E3: Jane Jensen scares up a new adventure with Moebius

If you know classic adventure games, then you probably know the name Jane Jensen. Now the creator of the Gabriel Knight series wants to take gamers on a brand new dark and mysterious journey.

Malachi Rector, a prestigious antiquities expert with an uncanny knowledge of history, travels around the world evaluating antiques for auction houses and private collectors. He can tell at a glance whether a varnish is 14th century Venetian or a 21st century imitation, where a particular hinge was forged, and what tomb an Egyptian artifact came from.

The game begins when a mysterious government agency named F.I.S.T. offers Malachi an odd job: instead of evaluating an antique, he will travel to Venice to investigate the death of a politician’s wife. Though this is far outside the scope of his usual work, Malachi is curious, so he agrees. What Malachi doesn’t know is that his photographic memory and genius for history is of extreme interest to not only F.I.S.T. and the U.S. government, but to other top-secret agencies as well. And Malachi’s about to meet a man in his travels who holds the key to it all…

Described as a “third-person mystery adventure game”, Moebius is also the first game that Jensen has overseen completely since 1999’s Gabriel Knight 3. Through cloud-funding site Kickstarter, she got the project moving under her new studio, Pinkerton Road. She also started up a bit of an instant fanbase for it at the same time. Not that she really had to work all that hard on that, since she’s easily one of the preeminent names in adventure gaming history.

Moebius looks like a title that’s right in line with what fans expect from the creator too- a dark, mystery filled adventure filled with occult references and themes. Personally, I’m digging the DaVinci Code vibe that Moebius is putting out too.  I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more.