George Stobbart, an average Californian tourist is on vacation in Europe when his his world is blown apart (literally) as he café he is sitting outside of is destroyed by a man in a clown suit. Together with Parisian journalist Nicole "Nico" Collard he must track down the killer in an international adventure that spans Paris, Ireland, Scotland, Syria and Spain on his quest.
The graphics are beautifully drawn and point to the fact that 3D is unnecessary in adventure games and can be downright annoying due to the fact the reliability and length of the game often suffer badly. The backgrounds are far better than the character animation, though the good story more than compensates for this.
The interface is simple to use and the puzzles are far more logical than in many an adventure game. Indeed Shadow of the Templars is relatively easy to solve and I managed to complete it without any help from walkthroughs, which is more than I can say for some of the obscure challenges in some of its contemporaries, where you end up resorting to combining every item in the inventory in frustration. It works mainly because the game takes a good while to reach its worthwhile conclusion (is there anything more annoying in games when they take months to finish, then the ending is a complete washout?).
The voice acting is variable, with Rolf Saxon and Rachel Atkins both perfect as George and Nico respectively, while some of the accents of the other characters is a little dodgy to say the least. There is some good support though from British character actors and overall it is of a higher quality than you will find in many adventure games. This is aided by a strong script that balances humour and seriousness well to round out the characters. There is even some educational value to Shadow of the Templars in the dialogue.
The music is well written by Barrington Pheloung, best known (in the UK at least) for his scoring of the Inspector Morse TV series. In my opinion though the music is not varied enough, though the atmospheric music in the Ireland section being a notable exception. The music is certainly improved upon in the second George Stobbart adventure.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars these days sounds cliché thanks to a certain Dan Brown book that has spawned about a thousand books with similar titles and plots that should be well ignored compared to this.
A true benchmark of the genre.
The graphics are beautifully drawn and point to the fact that 3D is unnecessary in adventure games and can be downright annoying due to the fact the reliability and length of the game often suffer badly. The backgrounds are far better than the character animation, though the good story more than compensates for this.
The interface is simple to use and the puzzles are far more logical than in many an adventure game. Indeed Shadow of the Templars is relatively easy to solve and I managed to complete it without any help from walkthroughs, which is more than I can say for some of the obscure challenges in some of its contemporaries, where you end up resorting to combining every item in the inventory in frustration. It works mainly because the game takes a good while to reach its worthwhile conclusion (is there anything more annoying in games when they take months to finish, then the ending is a complete washout?).
The voice acting is variable, with Rolf Saxon and Rachel Atkins both perfect as George and Nico respectively, while some of the accents of the other characters is a little dodgy to say the least. There is some good support though from British character actors and overall it is of a higher quality than you will find in many adventure games. This is aided by a strong script that balances humour and seriousness well to round out the characters. There is even some educational value to Shadow of the Templars in the dialogue.
The music is well written by Barrington Pheloung, best known (in the UK at least) for his scoring of the Inspector Morse TV series. In my opinion though the music is not varied enough, though the atmospheric music in the Ireland section being a notable exception. The music is certainly improved upon in the second George Stobbart adventure.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars these days sounds cliché thanks to a certain Dan Brown book that has spawned about a thousand books with similar titles and plots that should be well ignored compared to this.
A true benchmark of the genre.