Broken Sword - Shadow Of The Templars: Reforged Review - A Blast From The Past, A Step Into The Future

Summary

Shadow of the Templars remains a top point-and-click game with superb writing and puzzles.
The new interface modernizes gameplay for a contemporary audience.
Reforged version offers the best playing experience while maintaining that original authenticity.

George Stobbart’s dialogu🃏e over the opening of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars has stayed with me for years. I remember the trumpet of music as the Revolution Software logo appeared, then the café and its inevitable explosion that followed shortly afterwards. It’s ingrained in my memory, and even in the years since when I forgot man𒁃y of the main storyline beats or certain characters, I could never shake it.

“Paris in ꦍthe fall. The last months of the year, and the endꦜ of the millennium. The city holds many memories for me: of cafés, of music, of love… and of death.”

Yet nostalgia has a way of filtering our memories—we remember them as we perceived them rather than how they truly were. When I first saw 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Broken ꦺSword - Shadow of🐲 the Templars: Reforged with its clean gra🧸phics and crisp voice lines, it really didn’t feel all that different to how I remembered it. Until I switched to the original P🦋layStation graphics, of course, and was faced with the reality of the grainy condensed version it used to be.

Broken Sword: Reforged Interview - How Bringing The Game To Fans Has Chan𒐪ged Since Th♔e ‘90s

At Gamescom, 🌸we spoke with Revolution Software's Charles Cecil about Broken Sword - Shadow of the Tem🥂plars: Reforged.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网💟:

As a nice Reforged touch, the Revolution Softwareꦇ logo in ♉the opening is the original and then morphs into the sleeker modern version.

Shadow of the Templars introduces us to George Stobbart, an American tourist who witnesses a café explosion in Paris. The culprit? A clown. This sets in motion a trail that has George travelling around the world, eventually realising he’s stumbled into a bigger mystery involving the ancient Knights Templar. With the help of French journalist Nico C𒊎ollard, it’s up to George (and you) to stop the dastardly plans afoot.

In classic point-and-click fashion, you’ll be traipsing between various scenes, conversing with differen♛t characters, and collecting various odds and ends. Then, ultimately, you have to make sense of it all enough to pull at the thread of mystery that holds it all together. All without getting killed 🐷along the way, of course.

I have to applaud Revolution Software for what it's done with Reforged. It could have opted to remake the whole game, going for shiny new graphics and animations, freshly recorded lines, and encompassing the Director’s Cut additional content to make something brand new. It could have even done a Monkey Island and surprised us all with a strikingly different art style. But I’m glad it keeps the original spirit, and keeps its soul in the⛎ process.

The team used the original as a basis to remaster the grap💙hics and animations, adding finer detail and smoothing out little quirks, while restoring the backgrounds to the original concept art with beautiful details, a🎃nd cleaning up the cutscenes. Plot holes have been plugged, with the bar stool after the explosion now clearly being blown to smithereens, or the drain pipe George contemplates as an escape route being long enough to actually escape from. The voice lines are the same lines, enhanced of course, and with some additional ones to boot. Not brand new recorded lines, but original lines that were recorded in the ‘90s and never used.

To nitpick, there’s a moment here or there where you spot the details in a cutscene are a little off, usually b🍃ecause the upscaling George has received is noticeably better than the other character or element in the scene. Regardless of this small flaw (undoubtedly a symptom of reworking the original assets), I’m far happier with this direction than had the team done a full overhaul. It feels like everything that Shadow of Templars was meant to be originally, but without the constraints of ‘90s technology.

At its heart, Reforged retains that same feeling from all those years ago. The characte🍌rs sound the same, they move w🐭ith the same animations, it all jolts me back to when I was playing for the very first time. It retains the same sense of authenticity as the original but gives it a much-needed polish after all these years, and more importantly, fixes up that annoying old UI.

At the time in the ‘90s, it worked as well as could be expected. In fact, it was one of, if not the best point-and-click interfaces back then, but you can’t tell me you didn’t often misclick the wrong thing because it wasn’t alway💙s clear. Some of those icons looked nothing like they should, either. That was the beauty of the ‘90s graphics and tech. Now, that’s all been fixed in Reforged and it offers a sleek and intuitive༒ interface that’s clear and easy to use.

I grew up with point-and-clicks and so they are second nature to me. I understand their basic gameplay fe✃atures, I expect all the red herrings and conversations that ultimately get you nowhere, and getting stuck on a single puzzle for hours or even days felt normal. But that’s not the same for everyone, especially now. Nothing proved this more than when I first attempted to get my 11-year-old son to play some of my beloved childhood favourites.

He didn’t have the same attention span as I did at his age, back when we didn’t have the skibidi internet or a whole library of other games to play instead of persevering with the only one we owned. Getting stuck on puzzles for too long frustrated him, and things that seemed rather common sense to me in terms of how things should work were less obvious to him as he had less familiarity with the genre. That’s where Refo❀rged comes in.

Aside from opening with a clear breakdown of how point-and-clicks work when you start a new game, Reforged offers two modes. A Classic Mode and a Story Mode that’s been developed to make the gameplay more accessible for newbies. While I played through on Classic Mode, dabbling in Story only to see how well it worked, it’s a revolutionary option to coax younger and less 🐟familiar players into the point-and-click community.

You still have a straightforwa🅘rd generic hint system, so if you want the answer, every 30 seconds, you can reveal a hint and it’ll poke you into the right course of action. This is something the original lacked but the Director’s Cut introduced. However, being told the solution without having to make any logical leaps yourself can diminish that feeling of achievement, and so to maintain that feeling of self-discovery without flat-out peeking at the answers, Revolution Software has changed how its interface works for Story Mode.

Instead of clicking around the same multitude of hot spots and getting frustrated by all the options and no clear direction on how to proceed, Reforged will grey out things that will offer a redundant r🏅epeat interaction. 💟Additionally, it will begin to eliminate things you have examined and interacted with that are of no use to you, eventually narrowing down your options to guide you in the right direction.

If that’s not enough, stand still long enough and sparkles will appear from where you should be looking. If those are too obscure, eventually a blue circ꧋le highlights it too. If you miss even that, eventually a blue arrow points it out. Gone are the days of tearing your hair out because a puzzle seems impos🐲sible. If you want those days gone, that is.

This new system is entirely optional, and in 😼fact you can cust𒆙omise it to mix a blend of Classic and Story Mode. Maybe you don’t want the twinkles, circles, or arrows, but you like obsolete options being removed or greyed out? You can pick the aspects you want to tailor your gameplay your way, and then even change them up on the fly if you change your mind.

Speaking of switching things up on the fly, you can switch back to the PlayStation graphics whenever you want to, as has been the trend of these decade-old remasters. The interface remains as the improved 🍌Reforged version either way.

George and the Countess in original PlayStation graphics in Broken Sword Reforged.

Shadows of the Templars remains one of the best point-and-click games available, a classic from the 🦄genre’s peak in the ‘90s with superb writing, puzzles, and wit that has stood the test of time. It’s quite simply a brilliant example of point-and-clicks done well, featuring the original testing goat puzzle and all possible death scenes that the Director’s Cut removed.

Reforged has raised the bar to breathe new life into the game, reworking th♛e original assets to maintain authenticity, addressing small plot holes, and most importantly, it sets a new standard for how to make point-and-clicks more accessible in this modern day when players are less forgiving with their time and patience. Not to mention, all these years later, making George show everyone his dirty g𒁃reasepaint tissue is still just as funny as ever. With that, I only have one thing left to say. Does this tissue mean anything to you?