Gabriel Knight III
08/21/98
We just returned today from our second recording session for the voice-overs. We had about 3000 lines of dialogue total, about the same as our first session. The week went great. It has to be one of the peaks of game development to get to meet and work with actors of the kind of caliber we've gotten to use on several of the Gabriel Knight games. The sessions went brilliantly and quickly. Tim Curry, who plays Gabriel Knight, whipped through about 1400 lines of dialogue in five to six hours (nailing each line, despite the usual lack of context in a game script). Of course, the chance to sit out on break and chat is worth the experience in itself. We had many talented voices, including the voices of Ren and Stimpy (Billy West) and Minnie Mouse (Russie Taylor), to name just a few. We got some great stuff for a gag reel - if and when we get a chance to put it together. Check out the cast list on the GK3 page if you haven't had the chance.
On the home front, things are still in the dense thicket of production, something like the "Forest of Pandemonium" (as Milton might have put it), where progress is made haltingly - Sword of Determination in hand, technological dragons lurking. The rework of the engine was completed around the middle of June, but we're still ironing out bugs as we start rebuilding the room code. The smallest things take time - making Gabriel's walker turn smoothly, for example, or getting him to walk around instead of through other people.
As of today, we have four new "scripters" on the project. Much of our animation sequences will be put together in a special text language, which the game engine parses. The scripters will be doing this work. Camera angles, approaches, positioning of the characters, expressions on the characters, and the sequencing of the fidgets and animations are all fine points that require both programming logic and artistic finesse. The world in 3D requires much more polishing work than it did in 2D. I've said that before, but every day I'm assaulted with that fact anew.
Next: GK3 to release in 1999
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