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This page details Gabriel's lore rather than the boss found at the end of Act I and Act II. For the boss pages, click here for Act I and here for Act II.
"May your woes be many and your days few."
- Gabriel after he receives spare change from AN INSIGNIFICANT FUCK.
Gabriel is the main gameplay antagonist and main narrative protagonist of ULTRAKILL. He carries out the will of the Council with a ruthless efficiency that brings him both fear and respect. He is known as the Will of God and is among the most powerful of all the angels. When he was defeated by V1 for the first time in Gluttony, the Council believed him to be squandering his power and cut him off from the light of The Father. They told him that he would be dead within 24 hours if he did not prove his devotion by finding and killing V1. After he was defeated by the machine a second time in Heresy, he returned to Heaven and killed every member of the Council, realizing the atrocities he had committed on their behalf in the name of an absentee God.
Appearance[]
Gabriel's armor is primarily white and gold. His armor includes golden pauldrons, gauntlets that extend to his shoulders, and greaves that reach up to his thighs. His breastplate is gold and white, likewise are his tassets and helmet. The sides of his breastplate have dangling tassels. His helmet visor is primarily white and contains a golden cross and breathing holes on the face of it. A golden ornate band is present on the back and sides of his helmet. Two sheathes are present on his right hip, which is where he keeps his two swords, Justice and Splendor. These sheaths have golden text written on them, one of them saying "Justice is Splendor", and the other saying "Splendor is Justice."
Gabriel has black skin with gold designs on his abdomen and lower backside. His grey loin cloth and black skirt are attached to his belt. He has translucent blue wings and a floating halo that has the ability to vanish floating just behind his head. Said halo resembles an arrowhead in shape with unreadable markings along its base.
History[]
Long before the game takes place, he killed Minos, claiming it was justice, as the king reformed the Lust layer of Hell into a figurative utopia, which stopped sinners' punishments. Minos had refused to fight, believing in civil discussion but was promptly smote by Gabriel. The Heavenly Council then rewarded him with the title "Judge of Hell".
Also before the events of the game, during the Sisyphean Insurrection, he was able to recognize the weakness of Sisyphus and his army's reliance on his leadership skill, he commanded the armies of heaven to focus their energies at Sisyphus. He was then able to behead Sisyphus himself, breaking the morale of the Sisyphean army completely and making mopping up the insurrection a mere formality. Due to his accomplishments and his charisma, he was revered and treated as an idol by the people of Heaven. It is also implied that unlike the Council, he cares for some of the lower castes of heavenly workers, such as the Ferrymen.
Within Act 1, V1 encounters Gabriel when it trespasses into Gluttony, where Gabriel reveals he intends to stop the mechanical invasion of Hell. However, V1 defeats Gabriel, leaving the angel to promise that they will fight again as he retreats. However, for his failure and defeat at the hands of an object, the Heavenly Council, after stripping him of his connection to Heaven's light, demands that he rectifies his mistake within the next 24 hours, or die.
When V1 arrives in Heresy, Gabriel detects its presence, and demands that it comes face him. After lamenting the loss of life on the upper levels caused by the machine intrusion, Gabriel engages V1 once more, but is once again defeated. With this defeat, Gabriel suddenly has an epiphany and retreats to the moon (presumably Heaven's first layer) in order to deliberate in the epilogue. He eventually comes to the conclusion that God is missing or dead, and he has been manipulated by the Heavenly Council to commit atrocity in an attempt to control the system God has left behind. He returns to the Heavenly Council and promptly executes the council members, and brandishes one of their decapitated heads before a crowd of heavenly denizens. Having accepted his imminent death, he prepares to spend his last hours in Hell.
In-Game[]
Gabriel can be met in-game on two occasions (so far). Once guarding the entrance to Greed in [ 3-2: IN THE FLESH ] and later again attempting to enact his vengeance on the player in [ 6-2: AESTHETICS OF HATE ]. Outside of that, Gabriel's image can also be spotted all over hell through various paintings and murals, and he was first mentioned in level [ 1-4: CLAIR DE LUNE ] by the resident of the manor, who claimed to be a friend of Gabriel's, awaiting to enter heaven by his penance, as well as a headless skeleton praying to a painting of him. In [ 4-3: A SHOT IN THE DARK ], there is a picture of Gabriel with the word "TRAITOR" written in blood as well as his face crossed out. In the level [ 5-2: WAVES OF THE STARLESS SEA ], you can find a passage written by a Ferryman describing how Gabriel saved him from falling into the River Styx, and the rhetoric he told the Ferryman afterwards to console him.
In [ 3-2: IN THE FLESH ], he tells V1 to turn back and not go any deeper into hell, in an attempt to protect the lower layers from the machines. V1, of course, refuses, and so he fights V1 to keep him out instead. He initially speaks very eloquently to V1, although in a holier-than-thou tone that shows he is arrogant and disgusted with the Machine. Once they enter battle, he starts speaking much more angrily to V1, though still in that holier-than-thou tone, most likely because, as an angel, he is literally holier than V1. However, this changes when his light is stripped from him following his defeat.
In [ 6-2: AESTHETICS OF HATE ], he gives V1 a VERY angry monologue about how machines (namely and mainly V1) has completely destroyed the upper layers of hell, and how he is going to kill V1. In this level, he starts out enraged (though it's primarily visual) and most of his "taunts" are furious in nature, mostly ranting about how he will defeat V1 and right his wrong. However, after reaching his second phase, he "calms down" and begins to take joy in the fight, inviting V1 to continue fighting him in a rather unhinged manner, even laughing a bit. After being defeated, again, he unexpectedly finds relief in his defeat. Promptly confused by the emotions, he teleports from Heresy and up to the Moon, where the ACT II epilogue begins.
Trivia[]
- Gabriel is voiced by prolific voice actor Gianni Matragrano. Gianni is known for roles such as Satan from Antonblast, Sebastian from Pressure, Breadhead from The Gaslight District, Duke Nukem and many other roles, but Gabriel is Gianni's most well recognised and iconic role.
- He will voice anyone for a chicken nugget, but not Arby's giftcards.
- One of Gianni's latest roles is the character Mr. WPNZ from SMG4, a Mario fan content channel.
- Interestingly enough, Minos Prime's voice actor, Stephan Weyte, has also contributed to Mario media, officially in the past (being MC Ballyhoo from Mario Party 8).
- Gabriel is an Archangel from Abrahamic religions, where he is depicted as the messenger from God to the prophet(s).
- However, in ULTRAKILL he is depicted as the warrior of God, setting the game apart from Abrahamic religions.
- Gabriel's red and gold color palette when enraged was originally his main design, but was changed to white and gold because it looked too similar to Iron Man.[2]
- Gabriel’s source file is “The weird one with daddy issues idk”.
- Many of Gabriel's lines, such as "You make even the devil cry!", "Behold! The power of an angel!", "Show me what you were made for!", "You need more power!", and "Foolishness, machine, foolishness." are clear references to Devil May Cry, a video game series that heavily inspired ULTRAKILL. In addition, his appearance, voice, manner of speaking, and attacks seem reminiscent of Credo from Devil May Cry 4.
- "You need more power!" and "Foolishness, machine, foolishness." are references to quotes used by Vergil in Devil May Cry 3. Additionally, "Show me what you were made for!" may possibly be a reference to "Show me your motivation.", a quote used by Vergil in all of his appearances in the mainline Devil May Cry games.
- "Behold! The power of an angel!" is a quote used by Credo and Agnus in Devil May Cry 4 in their boss fights.
- There are several unused voice lines in which 3-2 Gabriel taunts the player by saying "Is your software running slow? I may have just the update that will do the trick! Have you tried Jesus?" as well as "Ashes to ashes... Rust to rust...". These voice lines, particularly the software joke, were too long to fit when Gabriel taunts the player.
- Gianni has also recorded two joke lines for when the player would follow his word and retreat back down the path they came, but these went unused.
- These voicelines can be found here.
- According to Hakita, many of Gabriel's taunts were improvised by Gianni during recording.
- Gabriel has many variations of his voice lines in the game files, mostly just the same voice lines in different tones.
- Gabriel is one of four characters to say the word "Fuck" the other three being MDK&O, Mirage, and the author of the terminal entries found in Prime Sanctums.
- The colours of Gabriel's wings and halo appear to reflect his emotional state.
- Full blue appears to be his default state, occurring during Phase 1 of 3-2, the 3-2 cutscene, and while he plays the organ in 6-2. Full gold coincides with his Rage state in Phase 2 of 3-2 and Phase 1 of 6-2. Blue and gold occur in Phase 2 of 6-2 and the 6-2 cutscene, and their texture in the game files is labeled
T_WingsEcstasy.png.
- Full blue appears to be his default state, occurring during Phase 1 of 3-2, the 3-2 cutscene, and while he plays the organ in 6-2. Full gold coincides with his Rage state in Phase 2 of 3-2 and Phase 1 of 6-2. Blue and gold occur in Phase 2 of 6-2 and the 6-2 cutscene, and their texture in the game files is labeled
- It's possible that Gabriel's weakness to nails is a reference to Christ's death from being nailed to the cross.
- This makes sense knowing he was the angel who told Mary that she would be the mother of the son of God.
- In the first scene of Act II's epilogue, the location of Gabriel's pondering is on the Moon, as in Dante's Paradiso (the third and final part of The Divine Comedy) it is the first circle of Heaven, and a ruined, dried up Earth is present in the background. This was confirmed in the Act II Developer Commentary Stream.
- Gabriel is one of a handful of enemies programmed to dodge getting crushed by a Malicious Face's falling corpse. However, getting this interaction to happen is nearly impossible without using jump pads and toggling on Blind Enemies.
- Although he dodges getting crushed, you are still granted the [+MAURICED] style bonus.
- V1, Mirage, Minos and Gabriel are the only four characters (as of writing) to have body pillows that can be officially bought from New Blood.
- On 8/16/2022, Gianni Matragrano performed a special stream as Gabriel where he pretended to take over his own Twitch channel. Due to the nature of the streams themselves, nothing Gabriel says should be taken as gospel and any of the claims made during the stream, such as the ones included here, should be regarded as non-canon jokes. According to the stream...
- Gabriel likes lasagna and hates Mondays. This is a reference to Garfield.
- Gabriel spiked an infant into a field goal whilst King Minos begged him not to and "cried on his knees like a bitch", before Gabriel continued spiking more infants.
- Gabriel doesn't know what the word Obama means and finds it "such a silly word".
- Gabriel doesn't know how money works.
- Gabriel cannot answer if he likes V1's feet on stream, due to it being an "important lore question".
- Gabriel also jokingly claimed you can get a G-rank/clear a Gabriel run by only destroying Idols with a ground slam.
- During the stream, a spring sound effect played when Gabriel reached the end of [ 6-1: CRY FOR THE WEEPER ], to which he questioned why it played. The meaning of this spring sound effect is unknown.
- Prior to the release of Wrath and Heresy for Act II, Gabriel wore twin katanas on his right hip before they were replaced by his signature swords "Justice" and "Splendor".
- 3-2 Gabriel's summoned shortsword appears to reuse the mesh of his old katanas.
- In the epilogue of Act I, Gabriel in the cutscene's artwork still visibly wears the old katanas.
- Gabriel's swords, Justice & Splendor, are most likely a reference to the DMC series, in which Dante wields two guns named Ebony & Ivory. Likewise, Gabriel's spiral swords attack on Violent difficulties and above greatly resembles Vergil's Summoned Swords in both their offensive and defensive positioning, alongside their exclusivity to higher difficulties.
- Gabriel is 1,85cm tall in the game files, however none of the characters have confirmed canon heights.
- Gabriel's character has much in common with the philosophical idea of absurdism put forward by Søren Kierkegaard.
- Gabriel's in-game model emits sparkles [3].
- Feathers are seen around Gabriel on the official New Blood body pillow, hinting that he may have plume on his wings that isn't depicted clearly on his in-game model.[4]
- On one of Hakita's streams, he explains that biblical archangels have no gender, and how masculine pronouns signify that a being is closest to The Father, thus why Gabriel is often depicted as being genderless.[5]
- Gabriel's arsenal changes per attack. His inventory consists of dual axes, a spear, a massive greatsword, and a katana, as well as Justice and Splendor [6]
- The sword with the blue blade is Justice, while its counterpart with the gold blade is Splendor.[7]
- Gabriel, Apostate of Hate does not attack using light weapons in [ 6-2: AESTHETICS OF HATE ], rather choosing to use his weapons traditionally.
Gallery[]
![Gabriel and V1 as seen in official art for [1]New Blood's 10th anniversary uploaded by New Blood's official Twitter page](/wiki/File:Gabriel_in_another_cute_outfit.png "Gabriel in another cute outfit.png (991 KB)")
.jpg "New Blood Holidays (with angry Gabriel).jpg (416 KB)")
