The
first
Broken Sword from Revolution has recently been
reissued in a newly refangled “Director’s Cut” version.
This was a game originally made in the late 90’s for DOS and
Windows 95, then adapted not long ago to be played on Wii and the
Nintendo DS and then the iPhone and the iPad when it came along and
finally now has come full circle (of blood) back to the PC for the
Windows 7 and Mac OS X generation on the Steam app platform. There’s
even a
version for netbooks at someplace called AppUp. And if you feel
like waiting a bit longer, a retail version is reportedly coming soon
from Mastertronic. Whew. This is more intricate than the game’s
plot.

I
admit, though, I’m a little lost about the “director’s
cut” designation. The original idea of the Director’s
Cut was for a movie released as the director intended it to be, before
the studio hacked it to pieces in the interest of increased crowd
appeal. Then, when such repackaging became popular, movie studios
and game publishers and everyone else scrambled to slap “Director’s
Cut” on any old revised movie or game in the hope of, you guessed
it, increased crowd appeal. Are we to believe that when Charles Cecil
and the other Revolutionaries first planned this game it was already
clairvoyantly configured for the iPhone?

Even back in the Nineties
Broken Sword 1 had already had more marketing-whiz titles than you
could shake a stick at. The original subtitle, Shadow of the
Templars, was no doubt judged too confusing for American
markets, so it was switched to “Circle of Blood.”
While in Europe the game was titled “Baphomet’s
Curse.” Who’s Baphomet? Some sort of half-goat
fertitility god that the guys at Revolution were wise to tone down
for their own purposes.

So
how has Broken
Sword 1 survived all this revamping and repurposing and
retitling? Surprisingly well. A game that generally pops up on most
“best of” adventures lists, it still tells a terrific
story of ancient rituals and modern-day relic hunting in Paris and
other atmospheric locales. George Stobbart is an American tourist
who gets caught up in an elaborate intrigue, involving, of course,
the Knights Templar and our old friend Baphomet and a lot of other
shady characters. He also runs into tony French freelance journalist
Nico Collard, with whom he teams up to track down the big story. It’s
classic pointing-and-clicking the whole way, with gorgeous hand-drawn
backgrounds and sprightly 2D sprites, a lush score, expert if at times
hammy voice acting, funky little animated hand icons and glorious
cinematic cut scenes.

The
director’s cut aspect I found to be a sort of give and take
deal. What you get is several new scenes, and even a new subplot or
two, where Nico plays the lead (à la BS2).
These peter out somewhat mysteriously soon enough, but have been worked
seamlessly into the original. They also include a handful of handheld-device-friendly
minigames, such as a sliding block door opener and a b&w photo
jigsaw puzzle. Also new, or reworked, are the inventory and character
conversation systems. Dave Gibbons has drawn all new character insets
to accompany the dialogue in the game, with detailed character expressions
as well as the usual lip-syncing.

Actually, I think there
are a whole bunch of other new bells and whistles, but it’s
a little hard to keep track what is from which version, or conversion.
For instance, there’s a diary that keeps track of the main characters’
key progress that I don’t recall from the original. I think
some and perhaps all of the original cut scenes have been remade.

On
the other hand, what you lose in this new version is a good number
of hotspots from the original. What you get instead is a blinking
blue circle over the few remaining hotspots. Both of these revisions,
of course, help simplify the game, and perhaps were even necessary
when porting to the Wii and Nintendo. Alas, they also cut into the
player’s immersion in the game, as well as eliminating some
of the narrative detail and the challenge. It’s a bit like playing
a scrollable pinball game now. It’s too bad the new PC and Mac
version didn’t predate the handheld editions. We might have
gotten the best of the upgrade and avoided the worst.

This
is the first time I ever played anything on Steam,
a gaming application that you download and install and through which
you order and play games (and get pop-up self-promotional ads, natch).
It’s similar to the Telltale Games setup in the sense of having
a player community to interact with, if you so choose. You have to
supply your credit card info as well as the usual registration fodder
and this is the aspect that makes me, for one, a little nervous. On
the plus side of such a system, however, they can more easily supply
you with an older game such as this one without the usual configuration
hassles. The Steam app handles all that for you. I did play BS1DC
in a DOSBox sized window that accurately reflected the original pixel
count, which meant I played the entire game is a window about a quarter
the size of my laptop screen, but I preferred that to the enhanced
window, which merely doubles the pixels and not the resolution, or
the full-screen option. On a wide screen monitor, full screen is not
a serious option.

My
personal advice is that if you’ve never played Shadow
of the Templars, you’d be better off looking for an
original copy of the game. Even if you have to play it on DOSbox,
which nowadays easily handles CDs and full-screen mode. You might
then consider playing this “enhanced” version afterward,
for the new material. If you have already played the original, then
I think this DC edition is reasonably priced enough
for an enjoyable trip down memory lane. Just so long as you’re
not as paranoid as I am about giving out your credit card number.

The original Broken
Sword: Shadow of the Templars is undeniably an AG classic,
and this new version has been both enhanced and marred by its various
Silly-Puttyish portings, but it still rates an overall A. And I still
don’t think George is Nico’s type.

PC System Requirements:

• Operating system: Windows
  XP/Vista/Windows 7
• Processor: Pentium
• Memory: 64 MB
• Hard disk space: 1.5
  GB
• Sound: Any Sound Card
• Video: Any video card
  with 64 MB video RAM
• DirectX®: N/A

Mac System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
• Hard Drive: 1GB free
  space