Adam D. Bormann

With the supply of third-person adventures dwindling to nearly nothing last year, many placed much of their hopes and anticipation on Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. Gabriel Knight fans all over the world rejoiced over its release late last year. Gabriel Knight 3 is the latest installment in Jane Jensen’s award winning mystery-adventure series, and is the first Gabriel Knight to utilize real-time rendered, 3D graphics.

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing the Adam D. Bormann, Design Assistant on GK3. Here is what he had to tell us about the making of the game, the public reaction, and the possibility of another installment of Gabriel Knight.

What were your responsibilities as Design Assistant on Gabriel Knight 3?

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I started at Sierra as the Sierra Studios webmaster (okay, it was Sierra Northwest at the time, but basically the same thing) and I was sitting with the GK team. I memorized the design backwards and forwards, and knew GK1 and 2 very well. So when someone on the team needed info about the design, or the previous games, or needed to find out what French currency looked like, or whatever, they would come to me. This part of my job continued throughout development. After a few months, I get a chance to move full-time onto the team as production assistant. I was originally hired to do “data wrangling,” so I was setting up the room code, setting up cameras, hooking up messages to items in the rooms, etc. When we had most of that squared away, Jane was ready to start going through the dialogue and looking for things that were missing or places where dialogue was needed. So I moved into more of a design position and helped her with this. I wrote dialogue for a lot of the things that Gabriel or Grace “looked at” or “thought about.” Jane later reviewed the dialogue and made changes, or left it if it worked. When that was done, Scott Bilas had the basics of his scripting language in place, so I started scripting sequences in the game, and hooking up more of the rooms as they were finished. I spent most of the rest of the production process scripting, or dealing with the different data files. I ended up coding (or recoding) all the HTML files for the SIDNEY search, writing the manual, assisting with one of the voice-over recording sessions, hooking up the points system, and hundreds of other tasks of this nature. Also, from my days as the webmaster, I knew all of the marketing people pretty well, so they would come to me for info on the game, or screenshots, or whatever they needed.

Gabriel Knight 3 is finally on the store shelves, so how does it feel? What do you plan to do the coming weeks?

It’s a strange feeling. For me, everything was in the building of the game. The last two years have been the best years, and the hardest years, of my life. All I can really say is that I hope that people are enjoying the game. In the coming weeks, I’ll be working on projects in my new position as Associate Producer with Sierra Attractions. Currently, I’m designing a new game and working on a few other projects.

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What has the public response been to the controversial storyline involving Jesus Christ?

I have been surprised that the controversial subjects haven’t really been brought up in many of the reviews. I have seen some mention of it on the message boards, but most people have been very accepting of the plotline. It’s a work of fiction, and people seem to be accepting that and not dwelling the “controversy” of it. One person on the development team left the project, and another chose not to join the project, because of the plot. But as most people who have played the game have discovered, we treat the controversial elements with respect and care. GK3 is not meant to be shockingly objectionable or offensive, it’s just meant to be an engaging and exciting story. Jane took an incredible real-life mystery and turned it into a brilliant work of fiction in the same way she did with The Beast Within and Millennium Rising.

Gabriel Knight 3 carries an enormous amount of pressure, as many critics point it as the last, best hope for the adventure genre. Will Gabriel Knight 3 really unleash a new wave of adventure games?

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I really wish they wouldn’t do that. When we started this project, no one was saying that adventure games were dead. We set out to make the best mystery game that we could. Mystery games are a sub-genre, just like mystery books. Not everyone is going to be interested in mystery adventure games. So why is the salvation of the genre forced onto a game that is not really meant for *everyone*? I’d love it if everyone enjoyed GK3, but it’s like asking a movie like Barton Fink to save independent film. I love the movie, a lot of people love the movie. But it’s not something that everyone across the board is going to enjoy, even if they are big fans of independent film.

One of the most striking characteristics of the game is its real-time 3D engine. Are you satisfied with the results graphics-wise?

I really like the look of the game. I also love the free-floating camera. It really gives the player the opportunity to see everything in a room. I was able to see the game at every point in it’s production, so I saw the advances, fixes and changes. I think it looks great, because it’s so much better than what we originally started with. It’s hard for me to look at another real-time 3D game and compare the graphics to GK3, because I know what we went through, and all the issues that we tackled. The other games probably did the same thing, but with different priorities. Most real-time 3D games, like SWAT 3 or Quake, have a set of standard animations that are used everywhere in the game. We had thousands of unique animations, many that used only once in the entire game. It’s the nature of telling a progressing story.

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How have people responded to this 3D incarnation of Gabriel Knight?

Reviews (professional and player) have been mixed, but I think that the majority of people really enjoyed the game. Even some of the die-hard FMV/Dean Erickson fans have told me how much they loved GK3, and how surprised they were by how well we managed to make a great game in 3D. There are people who still wish we had done FMV, but they’ve been saying that for years now, so I didn’t expect that we’d convert large numbers of that group. As long as they play the game, and enjoy it, I’m happy. At this point, if it were up to me (and it isn’t), GK4 would probably be in 3D as well. Maybe we could do something similar to SWAT 3, where they have actual faces mapped onto 3D characters, and then we’d have FMV cutscenes or something. We’ll talk more about this when Jane finishes Dante’s Equation.

Were you forced to cut anything, or give up certain features?

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There were a few things cut, but most of them were cut fairly early on. There was one room cut out of the end sequences, due to engine restrictions (it was just too big!). There was also one scene, which would have required two extra characters, that Jane rewrote so that the artists wouldn’t have to build them.