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Platform Filters:   All Platforms  Xbox   GameCube   PlayStation 2   PC   Game Boy Advance   Site Sections:   Updates  News   Games   Publishers   Developers   Reviews   Previews   Release Dates   Editorials   Glossary   Contact Us		Preview:       3rd September 2003: Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (ECTS 2003)  We caught up with Charles Cecil from Revolution, the developers of the Broken Sword games, at this year's ECTS and he was able to show us his latest project. Posted by Marc Hull - PlayStation 2,PC - UK and Europe Having been quite a fan of adventure games not too many years ago, I was quite put-off by their sudden foray into the realm of 3D graphics. Here was a genre that seemed perfectly suited to being in 2D, especially with the incredible cartoony style of titles like the Monkey Island games or Sam and Max that just seemed impossible to recreate with polygons. However, merely a year ago my interest in the genre was rejuvenated when I picked up a copy of the original Broken Sword - a game that, despite being originally released at a time when 3D was the buzz-word of the day, kept everything in nice, easy to understand 2D, and also retained the humour I used to love in old adventure games. How irritated I was, then, to glimpse at screenshots of the latest installment of the series earlier this year only to see that it had gone the way of all the other great adventure series - it had been converted entirely into 3D! When we were offered an interview with Charles Cecil, the managing director of the series' development company, at this year's ECTS I was ready to march down to THQ's stand, pitch fork in hand, and give him a grilling on why they had decided to change the series so drastically. However, merely a few minutes into his demonstration of the game the reasons gradually became more clear. Besides the fact that 2D games struggle to stand out in a world where graphics sell and gameplay is becoming more of an afterthought, Revolution have been very careful to keep the gameplay as simple as possible, while still taking advantage of the extra freedom that a fully-3D world has to offer. We're talking about super-smooth animation, panning cameras, realtime cut-scenes and dynamic environments that change depending on the time of day. I think one of my main gripes with 3D adventure games was the fact that controlling them always seemed more difficult than their 2D counterparts, and often they contained unnecessarily awkward camera angles that would obscure important parts of the environment. Fortunately, Broken Sword 3 has mostly fixed camera angles that are in intelligent places - in fact, sometimes you would be forgiven for thinking that the world was actually pre-rendered, but move to the extents of its view and it will pan round to give you a better look at the action. As for the controls, they're not point-and-click like on many of the old PC adventure games, but are instead far more console-friendly. On the PS2 version we played, the analogue stick was used for movement as you'd expect, while the four front-mounted action buttons would change depending on the context to give you a range of different actions that you could perform. With the control system now being much more orientated towards consoles, Charles was worried about comparisons being made between this and action adventure titles like Tomb Raider. Indeed, in terms of moving the game's playable characters about the environments it does play somewhat similarly, and the title's Congo-based environments that have you picking your way through tombs kitted out with traps and pressure pads do share a lot in common with Ms. Croft's exploits. However, whereas Lara's adventures were about pixel-perfect jumping and executing acrobatic moves, Broken Sword is a much more puzzle-oriented affair. If you try to make George or Nico fall off a cliff they'll simply walk to the edge and stop, or if you need to jump to a ledge you can simply position yourself so that a 'jump' action appears as one of your action buttons and then press it. It is also quite difficult, but not impossible, to die during the game. Hardened adventure fans may hate the idea of working through an epic only to have your character die, but fortunately Broken Sword is very forgiving in this respect. Firstly, you are always given fair warning of when a life-or-death situation is about to arise, so you'll know not to step on a pressure pad again if the last time you only just managed to escape the crushing spikes it triggered. Also, even if you are stupid enough to fall into a blindingly obvious trap o' doom, after a brief cut-scene showing your untimely death you'll simply be placed back within a few minutes of where you were, so it's hardly a set-back of life-shattering proportions. I have to say, despite my initial skepticism, this game is shaping up pretty well. I got to experience both the PlayStation 2 and PC versions at the show, and whilst the PC one can obviously reach higher resolutions, there was very little difference in terms of the level of detail and effects. Both versions had some very nicely textured environments with realtime shadows cast by each of the characters and various other special effects such as fire, smoke and water to give the world some life. The animation also seemed to be top-notch, with some impressive realtime cut-scenes that are triggered by completing puzzles. Charles promises that despite the trend for excessively long cut-scenes in games these days, Broken Sword would mainly contain lots of short sequences that would chip in frequently throughout the game to tie together the various puzzles and advance the story. In fact, all-in-all my only slight concern about the game lies with the controls for the PC version, since having played it using a console-style games pad at the show, I wonder how PC fans used to using a keyboard and mouse will react to the console-orientated control system. Overall, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon looks set to bring the series right up-to-date in terms of graphics while still keeping the simplistic gameplay and cartoony style of the previous titles. Although we'll wait until getting our hands on final code to see whether it maintains the same level of humour as the first game, we're confident that this will be a product that adventure fans will enjoy, however suspicious of the change to 3D you are. We hope to have more details closer to its October release, so keep your eyes on the site! Marc Hull             Latest Images:		Related Games:  Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon for PlayStation 2  5  Screenshots  1  Preview Click here for All Game Information. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon for PC  5  Screenshots  1  Preview Click here for All Game Information.
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