publish a host of novels, primarily under the name Eli Easton – it’s unsurprising that Gabriel Knight has made the transition from pixels to print. The original 1993 version of Gabriel Knight: Sins Of The Father came with a 33-page graphic novel set 200 years before the game, fleshing out the series’ mythos in an appropriately dark art style, illustrated by Terese Nielsen. In 1997, a full novelisation of Sins Of The Father was released. This stuck faithfully to the events as portrayed in the game, an approach Jane later regretted, stating that it was not the best way to introduce a literary audience to the series. That novel, the aforementioned graphic novel and a new 20-page graphic novel set a few days before the then soon-to-be-released Gabriel Knight 3: Blood Of The Sacred, Blood Of The Damned, were all included as part of the 1998 Gabriel Knight Mysteries: Limited Edition, a compilation of the first two games in the series. Jane took a second stab at novelising one of her games in 1998 with Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within. Learning a lesson from her novelisation of the first game, Jane allowed herself the freedom to deviate from the events depicted in the game, retelling the story in a fashion she thought would be more appropriate for a literary version of the werewolf mystery.