Interface

It's a 3D world

Gabriel Knight 3's 3D environment allows it to do some unique things in terms of interface. Towns and other areas are broken up into several distinct, loadable areas ala' SiN or Half Life. You can often see into neighboring 'load zones" but moving into them will pause the game a moment while the new scene loads up. The load times are not super short, but definitely tolerable. The uniqueness is in camera control. Instead of fixing the camera to the character you're controlling (you'll trade off controlling Gabriel and his assistant Grace in the game), the camera is free to fly around and look at the scene however you please. Control of the fly camera is done with the keyboard. W and S move the camera forward while A and D rotate left and right. Holding down the CTRL key allows you to strafe the camera left and right while shift + direction allows you to pan the camera up and down.

Stopping at the bar

Train Schedules

So what's so great about the fly camera? Instead of clicking on a door on the opposite side of the room and waiting forever for Gabriel to walk over there, the game will intelligently "warp" your character right up to the area you clicked on IF you simply move the camera up there. Since the action is happening behind you, nothing looks weird or unnatural. Once you get used to the interface, controlling the game via camera is the quickest way to get things rolling.

Secret Handshake society

Issuing a traffic ticket?

It's all in the context

The environment of Gabriel Knight 3 includes tons of clickable and interactive items. Everything is clickable: from books on the table to paintings on the wall to trees in the landscape, there's a lot to do and explore. Left clicking on an item brings up a context sensitive menu that shows you all the possible actions you can do to the item. The game calls the menu a "verb chooser." The primary buttons are inspect and (which zooms you in to that item - useful for helping move the camera around), look (which lets Gabriel or Grace make a comment about the item). Other possible actions include talk, if the object is a person. The talk button brings up another picture menu of topics to talk to the person about.

There's also eat, smell, pick up (to grab the item), and think (this one's important…thinking about an item often unlocks clues about what to do next and can even trigger key cut scenes). Finally, there's another button that allows you to use your currently selected inventory item on a specific object. For example if you come upon a locked door, you'd go into your inventory (accessible via right click), pick up the key you need. Then you'd left click on the door and left click on the key icon which should appear in the menu. The interface does take a few minutes to get used to but once you have it down, it proves to be rather efficient.

Grace, Mosely and Gabriel

Grace in the hotel room