Paris in autumn. The last months of the year, at the end of the millennium. The city brings back many memories: of cafes, of music, of love… and of death.
In the pantheon of classic adventure games from the golden age, few have managed to captivate me as much as Broken Sword. More realistic than LucasArts' games, funnier than Gabriel Knight, less obtuse than Sierra's greats, it stepped into the ring and faced off against a horde of PC gaming favorites, and it kicked ass.
The first and best game in the series is back today in the form of Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars Reforged, but this isn't the first time Broken Sword has attempted a comeback. Back in 2010, Revolution released the Director's Cut, a remaster with a few new features. It wasn't great.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. It was still, overall, a brilliant adventure game, but the additions and tweaks were unnecessary and spoiled the flow. For example, the iconic opening of the original – narrated by bumbling American tourist George Stobbart, just before he's nearly blown to bits outside a Parisian café – is swapped for a new prologue featuring Nico Collard, George's adventuring buddy and on-and-off girlfriend, and it just doesn't work.
Lessons have been learned. Shadow of the Templars Reforged recognizes that you can play with a formula too much and risk ruining it. Instead, this new remaster takes a lighter approach, retaining the vision of the original and pretty much everything else, but with remastered graphics and audio.
The Director's Cut's prologue is gone, leaving the original opening completely intact. The changes made are small and judicious. An elongated drainpipe that makes George's comments about a murderous clown's possible escape route more appropriate is one of the most notable. Yes, a drainpipe. So if you're a Broken Sword veteran, this is very much the game you remember.
If it's been a while since you joined George on his first adventure, you probably remember the sumptuous art and probably forgot how pixelated it was. And now that doesn't have to change, as the 4K overhaul makes the backgrounds and character art sing.
Revolution used AI to help with this task, but this isn't a case of AI-created art. Instead, Revolution trained an AI model on its own sprites, using it to interpolate frames between the hand-drawn ones. The result is a mix of new hand-drawn artwork, original sprites that have been enhanced by AI, and facial expressions created by human animators.
Remembering disasters like Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition and GTA: The Definitive Edition, where the use of AI created all sorts of weird anomalies, I was on the lookout for oddities, but I found nothing but improvements, like the tiny background posters outside the cafe, where the images are finally identifiable. George has a sort of bewildered look on his face most of the time, which doesn't always fit the scene even though it largely fits George's personality, but otherwise it's an absolutely breathtaking adventure game.
The audio has also been improved, though the improvements are less noticeable here. Dialogue still sounds a bit muffled, but to be clear: it's still much cleaner than the original. This is probably the best you can get without simply re-recording the entire film, which was obviously too difficult a task.
A difficulty system (Story or Classic) rounds out the small number of changes, and while the Story mode doesn't sit well with me, its inclusion isn't unwelcome. Receiving the answers to puzzles will rob you of the joy that comes from solving Broken Sword's sometimes complex ones, but the little nudges in the right direction (the way it stops you from repeating redundant actions or subtly guides you to places you should definitely be poking around) won't.
This is a classic pixel-hunting, inventory-baffling adventure game where you'll spend a lot of time trying to use one item on another until you get it right (or figure out the right approach and avoid all the trial-and-error nonsense), and while I'm a nostalgic sicko who actually enjoys that kind of thing, the ability to avoid some of the bullshit doesn't hurt the adventure.
What we're left with is a wonderful adventure filled with killer clowns, weird cops, harassing goats, and an American tourist who can't help but annoy foreigners. And while that style of adventure game may be old hat (but it's definitely not dead, as evidenced by the fact that a new Broken Sword is in the works), George and Nico's globe-trotting escapades are undeniably solid. And that's the best way to enjoy them.
