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Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon Preview
Mark Simons
24/06/2003
After screenshots from all the different versions here's our preview of Revolution Software's latest title...
Released in 1996 the first Broken Sword is arguably Revolution Software's finest game to date. It came after they had released two excellent point and click titles 'Lure of the Temptress' was a popular game on the Atari ST, Amiga and PC in the early 1990's, 'Beneath A Steel Sky', released in 1994 on the PC and Amiga, became a critical and commercial success for the UK developer.
With a couple of solid titles behind them they spent a couple of years working on 'Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars', which was released to universal praise and laid the foundations for a future franchise. It was a mature game, full of historical knowledge that went into create a very interesting plot that was revealed through good writing, great acting and a wonderful presentation. Graphics and sound were wonderfully atmospheric and the artistic style of the game was very impressive - it just all really hit the spot.
Revolution went on to release 'Broken Sword 2' for the PlayStation and PC, whilst the game did reasonably well at market, it lacked the indefinable 'I don't know what' factor; however that could all change with the release of Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon.
Bad jokes about dragons out of the way, we can now take a look at what revolutions Revolution have in store for us.
The first thing you will notice is that the game is no longer two-dimensional. George Stobbart and Nico Collard are now fully fleshed out and this is important for a number of reasons. Consoles would be the first; two-dimensional point 'n' click adventures don't really work on consoles, the controls, the audience, neither seem suited to pointing and clicking. Therefore put things in three dimensions, allow direct control of the character and you immediately get over some major hurdles to getting a decent selling, as opposed to just decent game, that and the death of the point 'n' click genre.
It has taken a while for technology to reach a stage where three-dimensional graphics can match the detail and artistic style of hand drawn animation. In fact it is now easier to animate characters than it would be to hand draw the sprites, the burden of labour has shifted from artist to technology. Lighting effects are also up to scratch, and The Sleeping Dragon boasts some lovely real-time lighting and shadow effects that are both atmospheric and important for the more stealthy bits of the game.
Now stealthy bits may just seem a token nod to the influence of Metal Gear Solid et al, but the implementation of such sequences in The Sleeping Dragon seems to be rather good. For instance, as you may have noticed in the screenshots, there's some warehouse that George has to sneak into, and it has various guards and guard dogs. It is possible to sneak in without being rumbled, but it is also possible to have people chase after you and that force you to run away and find an alternative way into the building. We are sure that there will be more examples of things like this, but naturally Revolution are keeping a lot of the specifics close to their chest, however, just because this descends from a line of point 'n' click games that doesn't mean you won't have to worry about dying in certain sections. This has always been one interesting things about the Broken Sword games as they were point 'n' clicks, which usually you can't die in.
Don't get the impression that it's all action though, The Sleeping Dragon will test your brain as well, and, not wanting to bang on about it, but being fully three dimensional has had an impact on the way puzzles work. For instance in the opening few scenes of the game you have to push a crate around to balance out a plane that is precariously close to the edge of a cliff and prevent yourself falling to your first death 'Italian Job' but different anyone? Then there's a little something about bringing an Australian pilot around with a bottle of beer, arguably a little showcase of the gentle humour that runs alongside a serious story.
The story itself is, well, we don't really know, Revolution are being very cagey, understandably as one of the best things about this series is the strong plots, and we don't want to know what's going to happen, that would sort of ruin one of the major selling points. We do know that there will be a hefty dose of conspiracies, historical mysteries wrapped up in an epic - read worldwide - quest for justice. Just like an average day at the TVG offices then... We hope that there is some sort of continuation of the themes explored in The Shadow of the Templars, which is very interesting given that The Kinghts Templar were some of the people who conducted and promoted the Christian Crusades in the Middle East. We won't go into too much detail about the Templars here, could end up touching on lots of themes and sounding quite mad as we could jump from Jesus to the Nazis to atomic weapons to the holy grail and many other things. If these themes are touched on in the game they could be interesting and illuminating...
The story will take you through some stunning locations including the jungles of the Congo which is probably not somewhere you want to visit right now, Prague, which would be nice to visit, Paris, always nice, and Glastonbury which is somewhere very close to us. Literally a few miles away from the TVG offices, the ancient Tor on top of a hill in the middle the Somerset levels - below sea level and rather flat you see - is visible for miles around and provides an excellent backdrop to the main stage of Glastonbury Festival. It also makes sense for the game as it has been involved in many historical stories, the Holy Grail and King Arthur being the major ones, as well as being a Mecca for spiritual types since Roman times and probably before then. We just wonder whether we'll be able to see our houses in the game... These locations are probably just the tip of the iceberg and we imagine that the scope of the game will be truly global.
