A couple of years after the events of Gabriel Knight 1, the titular hero (Erickson) of the story has set in Rittersburg, Germany, to his ancestral castle. He has published his novel based on the voodoo murders and is now trying to pen another book while Grace (Takahashi) is back in New Orleans taking care of the book store which has picked up more business since Gabriel's bestseller book. Gabriel's evening is interrupted when a group of people from the near village come to seek the help of the Schattenjäger. There has been a terrible killing of a child, pinned on escaped zoo wolves, but the people believe there is something more sinister afoot. Gabriel pens a letter to Grace and sets out to München to see what is what.
The first thing Gabriel finds out is, that the zoo wolves are an unlikely culprit. The prints he finds from the scene belong to a much larger beast with reddish fur. The specialist states a dog/wolf hybrid to be a much likelier animal to look for. Through the investigations, he finally finds a hunting club led by an enigmatic Von Glower (Lucas), who soon wins Gabriel over with his charisma.
Back in New Orleans, Grace gets Gabriel's letter and decides, besides his wishes, to head to Germany, where she aims to do research for him. She feels pushed aside and when she meets Gerde (Helene), the housekeeper of the castle. She also finds herself a bit jealous and threatened. Wanting to prove her worth in the Schattenjäger business, she begins to research werewolves, of which she finds good evidence from the old ancestral casebooks. She also manages to link long since dead last king of Bavaria, Ludwig II to these lycanthropic beings.
Thinking the Ludwig II angle a misstep, Gabriel ushers Grace to look into him, as he thinks that will keep Grace out of harm's way. Gabriel on the other hand begins to dig deeper into the hunting lodge members, as his gut is telling that's where the werewolf is hiding. Grace, who by this point has already learned Gerde to be a former lover of Gabriel's deceased uncle, has made amends with her and is now looking into Ludwig as well as in his favourite composer Wagner. It seems they were planning an opera about werewolves, but this was never discovered after Wagner's death.
During his inspections, Gabriel finds even closer evidence pointing towards certain members of the lodge. Some of them have taken part in hunting endangered animals. There are even signs of blackmail. As he and Von Glower have bonded further, the baron has asked Gabriel to accompany the group on a hunting trip. This gives Gabriel ample time to snoop further, but then he finally finds a werewolf, when Von Zell (Richard Raynesford), a disagreeable member of the group, is found from a near cave eating a human body. Together Gabriel and Von Glower hunt him down, but not before Gabriel is bitten.
Now sick from the werewolf strain running in his blood, Gabriel can't do much besides sleep. Grace manages to find the lost opera, which was linked to Ludwig's and Wagner's attempts in curing Ludwig of his own werewolf curse. The finale takes place at the opera, where Grace sets the stage for the final confrontation between Von Glower, who was the alpha wolf all along, and Gabriel. The death of Von Glower leads to the lifting of the curse and Gabriel returns to normal, if not counting for the mental trauma.
The Beast Within is in almost every way a very different kind of a game than the first entry to the series. The first difference comes from the visual side, as it was done in a full FMV-glory. The story is told in surprisingly well-acted and directed scenes, especially Peter Lucas is fantastic in his role as Von Glower. Erickson is decent as Gabriel, but it does take a bit before he finds his stride in the role. But that's probably because Gabriel is a bit more dramatic role this time around, as he is more serious and is trying to be more responsible towards his destiny. That's not necessarily the thing Erickson was the most proficient at playing, but he does have his moments before the end. Then again, his career as an actor didn't last much further than this game. Takahashi does a much better job as Grace, but she is perhaps a bit too overly snarky at times.
As The Beast Within is an FMV game, it also has an overabundance of flavour scenes of the characters doing different actions. This does get a tad old after a while, but luckily enough the scenes can be skipped. Interestingly enough, there's less freedom in walking around than usual for Sierra games, as you can generally just move to hotspots. This can, from time to time, be a bit of a nuisance, if Gabriel or Grace has entered the scene from a direction placing them near or in front of a hotspot. As the characters are clickable as well, it can be easy to miss some points of interest.
Another big difference is that you can play with both leads, Gabriel and Grace. The story is divided into 6 chapters, altering between Gabriel and Grace. Gabriel is doing the hands-on investigation whereas Grace is looking for information to help him. This brings a nice change of pace to the story and fleshes out Grace as a character much further.
One interesting aspect of the story comes from the homosexual undertones of the relationship between Gabriel and Von Glower. Von Glower has been looking for a partner to share his lycanthropic curse with for centuries and he finds that from Gabriel. In many ways, their interactions are shot like a budding romance, to which even Gabriel, the known womanizer, is not completely unaffected. If nothing else, he seems at least a bit curious of it and the enigmatic charm of Von Glower. And the level of maturity this all is explored is, in itself, rare for a 1990s game.
It might have been the change in the presentation of the game or Jensen sniffing the changing tones in the game industry, but The Beast Within is more of a story-driven game than the first entry. This is, at the same time, both a strength and a weakness, as the story is good and well told. Most of the time you rummage around, open plot points and solve simple puzzles. But then, at times, the game design succumbs into annoying tropes like pixel hunting and extremely linear progression, where the game is forcing you to check out everything before you can solve a puzzle you've figured out ages back but haven't been allowed to solve it. At times, some essential hotspots might even be locked out and just appear after you've done all that is necessary to open them.
The Beast Within is an interesting beast. On one hand, it is a kind of a break from the more usual game design Sierra was known of and it was one of those few 90s FMV games that actually knew how to use FMV properly before its reputation was tarnished by lesser developers. At the same time, for everything it does right, it manages to succumb to some annoying design tropes, especially if you are forced to look at that one, elusive hotspot you keep missing.
As a whole, I do prefer the 1st game over the sequel, but that's not to say that The Beast Within is a bad game. Sure, there are some annoyances and some of the FMV bits do drag on a bit too long. It still is a solid game and well worth playing. And in any case, it is better than the remake of Gabriel Knight 1 and that wasn't a bad attempt either. It just is, that I prefer the art direction of the first game as well as the strong voice cast it had and which was missing from the remake.
The 3rd, and currently the last, game changed things even further by ditching the 2D and FMV styles for the sake of 3D graphics. It is an even more divisive entry to the series, but more of that later.
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