27 years after its original release and 14 years after its first remaster, classic point-and-click adventure game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is getting a fresh remake and a brand-new sequel.
Officially titled Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged, the devs describe this as a "4K reinvention" of the original game that's set to hit PC, consoles, and mobile devices in early 2024. "I don't want to change the game, but I want it just to be better," series co-creator Charles Cecil tells 12DOVE at Gamescom 2023.
Reforged offers upscaled versions of the game's original 2D art, and that upscaling process was done in part through AI. While Cecil admits that AI tech is "problematic in many ways," he says that it was impractical for Revolution Software's small team of artists to go back and redraw the game's tens of thousands of frames by hand. Instead, the human artists created a number frames to train the AI, and then went back to clean up the AI's problem areas, like hands and facial expressions.
Shadow of the Templars was previously remade back in 2009 with new art, an extended story, and an additional playable character in The Director's Cut. While this version reviewed well enough at the time, fans have since come to regard it as a downgrade from the original. It seems that Reforged will launch without any of that added content, though that may change in the future. "If and when we bring the Director's Cut stuff across - which we might well do - then we can give people choices to which they play," Cecil says. "but at the moment the offering is just Broken Sword."
A brand-new sequel called Broken Sword: Parzival's Stone is also in development for PC, consoles, and mobile, and is set to be released sometime after the remake. As the devs describe the plot in a press release, "George and Nico reunite but soon find themselves embroiled in a terrifying conspiracy involving Nazi treasure hunters, brutal mediaeval histories, and quantum physics."
If you want to see another classic adventure game revival done right, check out our Return to Monkey Island review.
