I. GABRIEL KNIGHT MYSTERIES: COLLECTOR'S EDITION
II. HOLLYWOOD TRAVEL DIARY
III. INTERVIEW WITH JANE JENSEN
IV. NEW GK3 TEAM MEMBERS
V. NEW GABE'S FAVE WEBSITE AWARD WINNER
VI. WEB VERSION OF THE SCHATTENJÄGER DIARIES

GABRIEL KNIGHT MYSTERIES COLLECTOR'S EDITION

This month, Sierra is releasing The Gabriel Knight Mysteries: Collector's Edition, which includes the games Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and The Beast Within. This also includes Jane Jensen's novel version of Sins of the Fathers. It also includes two beautifully illustrated graphic novels -- "Sins of the Fathers" and "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" (the SOTF graphic novel is a electronic PDF version, and the BOTS,BOTD graphic novel is a full-color printed edition). Due to overwhelming fan request, we also have included a "Beast Within" soundtrack CD, which includes 20 tracks of music from The Beast Within, two tracks from Sins of the Fathers, and two tracks of preview music from Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned!

You can currently pre-order this at http://www.sierra.com/store/ for $39.95. Windows, CD-ROM only.

HOLLYWOOD TRAVEL DIARY
by Adam D. Bormann

Prologue - Let's reflect for a minute. A year ago, if a fortune teller had said to me, "I see a photograph of you...with Jane Jensen...and...who is that?..Tim Curry!" I would have told her she was off her rocker...but HOLY CRAP!! I'm staring at that very photograph!

It's only been recently that I had any real interest in going to Los Angeles. Sure, L.A. Story is one of my all-time favorite movies, and it was the stomping grounds of some really influential people, but I never really wanted to GO there. But three weeks ago, I found out that they wanted me to go to LA, and help with the second recording session for GK3. That's where this story begins...

My job was to be the "talent wrangler." I made sure that all the actors signed in and signed out, filled out their contracts, got the right script, and miscellaneous things like that. So you're thinking, "So you basically slept on the couch waiting for someone to come in or leave, right?" Not exactly, my other job was following along with the script, making sure that if the director or Jane changed a line that I wrote down the way the line was actually read, so we can change in the game. Okay, enough blathering, onto LA.

Friday, July 24 - We find out this week that David Warner's schedule (and recent popularity) forced him to back out of the project. Fortunately, our trusty director Stu was able to quickly replace him with an other great actor. Steven loaded me up with contracts, and Jane and I went through every copy of the 1000 page script, searching for places Kinko's (or we) screwed up. And it's a lucky thing that we did, because the first 100 pages of Grace's script was completely out of order. David Henry (composer, sound guru and sax maestro), Jane Jensen and I each lugged home two copies of the 6 pound script.

Sunday, July 26 - Sitting in the airplane, we heard over the loud speaker that the plane was having electrical problems. I started making all sorts of insane comments about the plane crashing into the Earth, and pointing out to David why we would die, but everyone in the seats in front of us would live. We arrived in Los Angeles Sunday evening, and found our way to the hotel. David Henry, composer and sound effects guru, knew his way around very well. LA struck me as being about as spread out as a city can be. It wasn't nice and close together like Seattle. No one was walking on the streets, you could hardly be expected to walk with everything being spread out like that. Every few blocks, you would see a person standing waiting for a bus, reminding you that it wasn't a ghost town. After checking into the hotel, David and I went to Barney's Beanery, which is apparently a famous greasy spoon.

Monday, July 27 - We were recording at a small studio in Hollywood called Bell Sound. They were great, coffee and donuts waiting for us every morning, valet parking, and a great staff that was ready to help us with anything we needed.

Monday morning we went to the studio early to set up. We met with our director, Stu Rosen. Stu's a real great guy. He has been directing in Hollywood for around 40 years, and knows everyone (he apparently was the first person ever to put Steve Martin on TV). He's very theatrical, and a really fun guy to be around. He ran through everything I needed to do, and answered my never-ending stream of questions. He kept reminding me to relax, and everything would fine. (You probably don't know this, but I get nervous easily, and stayed up every night until 3 am obsessing about what could or would go wrong the next day). We met the LA engineer who would be running all of the crazy knobs and switches, Robb Holt (who also ran a voice-over training program).

Charity James (who plays Grace Nakimura) arrived first. She was great, and read through half of Grace's script that morning. Meeting Charity was strange, because Grace's voice (which I had been hearing for 5 months now) was Charity's real voice! So it was really strange to have TWO faces to put with her voice (especially considering one of those faces is a 3D model!).

Gregg Berger came in after lunch, amazed us all as he hammed through a solid page of French (without having any idea what he was saying, or even how to say it). He had help from a guy who worked at the studio, who happened to be have a degree in French.

Tuesday, July 28 -- Tuesday was the day I learned never to go to the bathroom. The first time I came out of the bathroom, I almost ran into a huge star, whose contract doesn't let us use his name or picture for advertisements (is this an ad?). I'll just call him "John." He was very professional, with a capital "pro." We had to wait a bit for Stu to run to the store and get medication for his gout (yes, gout). So "John" went over his character, his character's motivation and all other things actorific with Jane. He read through his part quickly, (but very well). Stu snapped some photos and he was on his way.

Sometime after lunch, I was feeling adventurous, so I again entered the bathroom. Coming out again, I was staring straight into the eyes of Tim Curry. Oh my!!! He was brilliant. He read through all of his lines so well, and so fast, that he actually finished in two days instead of the 3 we had scheduled for. It was a real treat to see him in action. During breaks we sat around listening to him tell stories. He sat down at the chair and quickly found his place in the script, and after a few words to Stu in his standard British accent, Gabriel's voice came rollin' out his mouth like it was his real voice. He was incredibly friendly, and even hugged Jane and David (whom he had met at the previous recording sessions).

David Thomas came in and finished Mosely's script this afternoon. He was a very intense, intelligent man, who was starting a camp to help kids without families. His real personality was very different that his character's, which is good considering Mosely is such a doofus.

Wednesday July 29 -- Simon Templeman came in in the morning, and played two characters back to back, with completely different voices and accents! It was the first time I had seen someone completely change voices in front of my eyes. I was very impressed.

Tim's final session was this afternoon. He worked like a madman. During breaks, he told Jane how impressed he was with the dialogue and the writing. He said that he could tell that she had a lot more fun writing this game than the first. Again, we listened to him tell stories of other projects he had worked on. He was so enthralling, we all sat around and just listened to him talk. We showed Tim some of the current footage of the game, and he was very impressed. He really enjoyed seeing his character talking and walking around.

Thursday, July 30 -- Karen Ross, a French Canadian woman came in this morning to play our sexy French maid. She did a wonderful job, and had no problems getting into character. Joe Lala (who plays Buchelli) came in the afternoon and played a second character, which he did very well.

Friday, July 31 -- Charity returned and continuing pounding away at the Grace script. By this time, we were all getting really tired. Billy West (who does the voices of Ren, Stimpy, the Red M&M) came in in the afternoon and finished up Emilio's script. He was really funny, and a lot of fun to work with.

The Weekend - Jane went to visit her sister in San Diego. David's wife flew down and they went to San Diego as well. My wife came down and we went and did the LA thing (the walk of fame, the Hollywood sign, Disneyland, and Universal Studios). We all got sunburned and are still in pain.

Monday, August 3 -- Corey Burton came in the morning and recorded lines for a few characters. He was great, and as it turns out, it was his birthday! I was very impressed, because he had done voices for Gummi Bears, one of my personal favorite cartoons. Tom Kane (the announcer for Hard Copy) came in and recorded some very subtle dialogue, and was very good. Russi Taylor and Charity showed up at the same time in the afternoon, and each took about fifteen minutes to finish up their roles.

We took our DATs and headed for the airport. Flying home, we were all extremely tired, and glad to get right back into working on the game.

INTERVIEW WITH JANE JENSEN
by Adam D. Bormann

Adam: "Has much of the GK3 story changed since you finished writing it over a year ago?"

Jane Jensen: "Not too much. Some ideas for the game have changed, such as the driving interface going to a map, but not much of the story."

Adam: "Are we going to be able to see changes in Gabriel and Grace's personalities since GK2?"

Jane Jensen: "Yes and no. I think it's apparent that G & G are more comfortable with each other since they've been working together in Germany since Beast. But Gabriel especially has not changed enough you might say. Their characters undergo more development in the actual game itself."

Adam: "How do you feel about the story compared to other things you've written and other games you've worked on?"

Jane Jensen: "I like the story a lot because I think the subject matter is really fun and it was a challenge to integrate all of the Rennes-le-Chateau theory and legend into a cohesive story. It's definitely based more on factual information than any other story I've done. And it's fun having Gabriel and Grace and Mosely be such well-defined characters at this point and to able to write for them again. I think it's as strong a story as GK1 & 2 were if not stronger."

Adam: "Being the first non-SCI game you've designed, how you think building a game from 'scratch' has helped or hindered the development of GK3?"

Jane Jensen: "The technology end of things has been much more difficult this time around because of the new engine. It just takes a lot longer to get to the point where things can really come together and that's hard. But the engine is great and I can't image GK3 without it."

Adam: "Is there a GK4 in your future?"

Jane Jensen: "I hope to continue to write Gabriel Knight stories. I'm not done yet with the characters by far and I love working with a continuing mystery series. The series is actually at a great place for a writer -- the characters and the general feel of the series have been worked out and now it's a fun, comfortable arena to just play in for me and for the reader. I hope in one format or another I can continue doing GK stories. However, this may be the last game in which I'm so involved with the production end of things -- just because it takes so much time and I'd prefer to work on storytelling."

Adam: "Isn't Adam just great?"

Jane Jensen: "As Gabe would say -- Ooooh, yeah. I'm lucky as all get out."

NEW GK3 TEAM MEMBERS

The team grew a bit in the last few months, adding a few people whose job is to actually put together the pieces of the game that everyone has been working on for the past year, the scripters.

Mark Peasley, Art Director - Mark joins us as our Technical Art Director. He worked as an artist/director at Dynamix for years, on most of their earlier projects, and most recently worked at Trilobyte as the company's art manager.

Jessica Tams, Scripter - Jessica is currently finishing up her Masters degree in Physics, and has a lot of programming knowledge that has helped us many times. She is working on scripting logic and scenes in the game.

Eric Leaf, Scripter - Eric is working on two degrees: computer science and computer engineering. He has worked in Sierra's tech support department for the past four years.

GABE'S FAVES WEBSITE AWARD

Please welcome the newest edition to "Gabe's Faves" Websites, SIDNEY, the first unofficial GK3 fan site! This site is run by Christy Lein, Nico Sels, and Jaquixo. They impressed us most with their attention to detail, and their commitment to try to update their news page every day. You can visit this site if you haven't already at http://www.thixo.com/Sidney/

WEB VERSION OF THE SCHATTENJÄGER DIARIES

I'm experimenting with a web version of the Schattenjäger Diaries. This new version includes pictures, screenshots, and other fun things. This may eventually become part of the GK3 site, but for now, I've asked a few of the fan sites to host it. You can find the web version at:

http://www.schattenjager.com/
http://www.thixo.com/Sidney/
http://yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~heaths/gk/