ECTS 2002: Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon first look

At this year's ECTS conference, we met with Revolution Software's Charles Cecil and given an overview of the next game in the Broken Sword series. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon will be a third-person adventure game that will let players reprise the roles of freelance detectives George and Nico, who had previously been represented by brightly colored cartoon characters in the previous games, but will be represented as 3D models in the third game. However, Revolution is taking care to include as much detail and personality as possible for the detectives, as well as the characters they'll meet and the world they'll explore--they'll communicate with expressive gestures and have full facial animations.

The game itself will re-introduce the occult, fantastic themes of the previous games, including references to the secret society known as the Knights Templar, as well as to the "earth energy Gaia." At the beginning of the game, George will be flying on a plane in a storm over the Congo River when his plane is struck by lightning and brought down, while in Paris, a computer hacker approaches Nico (or someone who looks a lot like her) and begs her for help, only to be betrayed and shot. Though George and Nico's adventures will seem unrelated at first, their investigations will lead them across Paris, England, and Egypt as they investigate a new mystery.

The new game will have a new interface that will feature "direct control" of its characters using a gamepad (on consoles) or a keyboard (on the PC). Although many of the company's most successful games have been built on games that use a point-and-click interface, according to Mr. Cecil, "point-and-click is dead." The game's direct-control setup will let players move their characters quickly and easily, and interact with other characters and items using a four-icon interface in the bottom-right corner of the screen that will correspond to the four face buttons on console controllers. These icons will let players quickly and easily pick up, put down, open, and examine items without having to drag around a mouse pointer.

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon will involve what was described as "detective work"--in classic adventure-game fashion, George and Nico will need to speak to different characters and uncover clues to advance in their quest, though they'll also be able to make use of items in their inventories to solve puzzles or simply bypass certain difficulties. For instance, players might find a hamburger, which they can pick up and eat, or keep around to pacify an angry guard dog--but they'll also have lots of other ways to get past the dog. According to Mr. Cecil, Revolution is well aware that dying or coming to an impasse in a game can be frustrating, which is why many of The Sleeping Dragon's puzzles will include multiple solutions, though the game will also feature classic Myst-style puzzles as well.

However, the final game will be about 16 hours in length. That's because even though the game will in fact have cutscenes rendered in real-time by the in-game engine, these cutscenes will be mercifully brief. "We're not trying to make a movie, but we can certainly learn from movies--that's why we're not including exposition for exposition's sake," said Cecil. The game will also be punctuated by "action events"--suspenseful situations in which players will need to react to danger. Mr. Cecil gave the example of being faced with an armed attacker and being given only a few seconds to decide whether to fight or flee. The idea behind these sequences won't be about using twitch reflexes, but rather about making important decisions under exciting, high-pressure circumstances.

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is currently scheduled for release on the PC and PS2 next year. For more information on the game, consult our previous coverage .