Broken Sword: Director's Cut

Broken Sword, the 1996 PC original was a great game back then. It built upon some already solid point-and-click adventure foundations established by the likes of LucasArts and Sierra, and offered a more mature story (and humour) for an increasingly mature gaming audience. It was also the first PC adventure game that I recall that also had adverts for it running in the cinemas here in the UK. I still have my original CD copy, though unfortunately thanks to modern advances in OSes, its 16-bit installer simply will not work on my 64-bit Windows 7 setup. It was also a game I never got to finish - for some reason, my copy of the game had a game-breaking glitch that made it impossible to leave Syria. Thankfully, GOG has thoughtfully included the original game with the somewhat-derided Director's Cut. thankfully, this version also appears to lack this annoying glitch. So, onto the Director's Cut it is then. Rather than running through the plot (and probably spoiling it), I'm going to focus on the technical issues and additions here instead. Chances are, many of you will have already played a version of Broken Sword at some point anyway. The first thing you notice when you start a new game, is a completely new opening scene, one that rather than placing George Stobbart under your control, actually gives you control over Nico Collard instead. the opening scene, part of Nico's somewhat-clumsily integrated backstory is pretty much a sign of what to expect from the Director's Cut edition of the game. In the original game, Nico was pretty much a bit-part character, basically remaining in the background whilst George did all the investigating. To be honest, it worked pretty well, considering that George was intended to be the main character. Here, however, in an attempt to add a little more substance to Nico's character, we are introduced to a series of extra segments which attempt to create a personal backstory for her. Without going giving away any spoilers, they have very little impact on the main story itself, and basically feel superfluous. In fact, scratch that - they had no impact on the story whatsoever (since Nico's side story ends pretty quickly) and feel completely superfluous. It was possible that Nico's side-story was intended to flesh out the game a bit so you got an extra one or two hours worth of gameplay out of it, but the reality of it was that some of the main dialogue in the game had been removed (especially some of the original dialogue at the café shortly after the bombing) to seeming add some pace to the flow of the story. The other problem with introducing these segments was having to change the overall relationship between George and Nico. In the original, they were little more than acquaintances and Nico pretty much kept her personal life to herself. She was also portrayed as a somewhat confident, yet aloof character who kept her secrets to herself. Yet in the Director's Cut, she's much more at ease with George and a lot more open about herself, which just felt odd, and still did not sit well with the main plot, especially the later scenes. Thankfully, the rest of the plot hadn't been tampered with too much. There are other issues. In order to give Nico some additional dialogue for her side-story, a new voice actor was brought in, who seemingly ended up re-voicing the rest of Nico's dialogue too. However, it appears not all of it was used. There are some jarring moments where the voice acting (and audio quality) changes mid-conversation, where the original voice actor can be heard and at a much lower volume level. Likewise, although both Nico's and George's dialogue had largely been re-recorded, the same can not always be said for the secondary characters where the original recordings often remain - fairly scratchy audio and muffled sound in some cases. In other cases, voiced dialogue can often be missing altogether and I found myself relying on subtitles to read the missing bits. Speaking of subtitles, they do not work in cutscenes which is annoying considering at least one cutscene failed to load any accompanying audio during my playthrough. Graphically, the original featured some amazing hand-drawn (and painted) characters and backdrops that looked great in their native 640x480 resolution at the time. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said now on a 1280x1024 display. The high-resolution portraits used for the dialogue segments sit uncomfortably on top of some very ropey-looking low resolution backdrops and characters. Although a blur filter had been used to mask the lack of pixels, surely someone at Revolution still had the original high-resolution masters? This brings me onto a second problem - background animations. The Parisian sewers appear to get some animated water while the Hotel Ubu loses its animated flags. Inconsistency appears to the the order of the day with this Director's Cut. Although some people complained about the puzzles, to be honest I didn't really view them as a bad thing as they broke up the story a bit. The automatically highlighted objects on the other had is something else. This is meant to be a point-and-click adventure game, and part of that involves exploration. Having everything that can be examined or manipulated highlighted in full view ruins that somewhat. As far as this game goes, it's not a travesty. It just feels unfinished in places, and to be honest, when we already had the excellent original, somewhat unnecessary. Some of the changes made to the original story to fit in Nico's awkward side-story feel completely unnecessary - they just feel forced in somehow. The voice acting for the most part is OK, but I did find myself preferring the original voice acting for both George and Nico, but really what lets this version down are the technical inconsistencies - the ropey audio, the broken cutscenes, the missing background animations and the awkward overlaying of high resolution graphics over low-resolution backdrops. The whole experience just feels rushed and by-the-numbers, like a lot of so-called "HD" remakes these days. The overall package still gets four stars however, thanks to the inclusion of the excellent original game.

Broken Sword is legend. I first played this game on Playstation, at the time I was not much of a PC games. The release of the Director’s Cut edition convinced me to by the first episode out of pure nostalgia. The only thing I have to say is that this new edition is a bit of a disappointment. First, I always wondered why people had the urge to modify great gaming classic without thinking about carefully beforehand. The Director’s Cut just does not add anything good too the previous experience the game could offer. The comic book style drawing are alright, but differ from the original image old gamers could had of the heroes. But on the technical aspect, the game is just completely messed up. The absence of high resolution is strange for a version of a game released like 12 years after the original considering the evolution of PC standards.All you’ll get is a blurry effect to hide the disgracious pixels or they thought. Don’t get me wrong, everything is not that bad. There is one big positive point that the Director’s Cut version had and it’s the new scenes that extend the scenario. They manage to give the story a little more depth without sacrificing the coherence and the original aura of the game. Thus those new segments of the game are a delight and are pushing the length of the game up to 12 hours total. With the GOG version of the game, apart from the usual bonus that kick-ass, you now get the original version. And THAT is just great. You will be able to enjoy the game the way you like: as a digital archeologist who wants to have the purest experience possible or curious gamers who just want to see everything the game has to offer through the director’s cut version. In both cases, what you’ll get is entertaining adventure game with immortal cartoon graphics, challenging riddles, thrilling plot, sharp humour and an unforgettable experience. Broken Sword stays what it always has been: a great game

A bit of backstory: this is one of the first adventure games I ever played on my PC... but unfortunately it didn't work. It was the 90s, I was very young at this game was very difficult for me back then (I also played it in Italian since I didn't speak English). When I finally arrived to the goat scene, a blue screen of death fell upon me. Tried to uninstall and re-install a million times but it didn't work, and since a lot of time had passed from my purchase, I couldn't bring it back to the store to exchange it. Long story short, I never finished the game - back then there were also no Youtube gameplays, and internet was still WinMx and mIRC. Flash forward some 20 years later, and I FINALLY FINISHED THIS GAME. It only took me 20 years BUT I DID IT. I cannot really say if the new version is better than the old one because I don't remember much and even if I did, I'm much more well-versed in point-and-click adventures now so the comparison wouldn't make sense to me. I also was able to play it in English, and while the Italian dubbing is good, I think some accents are lost in translation (I wouldn't even know how some of the characters would sound speaking Italian with their own accent, as their accents are not very common). So 5 stars by default BECAUSE I FINISHED IT. The story is interesting enough (altough I preferred starting with the bomb scene as it's more immersive - you're as clueless as George in that case), and while the graphics might be dated, the game is still enjoyable if you like point-and-click adventures with a retro feeling. I didn't think the game was particularly hard, and judging from the reviews the old one was harder, but if a barely teenage me could play it then even the original is probably not that hard.

FOR SCUMMVM USERS: The data files from this version CANNOT BE USED. If you intend buying this to rip the files and play the original this is not possible. Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is a fantastic game. It's easy one of the best adventure games ever made, one of the few that deserve to sit right next to the near flawless LucasArts adventures. It has a fantastic story, with brilliant writing and great gameplay. However as fantastic as the game might be, this review is going to concern the features brought in by the 'Director's Cut', since this is the version that GoG have decided to release. The Director's Cut differs from the original in that it has new sections that flesh out the story more. These are well done, they are greatly voiced and the puzzles are fine. The main point where the game disappoints is presentation. This game is probably the most shoddily done remake I've ever played. The art direction is a confused and muddled mess. The original game was more like a animated movie but the Director's Cut tries to turn the game into a comic. This horrible mish-mash of styles results in some terrible cutscenes, such as the introduction which has been butchered. Instead of being produced in an animation studio, like the old game, the new cutscenes look like they were created in flash. The game splices new and old cutscenes together and it just doesn't work. Another example of this shoddiness is the quality of the voice acting. I don't mean in terms of how good it is, it's wonderfully voiced, but in terms of sound quality. The old voice samples have not been re-recorded and so sound is horribly compressed and fuzzy. This would not be a problem if it were not for the new sections of the game which have brand new voice overs and show this problem off. Overall the more I play it, the more I want the original version. A remastered version of Broken Sword is a great idea but with low production values it just comes out as being inferior to the original. Which is a real shame, as I was looking forward to well done remake. (Or at least an option for CLASSIC MODE (which sadly isn't present)) So far it seems that nobody has pulled it off, MI:SE 1 & 2 were not that great either, but hopefully the Director's Cut of Broken Sword 2 will be better.