The Game that RUINED a Genre (but not really)

To be honest, the goat puzzle was INFINITELY worse than the cat one. It's not super difficult to figure out, and it somewhat makes sense aside the use of cat hair and syrup (if you cannot match the face, mess it up with some noise and then match it). And also makes sense as for why he wouldn't take the dumb moped, you are playing as a flawed character who has his own problems and negatives, not a mary sue hero.

This game looks so beautiful with 3d acceleration enabled, I don't know why you decided to use the footage of some low-res software rendering piece of shit

oh lord, 25 years since i played this. I remember so much of it.

1:25:53 knew it. LOL. Just like today in business.

Do these people know what the word secret means?

So is the game about vampires or werewolves? 🤣

I wasn't expecting the history lessons, this was a neat video!

I adore Jane Jensen. I genuinely owe my love of adventure games to her and I also love the gay romance stories she writes… but yeah this game had problems. The tone was never really at a level of excitement and intrigue the way GK1 and GK2 had. I was thoroughly engrossed with those. It helps that I’m a New Orleanean and adore GK1 for the cultural accuracy and that GK2 sparked my interest and fascination with King Ludwig II of Bavaria and goal to one day see his beautiful castles. But this one was a slog to get through. The others I could replay continuously but not so much this one. It’s a complete shame that Phoenix Online ended up remaking GK1 (a game that didn’t need a remake at all, same with GK2. The 90s Bavaria visuals were perfection and made it one of the best FMV games it made me want to visit Bavaria) and not GK3. GK3 had interesting elements but the graphics were ugly and Gabriel was such an over-the-top lech that I didn’t really like him compared to how much I liked him in 1 and 2. Frankly, in GK3 I think Grace putting up with him made her look like she had a lack of self-respect. Either that or only because him being a weirdness magnet was kind of fun for her. If any GK game needed a remake and expansion it’s this one.

The independent camera is such a cool idea for games like this

Grace's disgusted reaction to Wilkes' initial pick up attempt is funny. The VA did a great job there.

On the whole I think Suppuration-H feels good.

That is some unparalleled comedic timing with that ending cutscene.

The approach to a 3D world is so interesting. In modern times, it's just a given that you'd control the character either 1st person style or over their shoulder. But for a game during the early days of 3D, nothing was set in stone yet. The idea of having the camera free roam around rooms unconnected to the characters seems insane in modern times, but I guess it must have made sense in a way back then. Like an almost logical progression from the fixed camera angles of 2D games, displaying a room that you as the player look over and give the character directions in.

I feel like a lot of the computer puzzles are so tedious because the steps taken to reproduce the 'puzzle' at play are bizarre and illogical. That's one aspect I feel really should have diverged more from the source material, to adapt it into something that might actually make sense. Playing conspiracy theorist could be fun, if they'd believably crafted a world where these connections existed logically.

Just for fun, I also wanted to try my hand at fixing the story. To me, the main problem seems to be that what you're doing most of the game is completely unconnected from your goal of rescuing a kidnapped baby. Until the very end, the only real relation between the two is "Well this is an adventure game, surely whatever you're doing must be relevant somehow." I might try to simplify it down to something more like…

– You're tasked with finding a baby. The dad says he thinks it's because his great-great-whatever grandpa left his vast fortune to whichever of his descendants would be born on a specific future day, almost like a prophecy. This baby is set to inherit that great fortune that has been waiting so long, and dad suspects the kidnappers are after that fortune as ransom. To him this is a mundane kidnapping with nothing supernatural. But, of particular note to Gabriel, note that the baby was somehow taken from a high floor on the building at night. There were no signs of them having been to any other room. Almost as if they flew in the window… The while night visitors thing is completely unnecessary, drop the entire concept.
– Pursuing a lead on the kidnappers, you overhear a conversation. They speak about drinking from "the grail" on a specific date in a named place to obtain obtain ultimate power or whatever. Gabriel confronts them, and sees they have the kidnapped baby, but they escape. This adds some urgency to the situation, find the baby by the mentioned date or something bad is likely to happen.
– Continuing the chase, you end up at the game's main setting. Gabriel is initially unconcerned with the whole mystery of the whatever, until he catches wind of something to do with a holy grail and the specific named location (a lost location, part of the mystery being trying to find this important spot) that the kidnappers mentioned earlier. Now he has reason to believe that this mystery is connected to the kidnappers.
– The characters go through with the whole process of trying to solve the mystery. Along the way they find bodies not with slashed throats, but with the telltale vampire bite marks to cement the supernatural vampire element with a little more excitement. They also uncover the idea that the holy grail is the womb/bloodline, the idea of the specific location having this great significance, and maybe even some speculative ancestry that includes the name of the baby's great-great-whatever grandfather as a hint to the player. With each discovery, the connection between the mystery and the baby is strengthened.
– The whole thing about putting the right bloodline on the throne is obnoxiously complicated, and kinda boring for a modern audience that will see kings as more of a figurehead than anything. Change it to the baby just has special blood from being born on the special day, and if a vampire drinks that blood on some important anniversary or whatever then they will obtain great power and immortality and be unstoppable and all that. Vampires took the baby so they could steal magic powers from its blood.
– Find the special location by doing all the puzzles and all that, simultaneously solving the mystery and finding where the baby will be taken- and just in time! The crew rushes there just in time to stop the evil plot and defeat the vampires.
– Fix Gabriel being like such a massive jerk all the time along the way. Like seriously, how unpleasant. Can they have a conflict about like anything else, please. I don't want them to get together if she's only leaving because he's so uncaring towards her. There have GOT to be other reasons for them to be apart… heck, could even show them getting closer all game, then at the end when she leaves suddenly it's for mysterious reasons how exciting.