![]() Over time, New Orleans’ mish-mash of voodoo coalesced into a practice known as Louisiana Voodoo. Citizens of all ethnicities fled to New Orleans, a city whose French culture and language seemed comfortable and familiar. Domingue–later renamed Haiti–a free state in 1804. Hundreds of thousands of slaves and gens de couleur raped, pillaged, and plundered until the French withdrew and declared St. The meeting boiled over into one of the largest slave revolts in history. On the evening of August 21, 1791, a voodoo priest called an underground meeting on the island of St. During the leisure time granted to them as gens de couleur, “free people of color,” they carried out voodoo ceremonies in secret. When their slave owners attempted to convert them to Catholicism, the slaves played docile and pretended to accept their new doctrines. They carried no material belongings, but they did bring their religious practices and beliefs. During the early 1720s through the early 1740s, most slaves exported from Africa arrived in the state of Louisiana. The more Jensen learned, the more she fell under the spell of New Orleans’ voodoo scene. Now everything I do is Googled, but at the time, I actually called a New Orleans bookstore and had them send me some picture books of New Orleans.” I really did all my voodoo and New Orleans research pretty much with books. “At the time I wrote Gabriel Knight, I had never been to New Orleans. Intrigued by the culture and mysticism of New Orleans, Jensen plunged down the rabbit hole. Many believed her to be immortal thanks to some clever smoke-and-mirrors tricks orchestrated by Laveau and her daughter, a dead ringer for her mother who took the elder Laveau’s place when she grew old. Laveau supplied locals with home-brewed remedies for sickness, love, and other problems. Laveau was known as the “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans. An original oil panting of Marie Laveau by Dimitri Fouquet, a New Orleans artist. who walked a dark path littered with obstacles like voodoo priestesses and demonic possession. ![]() Rourke played Angel, a down-on-his-luck P.I. While working at Hewlett-Packard, she had gotten hooked on Angel Heart, a psychological horror film starring Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke. She’d devoured Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire series of novels during college and became spellbound with New Orleans, the setting of the novels. Jensen turned to some of her favorite media for influence. I guess some of Gabriel’s writer-dom reflects some of my experiences at that time.” “At the time, I had tried to write a novel and didn’t get good responses from the agents I’d sent it to. Handsome and bright, yet more likely to chase skirts than mysteries and hard work. Unlike Graham of King’s Quest fame, Gabriel struck her as a scoundrel. One of her favorite archetypes was the flawed hero. Jensen considered her Indy Jones-style leading man, then dismissed him. Then I had to figure out how to make it work as a game designer." Naturally, Gabriel got wrapped up in cases that contained supernatural elements. She envisioned Gabriel as a modern-day Indiana Jones: a professor who specialized in the paranormal and had a penchant for adventure. The name “Gabriel Knight” had a strong ring to it. Setting aside theme and setting for the time being, Jensen concentrated on fleshing out her protagonist. For her first solo game effort, she wanted to tell an origin story. An inquisitor who jetted around the globe to solve murders would already be comfortable in his own skin. One of her first concepts was the backwoods of Germany, the setting of a string of murders that locals attributed to a werewolf. Jensen kicked around several themes and settings for her inquisitor to explore. This screenshot shows the extensive conversation interface players could trigger by clicking on NPCs. I came up with the idea of a guy descended from a long line of inquisitors who fight evil.” Gabriel (left), Jensen’s consummate bad boy with a heart of gold. “I wanted to do something that was a mystery, something that had a paranormal element to it. “At the time, I was a fan of graphic novels like Hellblazer and Neil Gaiman,” Jensen told me. While Jane Jensen shared much in common with Roberta Williams, an interest in creating sing-song worlds filled with fairytale characters was more her mentor’s domain.
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