Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged review

• Reviews by Richard Hoover
• Published:

Revolution’s 1996 classic returns, playing smoother and looking hotter than ever

Before Robert Langdon investigated the secrets of the Knights Templar in The Da Vinci Code, before Ben Gates hunted for the Templar treasure in National Treasure, there was George Stobbart in the 1996 point-and-click adventure Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (aka, inexplicably, Circle of Blood in North America). Now, with a bit of help from Kickstarter backers, Revolution Software has updated their golden age classic in a shiny new “Reforged” edition. With a stunning high-resolution treatment and an updated interface, this fresh coat of paint with a few under-the-hood enhancements makes the game more amazing than ever. Of course, at its heart it is still the same great characters and fun journey into mythology and conspiracies that made the original such an enduring treasure.

Many fans know the story inside and out by now, but for those who don’t or need a refresher, George is an American lawyer on vacation in Paris. While enjoying the pleasant weather outside a Parisian café, his day is interrupted by the appearance of a rather creepy-looking clown. When the café is soon blown up with a bomb, George feels compelled to investigate the matter as he doesn’t have a lot of faith in the ability of the police who arrive. In short order, he meets Nico Collard, a journalist working on a story about other terrorist acts perpetrated by similarly oddly dressed terrorists.

With Nico stuck manning the phone back at her apartment, George takes on the legwork and puzzle solving for this affair. His investigation takes him through the Parisian sewers, to a swanky hotel, a local museum, and even the hospital. Not content with one city, he later does a bit of globe-trotting to Ireland, Syria, Spain, and Scotland. Along the way, George gets onto the trail of a band of neo-Templars bent on world domination, and learns of an ancient mystical treasure that may give them the power to do so, which the original Knights Templar hid away. The story that unfolds blends intriguing historical fact, conspiracy theories, and interesting locales to weave an intricate tale. 

Voiced by the wonderful Rolf Saxon, George is by no means a silent protagonist. He has lengthy conversations with a wide array of eclectic characters and brings a bone-dry wit that is hilarious in its understated-ness. Swept into events larger than himself, he makes an excellent and eminently relatable protagonist for saving the world. George is complemented nicely by the eccentric supporting cast: there’s the well-bred and domineering English Lady Piermont, the double act Parisian cops Detective Rosso and Sergeant Moue, spunky Irish kid Maguire, and of course the Hendersons, Pearl and Duane, two tourists from America, the latter of which thinks George is a secret agent. 

The original Broken Sword released at the height of adventure gaming’s golden age, which meant it had lush production values even then, but they were starting to feel dated almost thirty years later, and the visual improvements here are impressive. Locations are highly detailed, vibrantly coloured, and emotionally evocative. The sun-dappled streets of Paris, with their trees yellowing for fall, are inviting. The cloudy skies of Ireland present a perfect backdrop for a crumbling stone castle. Ancient churches stand next to modern-day facilities like a costume shop. Lush vegetation hugs an old hacienda in Spain. The heat palpably radiates off the crumbling brick walls of buildings in Syria. Everywhere you go, the  many sights of George’s Eurasian travels are absolutely befitting of such a grand adventure. 

The game looks great in motion, too. George, of course, has the standard walking and talking animations, which are smoother now, but he also has a lot of custom ones too. Actions like searching boxes and garbage cans in a back alley all come with their own special animations, and even supporting characters make the environments feel alive. With the much higher 4K max resolution compared to the old 640x480, more detail has been added to all the character sprites. Their models are faithful to the original’s, meaning they still run the gamut from realistic to downright farcical. Despite the wide array of styles, they mostly gel, although a couple of characters have mouths so big, they could eat George’s head like an apple.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged

Genre:	Adventure, Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Conspiracy, Team-up, Treasure hunt, Journey
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Illustrated realism
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Long (more than 10 hours)
Difficulty:	High

Music and sound effects are well represented here, generally sounding better and suffering less from the audio compression artifacts that were prevalent in all games in the nineties. The instrumental music tends to sit in the background for the most part, though it appropriately comes to the fore in the more dramatic moments and hugely adds to the experience. The occasional adventurous musical sting also chimes in whenever a significant puzzle is solved or a new insight into the story is achieved. 

Curiously, of all the audio, it’s the voices that are the least consistent. Some, such as George’s, are perfectly clear and sound as if they could have been recorded with modern high-fidelity microphones. However, a few voices have a lower quality – not the actors’ performances, which are fantastic across the board, but rather the technical quality of the sound itself. Nico is probably the hardest hit by this, as I found some of her lines almost completely unintelligible. Perhaps the original recordings weren’t of sufficient quality, or perhaps some audio cleanup process went awry. Regardless, it got to the point where I had to turn the subtitles on to be able to understand her and a couple of other minor characters.

On the puzzle front, the Reforged version sticks closely to the original, which means the challenge is generally higher than what’s typically on offer in games today. And with more than a dozen hours of play time, comprised mainly of inventory puzzles, exploration, and exhausting dialog trees, there’s a lot to work through here. For the most part, puzzles require thought but are fair and very rewarding to solve – although, yes, the infamous goat puzzle is still here. Fans of the original game will doubtless remember this one, unless they’ve blocked it from their memories. For new players stumped by this four-legged nemesis, the addition of a new hint system may prove useful. 

Hints are available from the in-game menu throughout the adventure. Each puzzle provides multiple hints of increasing levels of specificity. A timer kicks off after each hint to prevent the immediate usage of the next one. Five minutes by default, it can be reduced down to thirty seconds if so desired. Even so, when you’re well and truly stuck and want to move on, it can be a little frustrating if you have to reveal five hints for things you’ve already solved before getting to the sixth one you actually need. With the puzzles built right into the game, it should be able to detect what stage a player is at and provide hints accordingly. Still, it’s a nice addition over the hint-less original game. Even though I’ve played several times in the past, there were still a couple of places I needed help in jogging my memory.

People’s memories of the original Broken Sword were clearly important to the developers, but the goal here was to make it more accessible, as the Reforged edition comes with a staggering number of options to customize the experience. Graphics can be switched between the original look – now quite blocky on large modern monitors – or the slick new hi-res artwork. Other customizations allow for already performed interactions to be removed from the interface display, the highlighting of hotspots near the mouse pointer, and a bevy of options for deciding how and where subtitles for dialog appears. Throw in gamepad support – complete with vibration effects – and every player should be able to find a combination of settings that makes the experience fit perfectly for them.

While this is an excellent remaster, it’s not the first time Shadow of the Templars has been revisited. In 2009, Revolution released The Director’s Cut on a variety of platforms. More than the 1:1 remaster that is Reforged, The Director’s Cut introduced new content – and excised some existing pieces – including several sections that turned Nico into a playable character. In Reforged, Nico is as she was in the first game – a largely background character who is little more than a contrivance for George to be able to talk about the plot between each chapter of the game. Not everyone loved those changes, but with all of the game’s other options to turn classic or new settings on or off, it seems a strange omission to not have included, even optionally, the new sequences from The Director’s Cut. As such, it feels like a Definitive Edition must still be somewhere on the horizon.

Final Verdict

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged is a faithful, modern remaster of one of the all-time great adventure games. Adhering to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy, it’s much as fans of the original remember it, but it’s fantastic to have this cherished classic available in such a high-quality, updated format! With the sweeter-than-ever eye candy, ear candy, and, um, interface-modernization-playing candy added on top of the already terrific cast of eclectic characters and exceptional story of history, conspiracy, and intrigue, this is a guaranteed winning combination that avoids unnecessary over-tinkering. If George Stobbart and Nico Collard feel like old friends to you by now, this is a nice nostalgia trip through their first adventure (even if Nico is again relegated to a lesser role). If you’ve not had the pleasure of meeting these beloved characters before, this is the best way to enter their world, feeling fresh and modern and new. It’s a world that needs your help to save, and what could be more adventurous than that?

Richard played Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher. 

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