Antagonist interviews Jane Jensen
Conducted by ANTifreese - June 1999
Interview with JANE JENSEN, writer and designer of GABRIEL KNIGHT 3: BLOOD OF THE SACRED, BLOOD OF THE DAMNED
ANT: Hi Jane -- welcome to the ANTAGONIST Games Network! Knowing you're in the "home stretch" with your latest release, Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, we really appreciate your time.
Jane Jensen: You've got that right. I barely even see my husband these days.
ANT: Jane, what was your background before joining Sierra, and how did you get interested in computer gaming?
Jane Jensen: My degree is in Computer Science and after college I went to work for Hewlett-Packard in the Silicon Valley. I worked there for six years, on a variety of mainframe stuff, mostly networking. But I was itching to write, which had always been a dream of mine. I spent my off-hours writing short stories and working on a novel. Then, around 1989, I got my first home PC and went shopping for software. I bought King's Quest IV and Manhunter: San Francisco. I got hooked big time and ended up buying most of the other titles Sierra had (I get obsessive about things, to say the least). I thought that the games would be a great way to leverage my technical background into a more creative career and so I wrote to Sierra and sent them a short story. A year later they called back -- and had an opening for a staff writer.
ANT: How long have you been affiliated with Sierra and what PC game titles have you worked on?
Jane Jensen: I joined Sierra in 1991. I wrote the doco and most of the messages for Police Quest 3, co-designed EcoQuest: Search for Cetus (with Gano Haine), co-designed King's Quest VI (with Roberta Williams), co-designed Pepper's Adventure's in Time (with Lorelei Shannon and Gano Haine), and designed GK1 and GK2.
ANT: What was the genesis of your first GK title: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and just between you and me, how did you come up with the name "Gabriel Knight"?
Jane Jensen: Well, I had the basic concept for the series and had to come up with a character name. I spent about a day with a baby name book. The concept behind the Schattenjagers was something like St. George characters. I'd seen a comic book series done with a kind of updated St. George character -- he was more of an 'avenger/terminator' type, but I liked the concept. So Gabriel Knight is a mix of an angelic name and the knight, obviously, which has a kind of quasi-religious-warrior connotation.
ANT: Your first two GK games received numerous accolades and awards. Congratulations! Are all three GK novels in publication?
Jane Jensen: The first two games have novels out in the stores now. I haven't written a novel for the third game and I'm not sure I will be writing one. If I do, it won't be for at least a year because I have another novel I'm working on for Del Rey (they're publishing "Millennium Rising"), which is not a GK game. I can imagine writing novels and designing PC games are totally different experiences.
ANT: Which do you enjoy more?
Jane Jensen: The games are definitely much more taxing and more rewarding in a way as well. Working with a team of creatives and engineers on a long project is tough -- there's sometimes conflicts of interest or just roadblocks or bottlenecks that can be very stressful. You don't have to worry about any of that in a novel -- it's just you and a computer and if there's a bottleneck, it's your own damn fault. So the process is much faster and easier overall. But, naturally, the 'challenges' of doing a game produce greater rewards as well -- you get to see the story come alive with art and acting, music, etc. Plus the games are just very cool because the story is interactive. It's a hell of a hard thing to do, but it's more of an accomplishment in a way.
ANT: How does the writer/designer interface with the game producer and team during the development process?
Jane Jensen: On all of my project so far, I've been working with the team on a daily or near daily basis. I am (usually) involved in most of the decisions that occur around scheduling, art, programming, interface, etc. And I am also the one who plays the game over and over and over as soon as it's barely possible and writes up notes about what needs to be fixed. Mainly it's myself and QA playing the game and sometimes the producer has time to go over it, too. I try to help keep everyone focused on what needs to happen to get the game to ship -- if only out of purely selfish motives!
ANT: As I'm sure everyone knows, GK1 was animated and GK2 was FMV. How was the decision made to return to animation for GK3?
Jane Jensen: It's not exactly a return to animation as much as it is a move forward to 3D, which just happens to be animated 3D at this point in time. Sierra felt strongly that all their titles had to move into 3D, and once they got me to sit down and play, say Mario in 3D, or Tomb Raider, I understood the appeal of the freedom of 3D and thought I could see how I could take what I do well (storytelling) into a 3D world.
ANT: Could you give us some insight into the technological advances applied to GK3 -- perhaps 3D and the G-Engine?
Jane Jensen: The main thing that is different for you as a player is that within a location -- say inside the hotel lobby or outside the hotel in the town -- you can move the camera to look at absolutely anything you want. You can zoom in on a tire, look under a car, go up to Gabe's ear, whatever you want. It's very different that being presented a flat 2D view of a room and that's all you get. It feels as though you are really in the room. You can explore a lot more. Then, when 'scenes' play, we do cameras for you (if you have cinematics turned on) so that it feels like a little 'movie' but it doesn't have the awkward transition to avis of, say, GK2. And you can turn off the cameras so you can look at Gabe through the whole conversation, or whatever. The puzzles this allows are, I think, more creative and fun to solve than is possible in a 2D environment.
ANT: Without giving too much away, could you give us a brief peek into the storyline in GK3? Also, will the players be able to play both as Gabriel and Grace Nakimura?
Jane Jensen: Yes, you play as both Gabriel & Grace. Gabriel is doing his usual stalking of suspects and Grace is working mostly with the new computer in the game - SIDNEY. It's pretty cool. You can search on names and concepts, which gives you html like data, do translations, anagrams, etc. Mostly, Grace is working through a long puzzle sequence involving building a treasure map. The story revolves around the real life mystery of Rennes-le-Château, which is a theme that involves lost treasure, the knights templar, freemasonry, some pretty interesting old heresies. And because we didn't think that was enough, we threw in vampires.
ANT: Okay, now for the biggie... could you give us the best guesstimate of the GK3 release date?
Jane Jensen: You should see it in stores between Aug 15 and Sept 15th at the latest -- probably in August.
ANT: Jane, thanks again very much for your time, and very best wishes on your latest project!
Jane Jensen: Thanks!
Last update: March 26, 2008
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