Having worked on everything from Beneath a Steel Sky and The Witcher to the Broken Sword Series and indie offerings, Steve Ince is the man to discuss adventure games, game-writing and game-design with. Gnome's Lair asks the right questions...
Revolution Software's Charles Cecil told us many stories of the ups and downs the Broken Sword series has faced over the years.
From GI.biz: "A beautiful, innovative, fulfilling, challenging, satisfying, mysterious game. Not only a game, but a story, an experience. It got a lot of components right and was one of the best games back then and it still is. It's worth saying that the series is still very much alive, as the fifth instalment was released in 2014 and there are rumours of (and a lot of fans craving for) the sixth game. Yes, you may have guessed it (or read in the title) - we are talking about Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. But let's talk about why such an opinion would form in the first place.
My brother and I started playing PC games right before 2000 and very quickly got drawn into the world of adventures. Of course, we had played NES games like Super Mario, Battle City and Adventure Island. However, adventure games were something else: they had a story, they had amazing art, voice acting, beautiful animation and music.
One of us got our hands on a demo of Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror and couldn't stop talking about it. Our screen time was limited and it was summer, so we spent a lot of time outside and out of town, but the demo left such a big impression on a teenage brain that a lot of that time was spent analysing the puzzles, animation, story and other aspects of that amazing demo (no wonder demos had a revival in the last decade -- it's a very good way to attract players to buy the full game!)."
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars celebrated its 25th anniversary in October 2021. To mark such a momentous occasion, Alternative Magazine Online is proud to present an exclusive look back at the game’s development with British video game designer Charles Cecil, co-founder and Managing Director of Revolution Software!
Thanks for commenting, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is one of my favourite adventure games of all time (as I'm sure you can tell). It's crazy that Virgin didn't want to publish it on PlayStation!
Yes, considering their reason not to and what they did end up publishing/published in the past is very odd.
