If you’re like me and you spent your spare
teenage time customising everything on your
Windows 95 PC,
then you’ll likely have also spent your
time playing point and click adventure games.
If you were really like me
then you’d have somehow managed to find
a spare hour to play these games in the morning
before school.
Those of us who fondly remember playing the
absolutely sublime LucasARTs games
like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of
the Tentacle
will also remember a certain special game
by Revolution Software…
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars.
Charles Cecil, the co-founder of Revolution
Software,
originally came up with the idea for Broken
Sword in 1992,
shortly after the studio’s previous game
Lure of the Temptress,
another point and click adventure game.
The idea was conceived by Cecil upon reading
a book called Holy Blood and The Holy Grail,
which theorises that Jesus and Mary Magdalen
got married and had children,
and that the descendents now live in the South
of France,
with this secret being protected by ‘The
Knights Templar’.
Cecil wanted to continue with the point and
click genre,
but steer away from the more comedic tone
set by Monkey Island and such,
and was interested in taking it in a more
dramatic route,
using “interactive movies” of the time
as a source of inspiration for making the
game more cinematic.
Making the game believable instead of realistic
was something important to Cecil,
and that covered everything from character
motivation, to puzzles, to background lighting.
This meant the game needed a much higher polish,
especially to compete in the video game landscape
at the time,
which was on the verge of the 3D revolution,
and was already populated with other adventure
titles.
Previous games by Cecil would’ve had a small
320x200 pixel screen with 16 colours, using
floppy disks.
Broken Sword was being produced at 5 times
the resolution for PC
with a screen of 640 x 480 pixels and 256
colours, using CDs with considerable storage.
To make the game as good as it could be,
the best from other creative industries had
to be sourced.
While Cecil was in Dublin to recruit animators
to produce hand drawn art for the game,
he met with layout artist Eoghan Cahill, who
worked at Don Bluth Studios.
He and Neil Breen provided the backgrounds
for Broken Sword,
drawing them in pencil, and then beautifully
colouring them in Photoshop.
A particular visual delight was the striking
introduction
where we see everything from a crow’s eye,
and then we have this sweeping view of Paris
at an almost distorted, fish eye perspective.
Eoghan and Neil’s environments are beautiful,
stunning, dynamic
and really brought the game to life, no thanks
to their experience working at Don Bluth Studios.
Cecil recalls bringing along pixel animator
Steve Oades to work as animation director,
who’d previously worked on Revolution’s
games as a pixel animator.
Some particular animators who were credited
with working on the cutscenes were Mark Povey,
who was an assistant animator at Don Bluth
Studios,
Ros Allen, who’d worked with Disney and
Warner Bros,
and Mike Burgess from Red Rover Studios.
A notable film Red Rover produced was All
Dogs Go To Heaven 2, the sequel to, unsurprisingly,
All Dogs Go To Heaven, which was produced
by Don Bluth Studios
So who is Don Bluth?
Don Bluth used to work at Disney, and had
worked on films like Robin Hood
and The Rescuers, starting his career as an
inbetweener
before becoming an animation director.
He left Disney and went onto create his own
studio,
which produced classics like An American Tail,
The Land Before Time and Titan AE.
His studio also did the animation for Dragon’s
Lair,
an interactive adventure laser-disc game,
which is also now available for Switch!
Disney’s influence on his style was apparent
in his own films,
drawing more influence from earlier productions
where he believed the quality was highest.
With all the talent involved in helping to
bring George and Nico to life in a classically
animated way,
it’s not surprising that the Disney influence
passed down by Don Bluth made its way into
Broken Sword.
When characters move, there’s a real understanding
of 3D space,
so you’ll see characters turning believably
within that space,
heads turn really smoothly,
you’ve got some flamboyant and over exaggerated
movement to really drive an emotion or thought,
you’ve got anticipation in actions like
grabbing someone
or little overshoot follow throughs like when
George rests on the table,
or you might catch a glimpse of personality
through some character animation,
such as George gently flirting by running
his hand through his gorgeous blonde hair,
the coy smile in return by the waitress,
or this goofy goon trying to defuse some TNT
with his hat, things like that.
I like the clown’s sliding squash as he
enters this doorway,
contrasting the relative restriction on George
with goofiness,
and this speedy run away with his trousers
bouncing up and down is really nice.
And this explosion is class, alternating shots
of shooting pillars with silhouetted glimpses
of the damage,
and I really love these little trails of debris
at the end that coil and taper as the energy
dissipates.
I find that the very 90s CGI vehicles clash
with the painterly hand drawn aesthetic,
but it’s used in such a small part, it’s
not too noticeable.
It’s just that 90s CGI growing pains era.
On top of all the solid understanding of your
classic animation principles,
it’s all animated on smooth 1s and 2s, so
anywhere from 12 to 24 drawings per second.
What’s interesting in this opening scene
particularly,
is when you play some parts back frame by
frame,
both characters are moving on 2s, so each
drawing is held for two frames.
But each character is held on the other’s
alternating frame,
which is either how it simply ended up being
animated,
or these characters were animated separately
then composited together later on.
This makes sense, as a few animators might’ve
worked on different characters,
so would then be artificially placed together
in the same scene later on.
Very occasionally you might notice some...inconsistencies
and moments
where there either wasn’t enough time or
enough budget,
such as when George climbs down this ladder,
his proportions kinda mess up slightly as
he gets closer to the camera.
And sometimes it’s a little unclear as to
what George actually looks like,
or at least how old he is, as his features
and general appearance fluctuate ever so slightly
from scene to scene.
There are character sheets that exist, so
there was definitely a reference,
but perhaps this was the only reference,
and more unusual angles for George had to
be made up.
What I like is that the calmer scenes have
flatter, more thoughtful movement,
and more dramatic ones have more energy, more
weight to movement,
more dynamic shapes to the movement, more
use of space with the arms and such.
Also, I just love how this church collapses
at the end.
Nice amount of detail, which I appreciate
as an effects animator.
Now, the animation for the characters in the
game itself is also massively impressive and
complex.
I mean, I’m always astounded at the amount
of frames each character must have in games
like these,
but George in particular has to have a walking
animation in different directions
which switch depending on which angle he’s
walking, flicking between two angles if needed.
The actual walk itself looks like it’s split
up, so his face is static,
but arms and legs move with the torso just
being moved in accordance with the up and
down bob.
Not being a sprite animator, I imagine this
is very common,
splitting different movements up into the
responding parts that need moving,
to save having to redraw everything each time.
Hey, animation’s all about clever shortcuts.
George has got many differing actions, like
crouching, climbing, rummaging,
idle fidgets like flicking his hair, it’s
just baffling.
And let’s not forget that many additional
characters throughout the game,
many with bespoke animation and poses relative
to that environment.
Something that’s worth noting is that all
the backgrounds are designed in the same perspective
and angle,
so all the animation that happens only has
to be drawn once,
and not from differing angles, such as from
above or below.
Now, don’t get me wrong, games that have
come out after Broken Sword
have progressively better animation for the
in-game characters,
like The Curse of Monkey Island and The Little
Acre,
(which coincidentally was animated by graduates
of a course set up by Don Bluth in Ireland)
but I think it’s Disney’s Influence on
Broken Sword that helped it stand above the
rest,
and pushed the industry’s quality much higher.
I didn’t play any other Broken Sword games
so I don’t know anything about their production
and didn’t do much research for this video,
but Broken Sword 2 also looks like it got
the same treatment,
if not better, in terms of animation, using
the same production quality as the first game.
I’m aware there’s been a director’s
cut of the first game,
with added bits for Nico and some….questionable
changes to the cutscene animation,
but I’m not interested in covering those.
I wanna thank Discord user FrDougal9000 for
helping me research this video.
Additional sources for this video are linked
below.
You can also watch Jason Manford play this
game in a Let’s Play series, funnily enough,
and he also has an interview with Charles
Cecil and George Stobbart himself, Rolf Saxon.
Man, what a great voice.
Thanks for watching.
Leave a comment below on your favourite scene
from Broken Sword, or if you think I missed
anything important.
Thanks to my patrons for funding this video,
and see you next time.
Loveyoubye.
