The Remastered Beauty of Broken Sword 1 and the Advent of Broken Sword 6

Embark on a journey into the world of game development and storytelling as we sit down with Charles Cecil, the renowned British video game designer and co-founder of Revolution Software. Delve into the eagerly awaited return of the beloved "Broken Sword" series as Cecil shares insights into the creative process behind crafting captivating narratives, designing intricate puzzles, and the challenges faced in bringing back the iconic adventures of George Stobbart and Nico Collard. From the announcement of new titles to the remastering of classics, Cecil offers a fascinating glimpse into his world.

You announced new Broken Sword games last year. So, why did we have to wait so long for the next chapter in this beloved series? 

One reason we waited so long is that writing new games is hard, and if there’s an excuse, it is so tempting to do just about anything else. When we completed Broken Sword 5 in 2013, there was the opportunity to port the game to iOS, Android, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. I had been talking to Dave Gibbons about creating a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky, and it felt natural to do that next. But during this time, I had been thinking, planning, and researching a new Broken Sword game, which we started once Beyond a Steel Sky was completed. So, it is exciting to finally be able to talk about both Broken Sword 6: Parzival’s Stone and Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Reforged. 

I also think it's quite good not to write games in one series too regularly. At one point, Final Fantasy games were coming out each year, which damaged fans’ perception of the series – I think they were sensible to slow down. 

Another reason is that coming up with new stories that fit into the Broken Sword canon takes time. For Broken Sword 6: Parzival’s Stone, I was very excited when I visited a wonderful little village called Montségur many years ago. I've been saving Montségur as a fabulous location around which to build a theme for the whole game, and now the time has come! 

Past games had wonderful stories. Where did you take inspiration for the new one? 

Broken Sword 5 features a Christian group called the Cathars (who followed Gnostic teachings), and the inspiration comes from when my wife and I visited a little village called Montségur about 20 years ago. Montségur is high in the Pyrenees and doesn't have a direct Templar connection, but it is part of that mythology. In 1244, the Cathars had their final stand there against the combined forces of the Pope and the King of France. Ten thousand Crusaders laid siege to this tiny village, defended by just a hundred soldiers who managed to hold out because there are only two very steep paths up to the village. Controlling these paths allowed the defenders to survive, there's also a very sheer cliff, and they could pull up food. 

On Christmas Eve 1244, the Crusaders sent professional climbers up that cliff through the snow. They managed to overcome and kill the defenders, allowing the Crusaders to bring up their trebuchet and eventually take the village. The story of this siege, with its clear fight between good and bad, was very exciting and inspiring. 

When I first arrived in Montségur, it was dark, and I went to a tiny hotel with only five rooms. The hotel was full, and the owner told us it was the only hotel in the village. As I was walking back to the car, an old woman opened a window and told me about a second hotel, which the first owner hadn't mentioned. My children were terrified because doors opened and closed in the middle of the night. It felt like a museum stuck in the 1930s. I also met Richard Stanley, a filmmaker who recently directed Color Out of Space with Nicolas Cage, and who lives in Montségur. He showed me some of the locations, shared the history, and gave me fantastic insights into the Cathars. 

It is brilliant, and you can go all the way back to the time of Christ. There are Gospels that were declared heretical at the Council of Nicaea around 400-450 AD, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Very few of these Gospels exist because they were ordered to be destroyed. In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, she talks about secret knowledge, and she was a Gnostic. The Cathars were Gnostics as well. It's extraordinary because, even at the time of Jesus, there was a competing faction that believed in equality and that women should be priests. It kind of made sense. 

If you go back to those early days, you had Doubting Thomas, who, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, wasn't there when Jesus gave the authority because he was a Gnostic. Even back then, Gnostics were being attacked. Mary Magdalene was called a whore because she was a Gnostic. Suddenly, it all makes sense why these different factions existed and why Gnostics were persecuted. They built a foothold in Languedoc in southwest France and flourished in the 12th century. That's why the King of France, who wanted that land, and the Pope, who wanted to wipe them out, launched a crusade. 

I'll tell you one last thing. There's a city called Béziers, the first to fall, where 90% of the inhabitants were Roman Catholic and only 10% were Cathars. When the Crusaders got in, they shouted to the Pope's envoy, Arnaud Amalric, 'Who should we kill?' He famously replied, 'Kill them all, God will know his own.' They killed 30,000 people, the vast majority of whom were Catholics. This brutality, combined with the spirituality and the idea that Montségur was the Grail castle, makes for a great story. Every Broken Sword game should have a great deal of truth and a great deal of conjecture, but that conjecture must feel credible.

Why did you decide to announce and develop both the remake of Broken Sword 1 and a new Broken Sword 6 simultaneously? 

Before starting on Broken Sword 6, we're working on a hugely enhanced version of Broken Sword 1. I felt it was necessary to announce Broken Sword 6 earlier than usual because otherwise, we would have been inundated with questions like, 'When's Broken Sword 6 coming?' We have incredible fans with so much loyalty, and it's wonderful, but they naturally ask about Broken Sword 6. So, I thought the best approach was to announce the Broken Sword remake and Broken Sword 6 concurrently. The story and many of the puzzles for Broken Sword 6 are already there, but we're still at least a year off. 

At Gamescom last year, I showcased how we're mixing 2D and 3D because point-and-click adventures often hark back to the '90s, but people want to play differently now. Technologies and gameplay ideas have evolved significantly. 

I think Broken Sword 1 was ahead of its time in that the puzzles weren't slapstick. Slapstick puzzles are great, but they can be quite simple, like using a red bottle to attract a magpie to get a piece of glass. What's harder is crafting a story that's robust, with puzzles driven by the characters' motivations within the world. Broken Sword really pushed that idea, unlike many other adventure games of the time that relied on slapstick. Those slapstick games broadly haven't survived, but Broken Sword has, and I believe it's because of the logical puzzles and strong stories we developed. 

I'm very proud to bring Broken Sword 1 back, and with Broken Sword 6, we're looking forward, not backward. When people reinvent adventures now, they often look to the past. I really admire Thimbleweed Park, a pixel game with modern technology, which is brilliant. However, I have less interest in games that simply reinvent themselves without moving forward.  

Can you share insights into the development process of the Broken Sword 1 remake? What were the most significant challenges faced, and were there any unique aspects or new features introduced in the remake that fans can look forward to? 

The main challenge is that we have 30,000 sprites, and each one takes about an hour to redraw, making it really unfeasible from a cost perspective. We were able to use AI to handle some of the more tedious work, but it's still a huge endeavor. We have close to 20 artists working on our sprites, with AI handling the boring parts of the ink and paint. The AI helps draw faces, expressions, hands, and improves animations where necessary, making the process more feasible. 

We were also able to bring back some of our original background artists from 1996. I discarded a lot of materials, but we still have the original layouts. We redrew over these layouts using the original game as a reference because ultimately, I'm not changing anything fundamental. 

Everything that happens in Broken Sword 1 remains a fact, I'm just adjusting some elements. For example, at the beginning, there's a scene where George pulls a drainpipe in an alleyway, and he says, 'Oh, he didn't escape that way.' But the drainpipe doesn't go off the top of the screen, so it's obvious the clown didn't go that way. We're extending the drainpipe to make it more logical. Another example is the stool with the bomb in the first scene; the explosion happens ten feet away, but the stool remains untouched. 

There's also an inconsistency with the assassin's jacket. You find his jacket, and later he comes back with a purple jacket and trousers as part of the suit, but the purple trousers are already in the wardrobe. These little inconsistencies are being addressed to make the game more logical and consistent. 

While going through the dialogue, we found many fun exchanges that were never triggered in the game. These were written and translated 25 years ago, but some logic prevented them from being included. For instance, there's a scene about the death of Peagram and Rosso talking, that was never triggered. Including these dialogues now is like a director's cut, adding back content that was always part of the canon. 

At Gamescom, I demonstrated a feature where I pressed a button to switch to the original graphics, and people were blown away. Everybody says this is how they remember it, but that's not how it was. And the problem is that for a new generation who don't have any sense of nostalgia, it's just a snowstorm of pixels. We're increasing the resolution by 36 times in each direction, resulting in a massive increase in scale.

What was the creative process behind developing the captivating narrative for the first two Broken Sword games? 

I worked at Activision back in the late '80s, which was a very different company from today's Activision. However, I had started writing games myself in the early '80s and wanted to get back into development. So, I founded Revolution Software, initially in Hull, and assembled a team including Tony Warriner, whom I had previously worked with at Activision. My lead tester at Activision was a talented writer named Dave Cummins. His ability was evident because we were publishing adventure games that were not well-written, and his feedback on these games surpassed the quality of their writing. 

My dynamic with Dave was interesting; I aimed for serious stories with humor, but he possessed a dry wit. Consequently, the first two Broken Sword games heavily reflected his narrative style. While we sometimes clashed, I managed the story elements and puzzles, while he handled the narrative. We occasionally adjusted dialogue to fit the narrative context. From a storytelling perspective, I owe Dave a great deal. Jonathan Howard joined us later, but initially, it was predominantly Dave Cummins and myself handling the story and dialogue. 

What is your creative process when it comes to designing a game? How do you approach game development, particularly in crafting engaging narratives and intricate puzzles? 

Gameplay must take precedence, but it must always be anchored in the story. Typically, I begin with a two or three-page story outline. There are always two intertwined narratives: one unfolding in medieval times as seen in Broken Sword 1 or Broken Sword 6, and the other in the contemporary setting. Both narratives must resonate with each location and scene. 

For Broken Sword: Parzival’s Stone, after drafting the story, I evaluate its gameplay potential and what makes it enjoyable. In this case, the concept of the Grail altering time, akin to quantum choices, and a series of puzzles that harmonize well emerged. It's then a matter of refining these ideas to suit the point-and-click adventure format, integrating them throughout the game. 

The design and story documents are always separate but kept synchronized. The story must inform the puzzle concepts, and vice versa, although this process is intricate. Sometimes, I wish for simpler games with recurring mechanics that escalate in complexity, but my passion lies in crafting adventure games. Games like The Witcher or Baldur's Gate are magnificent, but they tell stories differently, driven by combat rather than narrative puzzles. Therefore, it's particularly gratifying when players say, 'It didn't feel like solving puzzles; it felt like engaging in compelling narrative challenges.' 

We're not unique in the fact that other games tell very powerful stories. First-person shooters tell stories where you have a big linear bit of narrative, which is non-interactive - rewarding upon completion and setting up the next one, and that's fine as well. But as far as pure story is concerned, I would argue that the adventures we write, where the puzzles are deeply ingrained into the narrative, are a pretty pure form of how to tell stories interactively. 

How do you design puzzles that challenge players while maintaining the flow of the game? 

The question really is, how do you design puzzles that are not too easy and make sense? Just an example: get the sellotape and the cat hair and put it on as a mustache. That's a difficult puzzle, but it's not a good puzzle. And the problem is that if you make your puzzles logical, then it's quite difficult to make them hard. So, I would always prefer to keep them logical and, if necessary, accept the ire of people who say your games are too easy. But I think that often what they're saying is, we want the really frustrating ones. 

My problem that I learned very early is that when a lot of people objected to the fact that our games were too easy, I put in a puzzle involving a goat in the first Broken Sword game. People who understood the grammar thought it was great because it took them just a few minutes. It was 15-20 minutes to get past that point for everybody else. They were absolutely stuck, and they had no idea how to progress. So, it's very unfair, but of course, it's fun. And of course, you know, people celebrate that puzzle. But the reason it was difficult is that it wasn't a fair puzzle. If we changed the way the control system worked a third of the way through the game, which you could do in 1997 or 1998, but in 2023-2024, that's not acceptable. The way that people play games has changed now, and it's a much wider audience. They just want you to be fair with them. 

I love the passion of people that I meet. So many people talk about the first Broken Sword, Beneath a Steel Sky, or even Lure of the Temptress, and they remember so much about the characters and the story. And if you say: tell me about the first Indiana Jones Raiders film, they won't remember nearly as much detail. So, what is clear is that we are able to write stories in an incredibly dynamic way. Which in many ways has more potential to be more powerful than linear narrative. So, from an intellectual perspective, I'm really excited by that. 

And what I love are actually the fans; a lot of them talk about the fact that the games have changed their lives. There is a story I told before, a couple of years ago I met a young man, and he said: 'When I was young, I had a very unhappy childhood, and my mother died. And I played Broken Sword, and I discovered that ordinary people could do extraordinary things.' He said: 'You've literally saved my life.' What more could you want? If I were producing games with non-fungible tokens, or if they were free to play, and I was selling loot boxes, I'd make an awful lot more money, but I choose not to do that.

So now, you're bringing back Broken Sword, and you've already brought back Beneath a Steel Sky. So how about Lure of the Temptress? 

Lure of the Temptress is so basic, and the game design is so naive that it wouldn't work. We're lucky with Beneath the Steel Sky because I think that was crafted around a story. It was quite slapstick, and it was quite fun, but Lure of the Temptress, it got very good reviews. It averaged about 95%, but the gameplay just wouldn't stand up. I mean, my first adventure game was a text adventure, and it's not very good. But I think we're lucky to be able to go back as far as Beneath the Steel Sky. I don't think we can go any further back than that. 

How about a complete remake of Lure of the Temptress? 

Well, we could do it. I mean, that was a classic, and it was fun because in the case of Dave Cummins and me, you know, different approach. There's a very serious intro, beautifully animated, which is setting the story up to be serious, and then you have ludicrous situations. So, yeah, that was very much when we were kind of finding our feet. Dave, whom I admire enormously, passed away. It's been lovely working with other writers, but that's why we didn't continue after Broken Sword II.