Resurrection: Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

By Mark Brown

British developers Revolution are resurrecting point-and-click franchise Broken Sword by releasing the first three games on Steam. Games 2 and 3 – The Smoking Mirror and The Sleeping Dragon – are available now, and the first game will be added to the store soon. Here’s why you should buy it when it emerges.

“Paris in the fall: the last months of the year and the end of the millennium. The city holds many memories for me: of cafés, of music, of love and of death.”

To some, Broken Sword’s opening voiceovers shovel gravitas and amateur poetry into gamers’ ears through tinny, 1996 audio files. But to stalwart Sword fanatics, these warm proclamations and heartfelt anecdotes are the words of legend. The raucous orchestral outburst that follows these lines never fails to send shivers down my spine.

To George Stobbart, a Californian tourist resting outside a Paris café, these simple words preface an event that will change his life forever: a gigantic blazing explosion, plumes of thick black smoke and a scarpering arsonist dressed as a clown. Not so much as perturbed that he was nearly killed in the blast (although the customer before him wasn’t so lucky), George dusts himself off and starts his investigation.

Little does he know that his quest for justice, vengeance, excitement or – more likely – to impress the cute photo-journalist Nico Collard who happens to be covering the blast, will take him on an epic adventure around the globe. It’s a trip that spirals into deception and betrayal, love and death, conspiracy and cultism – with little instigation from George himself. He’s mostly along for the ride, picking up the trail just after the mysterious sect of killers, or getting there one step before them.

//The Last Templar of The Illuminatus
Broken Sword chose a malevolent force of evil that, in 1996, was considered fresh and exciting; the point-and-click adventure’s depiction of Neo Templars predated The Da Vinci Code and Assassin’s Creed by years. The game describes (in a particularly educational segment) how the order of knights, bearing an iconic red cross on a blanket of white, were wiped out by King Philip IV of France, leaving behind a missing wealth of treasure and loot.

This creates a gang of wannabe Templars, from petty thieves and gangsters to renowned inventors and detectives, who will stop at nothing to find the fabled treasure of the Order. The global reach of their faction and the chronological join-the-dots of the treasure’s whereabouts unravel like a cotton reel, snagging at landmarks, monuments and relics from around the globe. Treasures point to town names, scrolls direct to countries and Latin scripture on murals indicate regions of the world.

An ancient tripod in a Parisian museum mentions Ireland on its plaque, the orchestral music swells and a new location is added to George’s map. Next thing you know you’re in the sleepy, melancholy village of Lochmarne where residents lounge on bar stools, throw back pints and share gossip on the town’s archaeological dig or tall tales about the castle’s ghost. There’s a reclusive countess and her luscious Spanish villa that hides a secret, a perilous hill-top cave in Syria that holds a message for any treasure seekers. The penultimate scene sees George and Nico on a midnight train journey through the Scottish highlands.

//Impulse, with a dash of irrational intuition
For point-and-click aficionados, there’s clearly a split between the loony comical adventures of the Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry breed, and the serious exploits of games like Dreamfall and The Dig. But Broken Sword blurs the distinction, frequently escaping from the grisly murders and conspiracy plot with witty quips from George or the blundering stupidity of stereotyped goons and bit parts. “Stop, don’t shoot!” exclaims George, held at police gunpoint as he walks away from the colossal blast, “I’m innocent, I’m an American!” “Can’t make up your mind, eh?” Sergeant Moue zings back.

George Stobbart feels like an early prototype for the Nathan Drake archetype of today. His confidence far outweighs his abilities, he jokes in the face of danger and he’s got the roguish charm of today’s heroes. It’s a shame that while Drake’s voice actor, Nolan North, seems to have signed contracts to voice every videogame protagonist until 2034, Stobbart’s vocalist Rolf Saxon is stuck doing the narration for the Teletubbies.

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