The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
Released: 1995
Published by: Sierra On-Line
Developed by: Sierra On-Line
Author(s): Jane Jensen, Jerry Shaw, Nathan Gams, Darlou Gams, David Artis, Adam Bentley, Steve Conrad, Chris Carr, Bill Schrodes, Robert Holmes, Layne Gifford, John Schroades
Super VGA 256-colour graphics
Introduction
From the darkly prolific mind of creator Jane Jensen comes the second Gabriel Knight mystery: The Beast Within. We find Schattenjäger, or shadow hunter, Gabriel and his assistant Grace Nakimura deeply embroiled in a murderous mystery that unravels half a world away.
Gabriel Knight accepts his new role as a Schattenjäger, or Shadow Hunter, after discovering the nature of his bloodline. While Grace Nakimura is back in New Orleans managing St. George's Rare Books, Gabriel has made a new home at his family castle called Schloss Ritter in Rittersberg, Germany. He spends time writing books at his typewriter. He did manage to publish a novel based on the Voodoo Murders within the past year. Even with a successful novel, Gabriel still experiences writer's block. Gabriel begins his investigation by looking into a theory that the girl was killed by escaped zoo wolves. He checks out a zoo in the German city of Munich to find answers. There, he meets the zoologist Dr. Klingmann to find out what he can. Gabriel also attempts to get any information from the local police. Even with some suspicious people to meet, he can always rely on Harald Übergrau, a family lawyer, for information.
Did You Know?
Jane Jensen, the creator of the Gabriel Knight computer game series is the author of Millennium Rising (aka Judgment Day) and Dante's Equation. Her fiction combines history, religion, and philosophy in mystery-thriller plotlines.She has also written a novelization of The Beast Within, published by Roc.
The second Gabriel Knight title takes advantage of a technology that was new at its time, although it was short-lived. The use of full motion video for making computer games was the equivalent of filming a Hollywood motion picture. Character dialogue and actions, such as entering a room or picking up an object, were filmed on camera. The game still features a game environment that the player interacts with. When clicking on some objects, the game will show video clips of actions related to them.
The game's interface is a simplified version of the mouse interface used in previous Sierra adventure games. There are fewer cursors for various actions. There is an arrow cursor for moving in some places, a dagger to look at or interact with objects, and an inventory item cursor to use items. Only some screens in the game allow clicking to walk anywhere. The rest only show the player's character movement when leaving the current scene or moving towards an object.
Unlike the first GK adventure, this installment puts the player in the roles of both Gabriel Knight and Grace Nakimura. The game is divided into six chapters. As Gabriel in three of the chapters, the player attempts to solve a typical murder mystery that increasingly hints at the presence of a werewolf. As Grace in the other three chapters, the player focuses on a historical mystery that seems distantly related to werewolves. Towards the end, the two paths will merge and eventually uncover the same enigma.
The title won a number of accolades, including Computer Gaming World's Game of the Year award in 1996, PC Gamer's Adventure Game of the Year (1996), and Computer Game Review's Golden Triad Award.
System Requirements
| System Requirements | Intel 486 33 MHz CPU, 8 MB RAM, DOS 5.0+, 2x speed CD-ROM drive. Graphics support for SVGA only (640 x 480 in 256 colours) Audio support for Sound Blaster/Pro/16/AWE32, Pro Audio Spectrum, Roland MT-32/LAPCI), General MIDI, WIndows-compatible sound cards. DAC required for speech. Keyboard and Mouse supported. |
|---|---|
| Original Media | Six CD-ROM discs |
| Installed Size (MB) | 20 MB |
From where can it be run?
The game must be installed to your hard disk. The game will install and run under pure DOS (using INSTALL.EXE) or Windows 95, 98, or ME (using SETUP.EXE).
For more modern versions of Windows like XP, or in cases where the original installer fails to work on your machine, a replacement installer from Hendroz (from www.gabrielknight2k.tk) is available here. This can be used to either perform a standard installation (like the original installer), install the full game to your hard disk, or create a DVD copy of the game from the six original CD-ROMs. The replacement installer is only designed to work with the English language version of the game. It also includes the interlace patch as mentioned further down this page, so do not install the interlace patch if using this.
Copy Protection
Gabriel Knight 2 has no copy protection.
How to Setup
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Problems
Symptom: During the movie cut-scenes in the game, an interlacing effect is evident.
Resolution: A patch created by Hendroz (Enrico Rolfi, from www.gabrielknight2k.tk) removes the annoying interlace showing up in GK2 movies during the game.
Symptom: I'm in Chapter 4 of the game and I receive memory problems, or I receive 'Error 99' when changing CDs, or the game locks up in Chapter 6 when taking the holy water.
Resolution: This patch that updates the game to version 1.11 fixes these issues.
To Quit the Game
Supporting Documents
- Official Players Guide (Strategy guide, 134 MB PDF)
- Game Walkthrough
Extra Files and Patches
- Official Sierra v1.11 update patch - Updates the game to v1.11. See the Versions section for details on what this does.
- English subtitles patch - Adds English subtitles to The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery.
- CD/DVD patch - Required files for complete installation to hard drive. Can be used to repair a broken full hardrive installation where there is no music on game start and only displays the "RESTORE" and "QUIT" buttons. This patch will restore the "PROLOGUE" and "PLAY" buttons and the music.
- Hendroz extra patches - Extra patches found in Enrico Rolfi's (Endroz) GK2 installer above, that are not found in the official Sierra GK2 1.11 patch above.
Save Games
Save game files are stored in the main game directory under the filenames such as gk2sg.000, gk2sg.001, etc. There is also a file called gk2sg.dir or gk2sg.cat that stores the names of each of your save games. These files are not text-readable/editable.
Note that between different game versions and even patch releases, save game file are not compatible, so if you apply a patch or try to restore a save game from a different version it will likely not work.
Versions of the game known to exist
| Version | Date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Demo | Early 1995 | Pre-release demo of Gabriel Knight 2 |
| 1.0 | June 1995 | Initial public release. |
| 1.11 | 15th Jan 1996 | Patch release (note that previously saved games will not work once this patch is installed). This patch includes the following fixes: 1. Corrects "Out of memory" message at Schloss Ritter in Chapter 4. 2. Corrects "Error 99: Error Loading Resource 122v56" that occurs when switching to CD #2. 3. Fixes "dead end" that occurs when player exhausts dialogue with Leber before visiting Ubergrau's office for the first time and then can't get back to Leber to ask about "Black Wolf". 4. Fixes problem where Neuschwanstein border does not stop blinking even after player has heard every tour tape. 5. Fixes problem where Georg does not have "Lost Opera" topic if player hasn't clicked on "Letter to Conductor" in the Museum but has exhausted topics with Frau Miller, then cannot get back to the Museum. 6. Allows Grace to get holy water only once. 7. Corrects "thrashing" or continuous hard drive or CD drive reads. To install the patch: Copy the patch files into the game directory on your hard drive (C:\SIERRA\GK2DOS for the DOS version or C:\SIERRA\GK2WIN for the Windows version.) When asked, overwrite any existing files. After the files are copied, play the game normally. |
| Gabriel Knight Mysteries Limited Edition | 1998 | A collection that comprises Gabriel Knight 1 (v1.100.000) and 2 (v1.11), a soundtrack disc (also contains the game manuals, a comic for GK1, and a digital version of the 419-page GK1 novel). Also includes a 20-page graphic novel prelude of Gabriel Knight 3. |
| Steam Release | September 2016 | Re-released on the Steam platform. Requires Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 or 10, a minimum of a 1 GHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, a DirectX 7.0-compatible graphics card and 3.2 GB of available hard disk space. Recommended specs are a 1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM and a DirectX 9-compatible graphics card. |
| GOG Release | 2020 | Good Old Games announced GK2 was now available on GOG.com, and uses the modern ScummVM engine. |
Original CD-ROM Contents
The discs have no specific volume label. Here are each disc's contents:
Disc 1 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Disc 2 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Disc 3 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Disc 4 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Disc 5 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Disc 6 of 6 (CD-ROM):
Directory of A:\
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Installed Directory Contents
Once installed, the following directory structure exists in the game directory:
Full Install chosen
Directory of C:\GAMES\ . <DIR> 05/09/21 13:49 .. <DIR> 05/09/21 13:49 |