History VideoGame / GabrielKnight

* LimitedWardrobe: In the first game, Gabriel has a whole closetful of white shirts and jeans. In the sequels, the characters apparently didn't pack more than one set of clothes to travel abroad.

* LanguageBarrier: Gabriel doesn't speak much German, which makes it difficult for him to communicate with the locals. This annoys a lot of the Germans around him, as Gabriel has been in the area for months and, after all that time, barely knows "guten tag."

* LongTitle: ''Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned''.

[[folder: The series in general]]

[[folder: Sins of the Fathers]]

[[folder: The Beast Within]]

[[folder: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned]]

[[folder: 'The Temptation' short story]]

* GratuitousFrench: "Cabrit sans cor." [[note]] It's not ''French'' French, but rather supposed to be Creole French, meaning a goat without horns. Goats being sacrificial animals.[[/note]]

* TheUnintelligible: The narrator has a very thick accent, making understanding her a troubling task without the aid of the captioning. Most noticeable when she pronounces German words, Americans in general have issue, but they make it a hodgepodge of not knowing how to lay the emphasis upon things. The remake's recasting of the role is much less difficult to understand.

** You can see the scars on Gabriel's arms that he sustained in ''Sins of the Fathers'' in the opening sequence of ''The Beast Within'', though they're on the wrong arm (

** You can see the scars on Gabriel's arms that he sustained in ''Sins of the Fathers'' in the opening sequence of ''The Beast Within''. [[spoiler:On the other hand, while there are clearly scars on Gabriel's right arm, Malia wasn't in any position to cut anything other than his left arm.]]

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: To compensate for the fact that you can't die during the first 90% of each of the games (which is kinda unique in Sierra games), most of the deaths that do occur in the last sequences are in fact usually pretty gruesome. Getting your heart ripped out or your jugular slashed or strangled by a snake, getting your throat ripped open by a werewolf, getting sliced in half or your spine broken by being "folded the wrong way" are all part and parcel of the uglier side of the ''Schattenjäger'' business.

* LandPoor: Schloss Ritter has fallen into disrepair since the family's fortunes have waned in the past two centuries. The current owner, Wolfgang Ritter, only maintains five rooms, and lets the rest of the castle fall into disrepair because he can't afford to keep it up. He is also mentioned to be severely behind on paying the property tax. [[spoiler: After the first game, Gabriel inherits the castle and uses the money from his book and what he stole from the Voodoo Cartel to pay the back taxes and being repair and restoration work.]]

** Concept art for the 20th Anniversary remake of ''Sins of the Fathers'' looks to be this way.

* SequelGoesForeign: ''Sins of the Fathers'' takes place in New Orleans (for the most part). For the second and third games Gabriel relocates to Germany and France, respectively. (He actually moved to live in Germany, while being in France is just for a job.)

** Not to mention the detail of many locales in New Orleans in the first game. (someone went as far as taking photographs for comparison purposes).

** The first game uses the past misdeeds of ancestors haunting their descendants as the primary motivation for the story, as well as a constant theme. Gabriel's family is seemingly cursed to have the father of each generation die when the child reaches eight years of age, and a mistake by one of Gabriel's ancestors is directly responsible for the story. [[spoiler:When Gabriel's ancestor found out that the woman he was romancing happened to be a member of a dangerous cult, he condemned and betrayed her rather than giving her a chance to repent that she might have taken, causing her to steal the powerful Ritter artifact that allowed her cult to flourish into the twentieth century.]]

** The third game incorperates this with the vampire bloodline, all vampires descending from people who partook in Jesus' blood. [[spoiler: The Ritters too are descended from the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus in his side with the spear of Longinus]]

* BlackMagic: Voodoo. [[note]] though the game takes great lengths to explain the difference between the most commonly practiced Gris-Gris, HollywoodVoodoo, ''Hoodoo'' and ''Black'' Voodoo, alongside the mentioning how slave revolts lead to Voodoo practices merging with Christian concepts. Think of along the lines of the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants, and other offshoots of Christianity. Some voodoo is black magic, but not ''all of it'' is black magic.[[/note]]

* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: Near the end, Tetelo magically blasts Mosely's gun out of his hand.

* ForeignCussWord: "Putaine de merde", says Madeline to Grace at the beginning of Day 3. "What was that?" "Oh, nothing".
* PoirotSpeak: Buchelli. With bits of AsLongAsItSoundsForeign and OohMeAccentsSlipping.
* NoFlowInCGI: Egregiously averted with Madeleine and Gabriel's hair, which can be a bit of an eyesore in closeup (notice the horizontal patterns behind Gabe's hair...)

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Was the taunting spectre [[spoiler: of Von Glower]] real or false? Gabriel protests that while he could be talking to himself he is not creative enough to imagine in such detail.[[spoiler: That and previous games reveal that the spirits of unrepentant werewolves are unable to ascend, forever condemned to remain in the world they so desperately clung to.]]

%%* PointAndClickMap

* PointAndClickMap
* PolygonCeiling: After an extremely successful run with ''VideoGame/GabrielKnight'', the series went through two separate clashes with this trope. The first sequel had FullMotionVideo ''gameplay'' in a 2D environment, while ''VideoGame/GabrielKnight 3'' went into 3D. While both sequels had strong storylines, they were very difficult to play.
** Jane Jensen later said that they did not foresee the amount of details (and work) a full 3D game required. For her future projects she would prefer a 2D game on pre-rendered 3D backgrounds — it would look good enough while being much cheaper.
*** [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] with the ''VideoGameRemake'' of Sins of the Fathers, which uses 3D polygon for the characters, but prerendered backgrounds, and blends the two quite well.

* NoFlowInCGI: egregiously averted with Madeleine and Gabriel's hair, which can be a bit of an eyesore in closeup (notice the horizontal patterns behind Gabe's hair...)

* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: averted [[spoiler: with Madeleine, who chain-smokes cigarettes but is not evil at all]].