O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Guess, it was about time to replay Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars anyway… A classic from 1996, the original Broken Sword has often been considered one of the best point and click adventure titles. You had one good way of experiencing it (original release played via ScummVM) and one average way (Director’s Cut from 2010). But now there’s a perfect way of enjoying this title, with the new Reforged remastered release.
If you are unfamiliar with the Broken Sword franchise, it’s a series of titles made by Revolution Software that center around the adventures of George Stobbart and Nico Collard, who can’t help but constantly get involved with some ancient artefacts and secret societies. These are very much Indiana Jones-like simple adventure stories, that often starts falling apart if you try to analyse them in detail, but remain an exciting journey if you just let them entertain you. With the first title in the series, most notably, being one of the first examples of bringing the Order of Knight Templar into the pop culture, years before The Da Vinci Code and Assassin’s Creed.
Similarly to the no less incredible previous title of the studio, Beneath a Steel Sky, Broken Sword builds itself more on “problems” that the players have to solve, rather than on “puzzles”. And because of that, a lot of the clues you must learn are given to you via dialogues, not using items on other items. This is a very character driven game that attempts to feel like a deep investigation into a hidden conspiracy, so you often find yourself following vague leads that often bring you to surprising revelations, rather then linearly following a predictable story. And while the game does falter a bit in the second half, with more and more problems feeling forced and too absurd, it remains fun and intuitive for the most part.
Which is something I actually forgot – the way the investigation moves forward often feels natural, despite the fact that there are several completely optional things you can do and several moments where you can tackle the leads in any order you wish. Reforged doesn’t alter anything about this process if you’re playing on the Classic Mode, but if you wish for things to be a bit more streamlined and for the game to nudge you towards next steps, there’s a new Story Mode as well. The highlights for interactive elements return, active only in a certain radius around your pointer. Game now features auto-saves, that are mostly well placed, especially near the spots where you can die. And the enhanced visuals and audio quality are absolutely terrific.
Apart from the already mentioned weaker aspects of the second half of the game, the title does have a few rough edges that only a remake could fix. The infamous goat puzzle, for example, is as visually unintuitive as it used to be, despite the concept behind it being very easy to understand. Some of the scene transitions feel too abrupt, with you barely having a chance to register what’s going on, while suddenly finding yourself in a different part of Europe. The caricaturish nature of most characters sometimes feels a bit too much. And it’s a real downer that Nico barely has anything to do in the game. For all of its faults, and they were numerous, at least Director’s Cut tried to give Nico some interesting investigation to do on her own. Those weren’t good, but her presence in the game is very underutilized as is.
Nonetheless, Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged doesn’t feel like a new coat of paint on an adventure game that is “of its time”. This game still plays wonderfully and feels like an exciting and wonderfully presented adventure that is as fun to play now as it used to be almost 30 years ago. If you haven’t played this title before or have considered replaying it – Reforged is a great version of the game to grab, so give it a go.