Hey all,

I know this question has been asked before, but as I complete newbie to the Broken Sword series I have to ask - should I play the Director's Cut or the original?

I've been into adventure games for a while. When I was younger I always used to play the LucasArts games (Monkey Island, Sam & Max, etc...) while my brother was ALWAYS playing the Sierra stuff. I suppose I've always been more into the story whereas my brother was more interested in the puzzles (Tim Schafer = great). After the "fall of LucasArts", I (like a lot of people) pretty much stopped playing point-and-click adventure games all together. Just recently though I started to get back into them after discovering Telltale's Sam & Max and Monkey Island relaunches. Both are excellent yet they tend to be pretty easy when it comes to the puzzles (with the former being pretty uninspired in that area, despite the creative and funny story), so I started looking for a good mix of good story and good/decent puzzles. From what I've found, Broken Sword pretty much fits that mold. So on to the questions...

I have absolutely no experience with the Broken Sword series so it doesn't particularly matter to me if one is more true to the original idea or series; to me all that matters is which one I'll enjoy more. As I understand it, Director's Cut essentially 1. makes everything modern-computer-compatible (i.e. no ScummVM needed), 2. improves the resolution, 3. changes the voice acting (though there seems to be disagreement on this?), 4. changes/removes some of the animations (a few people mentioned that the backgrounds were no long animated, e.g. flags no longer blow in the wind), 5. adds a new intro chapter where you play as a different character (apparently this new intro changes the mood of the game?), and 6. improves the character graphics and the graphics of some (only the new?) cutscenes. With the exception of the removal of animated backgrounds and maybe some graphical inconsistencies, it seems like the Director's Cut would be much better? Or does the mood really change that much with the new into/is the new intro really that bad? Oh, and I also heard something about the Director's Cut being easier because of hints - how "invasive" is this? Also, are people having issues running the original in ScummVM? I attempted to use ScummVM a while back and had some trouble getting it to run correctly (despite me having no issue getting things like DOSBox to run resource-intensive games well), and I read here a few people having issues with Broken Sword and ScummVM.

Wow, I wrote a lot - hope you got through my babbling. Sorry for all the questions, thanks for reading!

-Ben

EDIT: I forgot to mention - I'm running Windows 7 x64

The Director's Cut has a few extra scenes here and there, but all of them are pretty bad and ruin the pace of the game, mostly because the new puzzles are absolutely terrible (they are not really "adventure puzzles", they are more like poor jigsaw puzzles). Story-wise, these new scenes don't bring much to the table (and I have to agree that the new opening can't hold a candle to the old one), and playing them is a real chore.
Also, some of the original puzzles were simplified, and some hotspots were removed.

Play the original.

Thanks for the reply - that definitely leans me towards the original.

How well does the original run in ScummVM? Any "game-breaking" bugs?

As far as I know, it works perfectly fine.

Director cut added some out of place story involving Nico. And they have edited out plenty of hotspot and cutscenes. If you decide to go with the original, check this thread first:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/broken_sword_the_smoking_mirror/bs1_original_version_crashes_on_save/page1

Thanks for the reply :)

I ended up buying the game and starting with the original version, though unfortunately I didn't know about the save crash until I tried to save about half an hour in... I've got it fixed now though, so all should be well (I hope!)

Great game by the way!

I would say that play both versions, but start with the original (like you already did).

I liked both versions and personally I think that you can get more from the DC if you're already familiar with the story. I usually consider DC as an alternative version of the story and the changes don't annoy me, because I also have the original version and I play it if I want to experience the original story.

People always disagree which version is the best. Some people like the new versions of adventure games with better graphics and others always complain that remakes aren't as good as origials. It happened with King's Quest back in 1990 and it has happened with recent Monkey Island remakes.

You're doing the right thing by playing the original first. The start of the DC version is much, much weaker than the original, and the whole thing runs more on rails with hotspots and a few events that play out differently or easier. I was actually surprised how different the two versions were. Thought the Nico story in the DC was pretty weak too, and didn't really make much sense. Big de-tour really. But you can check it out after you have completed the original.

It's a wonderful game. For me it was the best of the three games I played (1-3). They're all good games, but the first was better. And not just because Nico sounds sexier in it :D

I have just finished the DC version and I have to say I have not enjoyed it nearly as much as the original one. I specially did not like how they screwed the beginning of the game and how they ruled out some cutscenes from the original game. Also, the quality of the voice recordings is outrageous at times and most anticlimactic.

Overall I felt the game had lost a great deal of its former magic and while I rather enjoyed the added puzzles - or should I say minigames - in no way do they make up for all the woes. So I would advise anyone new to the BS series to go with the original version instead.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the director's cut version removes blood from several cutscenes. It's a small cosmetic change (amongst some larger, more fundamental ones) but many people felt strongly about this "censorship".

I've only played the director's cut version so I didn't know or care that anything was missing. I just really enjoyed the game overall, even though there were some weird story threads that seemed to come out of nowhere. I loved the game enough that I'd like to play the original.

Aye, blood was removed from the game. Another point I forgot to mention is that for some reason the DC version simplifies many of the puzzles and dialogue choices - another reason to play the original version instead.