Revolution Software recently announced two huge bits of news for adventure game fans! Not only will there be a whole new game with Broken Sword - Parzival's Stone but Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is coming too.
Yes I totally missed the original announcements.
Direct Link
From the press release:
“This is the start of what we’re calling the ‘Broken Sword Renaissance’,” says Charles Cecil, Founder and CEO of Revolution Software. “With both Parzival’s Stone and Shadow of the Templars: Reforged, we’re making a big, bold, and broad offer both to those who have walked in the shoes of George & Nico before and hunger for a new adventure, and also just as crucially people who have never even heard of the franchise. As with all Broken Sword games, both titles exist as independent adventures with no prior knowledge required, though naturally for those invested in the world we’ve created, there’s a lot to tap into under the surface.”
One thing to note, is that Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is making use of AI Art to help it along. Speaking to Polygon the founder of Revolution, Charles Cecil, mentioned they simply couldn't afford to remake it without the help of an AI trained using their own sprites. This did result in some backlash, with Cecil speaking to Game Developer to try and clear it up noting they own all the data, it's trained with their own work, and it saves time on tedious tasks to let their artists then add the human touch after for "facial expressions, correct animations, and finesse the details" and so on.
There's a lot of fuss over AI art, especially because plenty of it is trained by using artwork from others, but in this case it simply sounds like a useful time-saving tool for their artists.
Both games are due out next year, and according to the Steam pages for each they will have Linux support too.
Steam pages:
I wish they went back and gave 3 & 4 some love instead. Keep the gist of the story but remake everything else. Make them proper point & clickers with detailed 2D graphics.
Quote“This is the start of what we’re calling the ‘Broken Sword Renaissance’That could very well mean that they will do the other parts later if the announced games sell well.
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2546810/ss_17ca9dc0c70b35bc5d5f5d3ae5a096cf8e1217f4.jpg?t=1693516581
Look an awful lot like the first screenshot from the 1st game?
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2544110/ss_d125e57b0bab4bc9bc5c6b225c9e0effc820cab8.jpg?t=1693646834
Quoting: whizseI wish they went back and gave 3 & 4 some love instead. Keep the gist of the story but remake everything else. Make them proper point & clickers with detailed 2D graphics.
Yea these two feel out of place. Like Desperados 2 and Helldorado where the 3d engine wasn't good enough so the style became a lot worse to look at.
The parcival stone part has nice backgrounds but the 3d models feel a bit akward at the moment.
Hopefully we will three all 6 parts with the same attention to detail and a common style close to the original series.
Going for the first part of the series is a good idea though. Large screens will benefit from higher resolution and a better menu and controls would certainly help. The directors cut on a modern computer feels a bit weird imho.
As they work with AI, it shouldn't slow them down too much touching that game as well
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