꧟We all love it when one of our favourite games gets a little extra love, whether that’s with additional content, a port, a remaster, or a full remake. When you get into the latter offering, you inevitably surface debates about whether the newer version stands up to the original, has it changed too much, is it better or worse in design and gameplay… the list goes on, and rightfully so.

I was overjoyed to hear about Broken Sword—Shadow Of 🌳The Templars: Reforged, a remaster of the original 1996 game. However, this isn’t the first time the classic has been given a new lease of life. In 2009, an extended Director's Cut was released with new features and entirely new sequences that made Nico a playable character. As an avid Broken Sword fan, more content was never a bad thing in my book, though not everyone loved the newly added character animations during conversations.

Despite the Director’s Cut, Reforged is going back to its roots and is based on the original version instead. Broken Sword creator 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Charles Cecil exp✤lained to us at Gamescom that this is because the Director’s Cut was adapted from the GameBoy Advance version, which condensed aniꩲmation due to size limitations. Since the original version retains all the content the Director’s Cut lost, that’s the version Revolution Software has gone back to. However, the canon isn’t as straightforward as it first seems.

“We want to stick to the canon, but what is the canon?” Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil says. “For example, in the museum, there is a foreground, which is basically the artist got a photograph and [used that as a reference], and the original [concept art] had something quite different. We’ve gone back to the original. So for us the canon is not necessarily the first game, it is everything that was intended for the first game.

“One of the things we’re looking back to includeꦉ now is lines that were recorded back in 1996. They were always intended, but for whatever reason, were never triggered. We will have new lines, and they&🦹rsquo;ve all been recorded, as they were considered part of the game. My sense is, ‘What is the canon?’ The canon is everything that existed, and in many ways that takes precedence over the actual game itself.”

I recently visited Revolution Software in York to try out Reforged and, as much as I enjoyed the extra Director’s Cut content, it felt fitting to return to the original opening of the café explosion with protagon✱ist George Stobbart. I always preferred this as the b🍨eginning, setting the narrative in motion with a bang (quite literally).

Walking around with clean animations of George and all the other characters I’ve known for years felt unmistakably familiar, yet other parts still felt new. As I ducked into the sewers in hot pursuit of the clown bomber, I noticed a rat in the foreground that I didn’t remember from the original. The opening scene of the crow flying over Paris has had a few small det𓂃ails like moving cars added, so at first I presumed it was another touch-up to add some new flair for Reforged.

However, Revolution Software producer Sam Hayes explained to me that the rat was in the original concept artwork, but never made it into the actual game. In returning to the original with Reforged, Revolution Software is now able to fully re🏅alise Broken Sword’s potential.

The team reused original recordings and upscaled them for Reforged, though two sound effects they couldn’t recover had to be re-recorded. Their first attempt at upscaling lost some of the dialogue's character by stripping out intonations, though it did remove the hiss of the old condensed audio. Eventually, the team found a middle ground that retained the characters' original personalities while still improving the overall quality.

A lot has changed since 1996, and so Revolution Software would be forgiven if some parts of the game were 💝dated in terms of its tone and dialogue. However, Cecil explains the team felt there was very little they needed to address in terms of modern culture and sensibilities, “The original script dialogue was written by Dave Cummins, and he was quite progressive. He’s left us in a pretty good state.”

Th꧒e sound wasn’t the only thing compressed in the original version, with Cecil explaining that the video files also had to be really compressed to reduce the number of colours, pointing to the opening scene of the crow flying 🌠over Paris and how pixelated it became on original hardware as an example. All these years later, it looks a bit gnarly. “This is one of those many itches, after 25 years, it’s wonderful to go back to the original source and to make it look really good.”

While my (very biased) memories of the original hold the graphics in high esteem, Cecil points out that it was good back then because of what it was, with it masquerading as a pixel adventure game like Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island, “It wasn’t a pixel ar🍸t game. It was a game that was pixelated because the resolution was so low.”

The team is using the original concep🦩t art to fill in the details and faces of characters to flesh them out properly. In the original, you only saw detail in the cutscenes, with Cecil explaining, “In those days, cutscenes were important because there was no detail on characters’ faces. You would get the detail from a cutscene, and you would transpose that [in your mind as the player] onto the little sprites walking around.”

Cecil is glad that fans have responded well to the improved graphics - he says most fans tell him, much like myself, they see the new graphics and their memories fo💟ol them into thinking it was always that way, until you press the button to compare to the ori🌠ginal, of course. Cecil is also contemplating adding a further option to compare to the original (and much worse) PlayStation resolution as well.

Though Revolutioꦇn Software is staying faithful to the canon, it’s also seizing the opportunity for a little creative licensing to fix some things that didn’t make sense in the original. Small details that won’t affect the storyline, but help to maintain that willing suspension of disbelief. One example is the drain pipe in the alley that George considers the clown may have climbed to escape doesn’t reach all the way up the wall in the original, making it an impossible escape route. To make it feasible in Reforged, the pipe has been elongated to reach all the way. Other minor details, like a waitress’ outfit not matching the sprite in a cutscene, have been addressed, too.

For a final emphasis on staying true to the original idea, Revolution Software has kept the original credits in, with Cecil explaining, “The majority of that game belongs to the team that first created it.” Of course, they pl♛an to add the new team for the end credits🤡 to ensure that both teams get their dues. As a steadfast fan, it’s exciting to think we’ll be rediscovering the original all over again, not just because of the new graphics and interface, but because we’ll uncover lost gems that didn’t make it off the concept page the first time around.

Broken Sword - Shadow Of The Templars: Reforged launches 💝laterℱ this year, and the .