Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen may be unable to make future games in the acclaimed adventure series due to licensing issues, but that hasn’t stopped her from making a spiritual successor instead. Moebius is the game in question, and VG247 has heard from Jensen and developer Phoenix Online that it will be the next best thing for Knight fans. Find out why after the fold.
As part of a VG247 interview going live next week, we asked Phoenix Online CEO Cesar Bittar and Jensen for insight into Moebius, a new adventure game that was successfully funded on Kickstarter back in May.
Jensen replied, “Moebius is going very well. We started production in September with Phoenix Online as developers and have already seen a lot of progress. The art style is really fresh, I think, and the story turned out great. It has similarities to Gabriel Knight the same way that Gray Matter had – it’s the same genre – a mystery thriller with some paranormal elements. But that’s about the extent of it.”
Bittar added, “From a different perspective than Jane’s, I’ve read the story, and I can say that the enigma of the game is something that feels extremely fresh and exciting. Gabriel Knight fans are definitely going to love every minute of it.”
Moebius stars antiques dealer Malachi Rector who is hired by a billionaire to investigate a string of odd happenings and the murder of a young girl. As Rector charts back the woman’s life he falls deeper into a secret regarding her past.
It’s a concept Jensen has wanted to pursue for some time, “It’s an idea I had kicking around for about a year,” she revealed. “We actually offered our supporters to vote on the game we would do first and Moebius was chosen. Also on the list was Gray Matter 2 and an English romance game.”
On the subject of quality writing in modern games, Jensen feels that while standards are raising across the board, top writing in games has always been around in the industry, “This had been a ‘thing’ since I started in games 20 years ago. Every few years people get excited about writing and story ‘possibly becoming important’ in gaming.
“Honestly,there have been some great writers in gaming for a long time, since the Infocom days, and there are still really innovative things going on such as The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain. So I don’t see it so much as a new thing. I don’t think the industry as a whole is changing, no. Most game companies really undervalue the story aspects of a game. I just continue to do my thing.”
Jensen is also acting as story consultant on Phoenix Online’s episodic adventure series Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. You can find out more about Moebius and Cognition when our feature goes live next week.
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