Broken Sword 5: back to basics

The English Revolution Software seems a relic of some golden age of adventure gaming, miraculously survived to the present day intact. Based in York in 1990, it still produces even a few, but only quests. Moreover, a series about the adventures of American lawyer George Stobbarta and French journalist Nicole Collard can be safely attributed to the most classic and popular pieces of the genre.

The long-awaited continuation of the legendary series, largely congenial first graduates Broken Sword
It is not surprising that the emergence of Charles Cecil and his colleagues on Kickstarter in September last year with plans to build a new “Broken Sword”, this time completely in the spirit of the first two issues of the series – with two-dimensional graphics, as opposed to the not entirely successful recent experiments with the prevailing fashion 3D, – was greeted by fans of the genre point-and-click with great enthusiasm. Incidentally, the original play The Shadow of the Templars and its sequel The Smoking Mirror may be familiar even to modern players, not particularly sophisticated in quest trends of the 1990s, the last few years, Revolution Software only to those involved and that actively adapts its early masterpieces for all new platforms on the Wii and Nintendo DS to iOS and Android – and quite successful in commercial terms. And on Kickstarter authors collected twice requested 400 thousand dollars . However, as with most projects kraudfandingom, the birth of Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse (after some doubt, the authors added to the name and serial number) substantially delayed – instead of April 2013 the fifth edition of the legendary series appeared in December, and then only half: The second part ruthlessly cut in half adventyury should get somewhere around January. 

Nevertheless, the very first look at the new “Broken Sword” shows that promises its authors performed in full – at least in regard to the visual part of the project. The game is really beautiful 2D-image. Perhaps epic landscapes Memoria can compete with local backgrounds gothic and scales, but colorful and elaboration of even the smallest details of the second plan English adventure definitely bypass any German. There is no doubt that this is a really Paris and Montmartre – and, despite an abundance of corpses laid on the plot, the atmosphere of permanent holiday. Is that the character models are a little spoil this idyll: No, they are very cute and quite a recognizable to fans of the old George and Nico, but not implemented in a two-dimensional graph, and prerenderennom 3D, Sal-shading techniques, and therefore little to stand out in style background landscapes and interiors handmade.

Speaking of corpses, and the plot. Broken Sword series has traditionally exploited themes para-religion, medieval heretical sects and “Last Secret Knowledge”, and long before the advent of pop novels of Dan Brown performed in the spirit of the same kind of pseudo-baek. In The Serpent’s Curse for a change instead of the Templars derived Gnostics, but the plot of this change had virtually no effect. And if you do not pay attention to those white threads, which are usually sewn all known science “conspiracy theories”, the numerous mysterious murders and the story is stolen paintings in the intro of the game with the encrypted secret message on it is quite able to capture the interest and even if a halo of originality and novelty, they are unlikely to boast. 

Although the actual history of the Gnostics and their conspiracies clearly left a snack for detailed disclosure in the second half of the game. Now that we have to settle for a little investigating crimes smaller scale – and, according to the most recent fashion already, Russian oligarch as the main villain. Well, with whole bunches branchy cranberry, so far without it – in the form of a portrait on the wall Gaddafi luxury London mansion, the first edition of “War and Peace” in oligarhovoy treasury – and typewriter with Old Slavonic characters obsolete in the time of Peter First, as one of the few game puzzles. In fairness it should be noted that not more lenient developers and representatives of other nationalities. For example, to caricature the French inspector heading the investigation, which unofficially engaged under our strict supervision of George and Nico – not only from the police, but also from any self-respecting psychiatric hospital it would definitely be kicked out for incurable dementia. As you can see, from “fine English humor,” which at one time praised Alexander Bird on the pages of “Home PC”, declaring the third part of “The Broken Sword», The Sleeping Dragon, best adventure games in 2003 – alas, almost no traces.

On the other hand, the dialogues between the characters here are still interesting, and many, for the most part, beautifully performed by actors (at least in the English version of the voice). It is through conversation is an opening scene, they also provide guidance for clues and hints at further action characters. The gameplay maximum corresponds to the classical quest: no lights even hotspots or disappearance already examined and used. However, complaining about it is not necessary – thanks to a handy hint system that will not allow even beginners to be at an impasse. The in-game help can be disabled in the settings, but even then the passage of The Serpent’s Curse is unlikely to cause difficulties: pixel-hunting virtually no puzzles are fairly simple, and the key code or passkey to any counterclaim castle carefully stashed in the same maximum in the next location . We have to manage and George and Nico alternately – but no specific features in the gameplay is not observed. One could complain about the linearity of the gameplay – each time the task we have only one, besides, as a rule, voiced hero or heroine in a conversation with other characters – but that is a feature of almost all the games story and bring it to the shortcomings was would not be quite fair. 

And that definitely would like to complain, it’s a breakdown on the Broken Sword 5 into two parts. As is the case with the recent The Raven , this division rather artificial and not caused by the logic of the plot, and banal incompleteness of the whole game. In fact, there is all the features of the regime Early Access: although critical bugs PC version have been fixed on the day of release, many authors promised “buns” still have to wait. Gradually, over the coming weeks to appear Steam-reaching, Russian and Polish subtitles, patch converts the background images into a format HD … However, in the present, in the resolution of 1280×720 the game looks quite good, and the duration is approximately 6:00 first part of the new “Broken Sword” is quite comparable with some modern full-length adventure game.

So in front of us – a worthy continuation of the legendary quest series and a worthy conclusion unexpectedly rich in excellent adventyury year . Fans of George and Nico recommended for urgent and mandatory use – although the rest of the players should still wait a month and a half and get acquainted with The Serpent’s Curse in its entirety and splendor.

Broken Sword 5: back to basics