Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is Jane Jensen's first installation is the Gabriel Knight interactive fiction series. Gabriel Knight 1 is a great game, featuring state of the art technology (for it's time, duh) and a great plot.

In Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Gabriel is researching a new novel about VooDoo he is writing and the local VooDoo Murders case has both inspired and interested him enough to include it in his research. However, as he learns shocking details about his own family history and about a centuries-old curse, what began as research becomes a struggle for his very life.

In Sins of the Fathers, you do a lot of research about the roots of VooDoo and about famous people in the history of VooDoo like Marie Laveau. Most of the information presented in the game is accurate, except plot info. The game is amazing, and the way Jane Jensen incorporates real history into a chilling plot is really what makes the Gabriel Knight games so damn good.

One problem with this game though is that is is very difficult. I played The Beast Within first (which is much easier than Sins of the Fathers), and when I played this I was surprised at how hard some of the puzzles were. Normally I oppose realing hint books while playing Gabriel Knight style games, but with this game you are really gonna need a hint book! Another good idea is to read the Sins of the Fathers novel, it tells you the answers to some of the major puzzles and can give you hints on what to do in each chapter. It will give the story away though, but it doesn't have every puzzle as in the game so even after reading it you still will some challenge left in Sins of the Fathers. You can order the novel Sins of the Fathers at either Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com. If those don't work out for you, then check out Half.com. I believe that the game has recently become somewhat of a rarity, so finding it at retail stores may not be possible. But, half.com should have a few used copies for sale.

Sins of the Fathers had beautiful hand drawn graphics and an excellent cast. Tim Curry played the voice of Gabriel Knight, and although I liked Dean Erickson from GK2 a little better Tim Curry still did an excellent job. Mark Hamill (from Star Wars) played voice of Detective Mosely, and he really id a good job creating the character your stareotypical donut-eating cop. However, Mosely is a much deeper character than that. I liked Leah Remini's job as playing Grace Nakimura, Gabriel's sarcastic employee at his book shop. The character clash in between Gabriel and Grace alone is enough to make playing Sins of the Fathers well worth while.

Overall, Sins of the Fathers is a GREAT game and I would reccomend it to anyone who can solve puzzles. My only real complaint about the game was the graphics. I normally don't care too much about how good a game's graphics are, as long as the story and content is good, but in Sins of the Fathers I thought that except for the cutscenes, the graphics really were very poor. They still were playable, but at times in the game I couldn't tell what some things were, and I would miss important things. That basically is the only problem with the graphics, I probably am over stating this. The graphics were good enough to play, but just bad enough to make playing difficult. I like the fact the the graphics were hand drawn, I just wish they were cleared and more detailed. That's all, but don't get me wrong, this is still a great game.