The point-and-click genre of adventure games is a always a great base to build off when you’re looking to have valid puzzles that are organic to every scene. And it never hurts to throw in a ton of awesome characters and beautiful dialogue. Revolution Software, led by Broken Sword’s top creator, Charles Cecil, continues to craft rich, engaging stories using that simple-yet-effective set of tools.
I would say that, as a result, The Shadow of the Templars is a great adventure that does a nice job tying together the titular group in a mystery that has you globe-trotting all over from Paris to Syria and back again. And it does so using 2D artwork.
The first time I met Broken Sword was through a friend who was adamant that I experience it for myself. He lent me his copy, and the second I booted up the game, I fell in love. It looked like a living painting, each scene had so much detail, all of it lovingly rendered by hand. Our hero, George Stobbart, whom we are in control of for the most part, is an American patent attorney on vacation in Paris. But as it is wont to do in the lives of those who find themselves in adventure games, the ordinary takes a hike, and George is left to unravel a mystery of Templars, the Knights of ancient times who were said to possess a secret that could upset world order.
Broken Sword, on so many levels, is a tale of two halves. One, a historical half, draws from the historical background of the Knights Templar, now much-vaunted as a would-be conspiracy. In this part of the tale lies a very clear secret from history. The second half of the game finds our modern-day protagonist in yet more dire straits, as part of what is, at its core, a good, old-fashioned “who dunit.” And as in the last game, you’re looking to solve the riddles of the eons (in concert with your character, who does most of the work) and explain what you found to others, both the halfwits of the secret society and your unenlightened partner.
The protagonist of the game, George Stobbart, is very easy to like and to relate to. He’s an American patent lawyer now, but—as he keeps reminding us—he was once just a guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time and somehow got pulled into saving the world. His forcefully light tone has an odd but large appeal. And the chemistry between George and Nico is, in my opinion, the best part of Broken Sword.
The art direction in this game is truly something to behold. Each background is detailed in a way that only hand-drawn art can be, with way more going on in each image than any static image has any right to hold. From the top of the Eiffel Tower to the bottom of the catacombs, the level of detail is obsessive. Characters, too, move with a range of actions and emotions that reflect the diversity of real people; the awesome thing is, there are no real edges or even stillness. And what is even better is, you can really tell that no one in the game is having conversations filled with placeholders.
The puzzle design in Broken Sword is magnificent. What is the secret of the Broken Sword, and why is it so appealing? I think it’s the fantastic puzzle design that has been stitched into the game. And there’s one thing in particular that, to me, really signals that a puzzle in a game is excellent design. And it’s a word that some people find off-putting or use in a derogatory way, but I can’t think of a better word, so I’ll use this one: “obviousness.”
I remember a really unforgettable puzzle in the form of a medieval document. It was up to the player to figure out the meaning of the virtual manuscript, which was chock full of strange symbols that didn’t correspond to anything in the average person’s range of knowledge about secret ciphers. There were also a few clues sprinkled about. Using the virtual clues and lots of real knowledge about forgotten or not-well-known history, the player was expected to solve a puzzle that, after many hours, would yield the correct answer.
The game’s interface was delightfully sleek and simple. And the controls worked quite well. There were never any commands that could become potentially obtuse or fiddly (the by-product of a bad, point-and-click system), and it was fairly easy to see what kinds of objects you could interact with which would then lead to you being able to figure out a puzzle. The design of this game was supremely friendly to newcomers and even old hands at the adventure genre. It was a type of “You have the freedom around the screen but only use the type of contextual controls that wouldn’t give you carpal tunnel or unnecessary migraines” that I approvingly and enthusiastically completely dug.
One more facet of the puzzle design impresses me, the use of real-world locations and historical artifacts. The game’s creators clearly undertook an incredible amount of research and made the game feel very “real” by setting most of it in actual places (like Jerusalem and Acre) and pushing you to interact with their approximations of real historical objects. You can almost feel the team trying their absolute hardest to make the experience as emblematically and surreally real as possible, which I think they accomplished here.
Broken sword offers a fresh and exciting, always evolving gameplay, for two main reasons. The first reason is the different puzzles that gamers have to solve: no two puzzles are the same, making for a nice change. The Broken sword series offers inventory-based and knowledge-based puzzles. Every time the puzzle is on the side of the inventory, there are defined objects that gamers can use and combine. In the sections of the game bordering on the knowledge base, players can strive for victory by using what they’ve learned from the surrounding narrative. Daedalic Entertainment has made sure that the victory is always savored.
The original Broken Sword was by no means a solitary stroke of genius; it gracefully gave birth to a handful of follow-ups that had just as much, if not more, luster than the first game. Every Broken Sword title after “Circle of Blood” upped “The Smoking Mirror”: they all featured ancient conspiracies, mind-bending puzzles, and an array of wonderful, often humorous moments.
Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror came out in 1997. Like the first game, it cast George and Nico as the co-stars of a new adventure, this time involving the artifacts of an ancient Mayan civilization. The couple’s on-again, off-again relationship had hit the pause button for the moment, making for another nice, frisson-filled setup. The game was more expansive than the original, with new mechanics and a whole lot of new places to visit; for instance, the couple journeyed to the Mayan jungles of Central America. As before, the game invited the player to make mental leaps and work with a virtual geography of preposterous places.
The Broken Sword series made an essential change with The Sleeping Dragon in 2003. It moved on from 2D to 3D, letting the player take direct control of the characters (while the first two games had a point-and-click interface). Some fans didn’t much care for the change, but you still gotta hand it to the game, you can’t deny it with the mixed reactions it got from the fans, that it still delivered an engaging narrative along uncomplicated puzzles. As always, I enjoyed the narrative and the puzzles. So, the next thing to say here was that the camera perspective was even worse than the previous games, which led to more dynamic and dramatic camera angles.
Broken Sword: The Angel of Death, released in 2006, holds true to the 3D form set by its predecessor. There was no going back to the original 2D style for George and Nico, even though many fans wanted just that. The 3D style seen in The Sleeping Dragon was here to stay. Its creators had to try to refine the 3D puzzle adventure, and although The Angel of Death was panned by several critics who either really didn’t “get” what the remodeled Broken Sword series was trying to do, its puzzles were generally challenging and well-designed.
The software company Revolution returned to the Broken Sword series in 2013. They released Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse, which delighted old fans by once again featuring the classic 2D art that had defined the earlier games. Both fans and critics seemed to appreciate the more direct “point-and-click” mechanics of the new title, a feature that had begun to fade in many AoG titles of the last decade. When the new game did incorporate movement, it was usually in service of solving a single-screen puzzle, which typically involved some very funny and often absurd logic.
Looking back on my time with the Broken Sword series fills me with nostalgia and a deep sense of gratitude. Not only did the games become an important facet of my gaming life, structuring my tastes and interests in the same kinds of video game narrative foundations that formed a lot of other millennial kids into the adventure game fans we sampled; Revolution Software’s premier series taught me a great number of things that have had some truly impenetrable staying power. I still carry these moments around with me, not just while playing other games but also in my studies and life outside of gaming.
Broken Sword made a lasting impression on players by taking them on a journey around the world. Every scene felt meticulously created and was rich with stunning detail. From the streets of Paris to the heart of the Mayan jungle, there was always something to look at. There was no doubt that the designers had invested significant time into creating every scene, and the visuals were not the only factor that aided the experience of exploration, for the characters themselves had plenty of charm to offer, and the pacing also maintained itself. And if there were any times when players felt they were missing anything important, all they had to do was use the game’s hint system, take good old-fashioned notes, or use all their characters’ abilities, an innovative mechanic connecting the memorable aspects of this game.
The variety of characters in the series was enthralling as well. From moment to moment, it seemed that each personality was on the verge of revealing some aspect of their individuality that would pull you in for the enthrallment of that particular episode. Yet, what was even more captivating was the promise of their interaction with each other, which I imagined would bring something new and unexpected into the picture. Take, for example, Nicole Collard, resourceful, inquisitive, and above all, alluring. Some young boys watched cartoons for wet nurses on Saturday mornings. At the age of over fifteen, I watched Broken Sword because Nicole Collard to me.
On a deeper level, the themes of the Broken Sword series resonated with me. They were games of historical and often theological enormities. The narrative was a multilayered tapestry of symbolism laden with monumental events and boundless mysteries. Education and entertainment were at the heart of the experience. More specifically, the series piqued my interest with its continual reference to historical events and figures.
The Broken Sword adventure games have made an outsized contribution to all of the best elements that make up great games in this genre: memorable characters, compelling narratives, and really good puzzles. I think it’s fair to say that Broken Sword established a series of really high, tough-to-reach virtual peaks that have pushed and challenged the creative possibilities not only in what adventure games by themselves could be, as a way of experience, but also of what you might just call “games,” period. And in all that, Broken Sword, from the beginning, has been a major, major influence: I tend to think of it next to “Myst” and “The 7th Guest” on CD-ROM, and of course when the talk turns to those, it’s all about the money they made, pushing the genre as a viable and potentially profitable form in a new market.
Broken Sword too demonstrated that video games can serve as a medium for telling powerful stories. The tale it told was far more than one of finding treasure or saving the world; it was about who its characters were, particularly why they did the things they did when confronted by situations that had no right answers and that tested their mettle and their mettle’s limits. And its frequently witty dialogue rarely let up in its pressure on the characters during the emotionally charged climax of a narrative that was so strong few had any chance of forgetting it, least of all any unfortunate soul who was kidnapped and almost sacrificed to a bull by the unspeakable cult that operated behind the engages-before one of the neutron bomb-like plot twists that had the stunning narrative action just before the story’s virtual curtain closed.
Looking back at the Broken Sword series, I feel a deep sense of gratitude. This gratitude is for the hours and hours of quality time that I’ve been able to spend with the game series. I’ve been able to experience a fantastic and often deep story, impressively crafted characters, and incredibly well-drawn and detailed artwork. And it’s not just me, the series commands a fiercely loyal fan base. Despite more than a decade since the release of the first game, fans continue to cherish and celebrate Broken Sword.
In sum, the Broken Sword series is about much more than moving from one challenge or puzzle to the next. Each title in the set is a journey along well-crafted paths of intrigue, discovery, and sheer wonder, and in my case, certainly, a fine bit of nostalgia to boot. Broken Sword stands tall and proud, an experience to vouch for the serendipity of video games. If you were not around when the magic was happening, you must play. It is happening still, and in any case, its magic must not be missed.
