Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged fixes bits you didn’t even know were broken

“We’re going back to what the original was before an artist took shortcuts,” says director Charles Cecil.

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged / Revolution Software

Most modern-day video game remasters seem inevitable, a matter of ‘when’ not ‘why’. For Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars director and co-writer Charles Cecil MBE, the ‘why’ came first.

And the answer? Because it’s the best video game he’s ever made. With a career stretching back to 1985, and five entries in the Broken Sword series under his belt (the sixth is in development), that’s saying a lot.

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is Revolution Software’s classic 1996 point-and-click adventure. It follows George Stobbart, an intrepid patent lawyer with unfathomably deep pockets, and brave journalist Nico Collard, as they travel the globe uncovering the arcane secrets of the Knights Templar.

The game doesn’t just feature 4K visuals, remastered audio, and improved animation. It’s also a chance for Cecil to plug plot holes undiscovered for almost 30 years – plot holes only  noticeable to someone who’s thought about this game as much as he has. For instance, the clown’s bomb.

“You might remember the clown puts an accordion on a stool in the bar,” says Cecil, demonstrating the game’s introductory scene. “So what I’m going to try and convince you is that this is a game for 2024.”

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged / Revolution Software

The accordion, packed with explosives, blows up the cafe. In the original, the stool used by the clown for his accordion is undamaged and looks like every other stool. In Reforged, it’s rightly reduced to a smoldering crater.

“Nobody’s noticed, nobody. But to me it matters, and I have the power to tell the artist to draw it as it actually looks. All of these things are actually quite important. When you get a continuity error in a film, often the audience doesn’t realize, but they know something is wrong.”

Crucially, however, you can choose to keep that continuity error intact. Hit Tab and the game instantly switches to its original form, with jagged sprites and blurry backgrounds. After all, the devs managed to cram it all on a 700 MB CD.

Next, Cecil shows off the museum, hitting Tab and using the classic filter. Inside he highlights a low-res statue of a Hindu goddess. “What the artist did, which I kind of missed, was they took a photograph from the Internet of this goddess, this Hindu goddess, and they pasted it on, and it shouldn’t be there. It’s not right. It looks very flat.”

The new artist on Reforged referenced the original line art, which was a statue of an Eagle rather than a Hindu goddess, and redrew it from scratch. The result doesn’t look nearly as disjointed. 

That’s not to say Revolution Software ignored the vision of the original game. Rather, it was reinterpreted. Take the floor. In the original game it’s comprised of blurry, plastic-like panels; here it’s unmistakably stone. It fits right in with the museum’s aesthetic.

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged / Revoluton Software

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is 36 times the resolution of the original game. That doesn’t just mean it’s sharper. It also means Revolution Software had to fill in the gaps. 

Where the opening shot of the Paris skyline was almost apocalyptic in its omission of life, with no cars on the roads and just a single bird in the sky, hovering with two frames of animation, now the streets feature fully animated cars revving along. There are also new water effects on the rippling currents of the Seine.

Cecil steadfastly refuses to use AI in bringing Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars back to life. At one point, Stobbart picks up a newspaper and scans its pages, his eyes seemingly reading every line. 

“Everybody said, ‘oh, we could use AI,’ but you can’t use AI, because what we want is we want the expression in the face, we want the fact that for a moment George’s eyes dart towards the camera and then they look down. That’s the way a human face looks.”

There are also real-time shadows. When Stobbart walks into an interior location, he gets darker. If he walks into the sunshine, his character model brightens from dynamically rendered rays of light.

Two different gameplay modes, meanwhile, are there to entice a new generation of player. These are Classic and Story. If you want to experience the original unchanged, pick classic. However, if you want to move a bit faster and get a few subtle hints along the way, Story is for you. 

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged / Revolution Software

Cecil remembers getting stuck on old adventure game puzzles, then going to bed and waking up with a solution. “That was great 30 years ago. That is not the way that people want to play games these days.”

Story mode adds hints, at varying levels of intensity based on your preference, and one of these is a sparkle. This faintly glittering cloud hovers over the bit you’re meant to click, so you’re not aimlessly searching around the screen.

There’s also the way George only interacts with an item once; once you’ve clicked on a bin, for instance, the ability to click it again disappears. This whittles down your list of interactive hotspots until you’ve found what you need.

“I don’t know about you,” says Cecil, “but when I get stuck, I go back to the same thing and I try it, and I get the same voice, and it just drives me nuts.” The result is players are rewarded for exploration rather than frustrated.

Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged represents a determination to reinvent the classic adventure for 2024. That goes not just for the lovingly updated visuals, but for the new features designed for modern audiences.

The game releases on September 19, 2024, on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. And if it’s a success, next on the table for Revolution Software is reforging the sequel, Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror.