Broken Sword
Broken Sword is a series of adventure games. The first game in the series, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, was released and developed in 1996 by British developer Revolution Software. Its sequel, Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, was released a year later, and was followed by Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon in 2003, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in 2006, and Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse in 2013. A remake of the first game in the series, known as Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director's Cut, was released in 2009, and a remake of the second game in the series, Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror – Remastered, in 2010 for iOS devices; other platforms followed in 2011.
The main protagonists of the series are George Stobbart, an American patent lawyer, and Nicole "Nico" Collard, a French freelance journalist. While Nico does not appear as a playable character in the original version of The Shadow of the Templars, she does become playable in the Director's Cut.
The Broken Sword series was conceived in 1994 by Charles Cecil, Noirin Carmody and Sean Brennan, while talking about the mythology of the Knights Templar. The first three games in the series as well as the fifth game were developed by Revolution Software, while the fourth game was co-developed by Revolution and Sumo Digital. The Shadow of the Templars and The Smoking Mirror were critical and commercial successes, selling millions. However, The Sleeping Dragon and The Angel of Death received mixed reviews and were not as popular as the first two games. This was mainly due to the switch to 3D graphics and because the third game left the "point and click" interface for a more action-oriented gameplay. The latest game in the series, The Serpent's Curse, returned to the series' 2D roots. The series appeared on several top adventure game lists. A comic book was produced for each remake of the first two Broken Sword games.
Games
Story overview
In The Shadow of the Templars, American George Stobbart is touring Europe. He becomes both a witness and victim of a bomb attack on a Parisian café "La Chandelle Verte", caused by a clown, later revealed to be an assassin named Khan. The perpetrator steals an old man's briefcase and sets off a bomb inside the café. Stobbart meets a French photo-journalist, Nicole "Nico" Collard, a resident of Rue Jarry in Paris, with whom he tries to discover who is responsible for the murder of the old man, Plantard, and while doing so, end up unraveling a conspiracy relating to the Knights Templar. The third and fourth game, The Sleeping Dragon and The Angel of Death, follow the Templar-related storyline: The Sleeping Dragon continuing the story from The Shadow of the Templars with a number of returning characters, while in The Angel of Death, George and Nico, with a newly introduced character Anna-Maria, unravel a mystery related to the Catholic Church. Unlike the other installments, in The Smoking Mirror, George and Nico unravel an Aztec mystery, involving the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca. The Serpent's Curse follows a storyline related to the Gnostic Gospels.Development
''The Shadow of the Templars'' and ''The Smoking Mirror''
Video game designer, writer and director Charles Cecil began working on the scenario for Broken Sword, Revolution Software's third game following Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky, in 1992, which would be set in Paris with a Knights Templar storyline. After visiting Paris and reading The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Cecil was certain the Templars would be a good subject for a game. Cecil, Dave Cummins and Jonathan L. Howard began work on the story and design. Cecil and Cummins attended a film-writing course and their script was read by senior BBC scriptwriter and dramatist Alan Drury. Steve Ince, who created initial location sketches for the game before working on Beneath a Steel Sky, was promoted to producer halfway through the project. In 1994 Cecil and Noirin Carmody met with Sean Brennan, then-head of publishing at Virgin Interactive, and Virgin agreed to publish the game's PC version, but were not interested in publishing the game on the PlayStation, feeling that only 3D games would sell for the console. As a result, Cecil contacted Sony Computer Entertainment, who agreed to publish the game for the console. Tony Warriner and David Sykes were the game's designer-programmer Carmody the executive producer. The game uses the Virtual Theatre engine, as do Revolution's previous two games.One of Cecil's goals was to depart from the humour-based adventure games more popular at the time by creating a game with good pacing and a complex storyline, a reason he thought the Knights Templar would be an ideal subject. Broken Sword offered a unique "conversation icon" system which would not reveal to the player what the protagonist was about to say; Cecil's intention was to make the game more cinematic. Although aiming at designing a game with a cinematic feel, Cecil felt the game should not resemble interactive movies of that time, which he felt were "mimicking movies". He wanted to create two protagonists who would exchange ideas, helping drive the game along. He made George American and Nico French to appeal to US and European markets. Revolution believed they needed to utilise the best of other creative industries.
Hand drawn artwork was animated by artists including Don Bluth Studios' Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen and Red Rover Studio's Mike Burgess, resulting in graphics animated in a style resembling classic animated films. The game's final cost was one million pounds.
Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror was conceived in 1997, by Cecil and Revolution's crew. The artwork for Broken Sword 2 was developed through a number of stages. Initially pencil drawings were made of characters which were then digitally coloured in, before being cleaned up. The background layouts were produced in a similar way, also starting out as pencil designs. They were all drawn by Eoghan Cahill and Cornelius Breen, who both previously worked on the original Broken Sword game, while they were now working together with Amy Berenz and Lee Taylor. The music in the game was again composed by Barrington Pheloung, with Bob Sekar adding the closing score. While Rolf Saxon returns to voice actor of George, Jennifer Caron Hall a bilingual actress and daughter of French actress Leslie Caron, was cast as Nico. Theatre director Edward Hall rehearsed the assembled actors and took no more than a week to record the entire game, according to an interview given by Rolf Saxon in 2011. The game was first released for Windows on October 31, 1997.
''The Sleeping Dragon'' and ''The Angel of Death''
Revolution first discussed the idea of a third Broken Sword in 2000. At first, The Sleeping Dragon was planned to have similar cartoon-quality visuals to the first two Broken Sword games, but Revolution decided not to use the "flat" look, claiming it lacked visual depth. The team wanted the game to look believable, but not necessarily realistic, similar to Japanese animated films. Textures were hand drawn to achieve the "cartoon" look, while the light-map employed radiosity to create realistic lighting. Advances in hardware plus the changes in methodology allowed the game to move to 24-bit color. To make the game feel like a film, Revolution brought in a cinematic consultant, Bob Keen, who made sure the game conveyed emotions and atmospheres appropriate for each scene. The music in the game was composed by Ben McCullough. The voice recording was scheduled to take five days, but the entire process took four days. The voices were recorded with the voice actors together, enabling better getting into their parts. The full script is 6,000 lines in total, similar to Broken Sword II. While Rolf Saxon returns to voice George, Nico was this time played by Sarah Crook. The game's final cost was two million pounds.Revolution Software and THQ announced Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in August 2005. According to Charles Cecil, the Broken Sword was originally planned to be a trilogy, but after the release of Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, the demand from fans for a sequel was overwhelming. Though The Sleeping Dragon benefited commercially from being released on console as well as PC, this approach required certain development compromises as the PC version was held back by the constraints of the console versions. As a result, The Angel of Death was written for PC only "so as to really push the boundaries in terms of the technology and graphics". As a series' first, Revolution was not the only developer, but was co-developed by Revolution and Sumo Digital. Cecil believed that because of the requirement for ever larger team sizes, it was no longer possible to maintain a large development team to write single original titles, resulting in Revolution closed the production side in order to concentrate on design, and Sumo to concentrate on production. It was the first game to use the amBX lighting technology. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon was criticised for featuring a high number of action elements. Cecil stated that he aimed to put the player under pressure. While he still stood behind this principle, he thought the action elements were not the right approach. The Sleeping Dragon was also criticised for using a high number of crate puzzles, resulting in Cecil reducing the number of them. The music in the game was composed by Ben McCullough and features tracks by Übernoise. While Rolf Saxon returns to voice George Stobbart, Nicole "Nico" Collard was this time played by Katherine Pageon.