(This is part of my journey playing through Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within. You can follow the entire series on the Nostalgia Lane page.)

One of the aspects of adventure games that I’m less fond of is how you can get stuck in a particular locale or part of the game for a very long time while trying to figure out how to progress. There’s a tipping point that occurs between the pacing being acceptable and “if I have to see this screen one more time I’m going to swallow my tongue to end this suffering.” Even while Gabriel Knight 2 has kept the investigation element of the plot moving along, so little has happened and so many of these locations have been repeated that I’m starting to go a little nuts. Was the first game this boring at times? I don’t recall.

We need stuff to happen. And today, it does.

Grace brings the copy of Ludwig’s diary to Georg, confirming the creation of a lost Wagner opera. Being a “one-upper” kind of guy, Georg whips out a Wagner diary and the two have the weirdest date ever. Again, I am playing a game that’s spending an inordinate amount of time reading diaries. Is this Lisa Frank Goes To Germany? At least this ends chapter 4 and our current time with Grace.

OK, when I said that I wanted stuff to happen, I didn’t mean that I wanted to see Gabe get it on with a really, really bad actress.

Let’s back up. Chapter 5 opens with Gabe recounting the night before, which started with drinks and laughs with Von Glower and ended with Von Glower pawning off his snuggle toy to Gabe, Gabe getting lucky, and Von Glower creepily caressing Gabe’s hair while he’s asleep. I cannot help but think that Grace will probably castrate him when she finds out about this, if the Gerde Incident was any indication.

It’s the big day of the hunting trip, although the members haven’t started gathering yet. Gabe returns to the club, snarks a bit at Xavier, and retrieves his tape recorder from the magazine that I remember planting (in Syp time) weeks ago.

He returns to Harry, his lawyer, and gets the latest mailed report from Grace. Harry says that the Bavarian national forest has had a long string of missing persons over the past 10 years or so, so I guess it’s a good thing that Gabe is going there completely unprotected. Well, he’s got a sausage in his pants pocket. That will slow down the wolves somewhat, I imagine. Harry continues to help out by translating the tape, which has the hunting lodge members talking about the killings, the wolves, and how Gabe is asking too many questions. Harry is dutifully concerned. I like Harry.

Gabe heads to the police Kommisar and uses the same tape to convince him to let Gabe check out the account books that the police confiscated from the victim Grossman’s place. When the big, beefy Kommisar and his big, beefy partner leaves the room, Gabe rips out an account page, then lies to the Kommisar as to the location of the club. Right now I think that Gabe is actively trying to get eaten.