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Hapless American tourist George Stobbart is back again (again), with Revolution Software celebrating the success of its 2024 remaster by remastering Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror.
If you missed it the first time around (perhaps because you weren’t born in 1997), then you’re in for a treat. George and French journalist Nico Collard say goodbye to Paris and Templar conspiracies and instead find themselves in South America uncovering a Mayan mystery.
George really doesn’t know how to take a normal holiday.
This updated version will feature 4K art and the return of Broken Sword 1’s story mode—a more relaxed mode that gives you a bit of assistance with puzzles, while not feeding you the solution.
“The Smoking Mirror has always been one of our most loved games, and with Reforged we were able to enhance it in ways that respect the original while making it shine for modern audiences”, says Charles Cecil, founder and CEO of Revolution Software. “Just as with the first game, we can’t wait for players old and new to experience it again.”
I truly adore the Broken Sword series and thought the remaster was pretty much perfect, aside from the slightly tinny audio. And it was a lot more faithful than the Director’s Cut, originally made for the Nintendo DS and ported to other platforms.
Revolution has also decided not to employ AI this time around, as Cecil revealed to YouTuber Cressup, in a recent interview.
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“I got into a bit of trouble talking about AI last time,” he said, “but AI didn’t really help us very much at all, and we’ve gone into Broken Sword 2 just saying, ‘We’re just going to do it using artists and animators, and we’re not going to really consider AI,’ because it didn’t help us last time and we’ll get a better product and I think it will be better received.”
I reckon Revolution and Cecil caught some strays last time, thanks to AI being such an incredibly broad term. Revolution used AI upscaling, which has been used in mods and remasters for a long time—well before the current AI debate kicked off. This was not a case of an AI being used to create new assets.
But since modern AI use is often gross and creatively bankrupt, a lot of people weren’t happy to hear that Broken Sword would be taking advantage of it. Regardless, Revolution won’t be using it in any form this time, and Cecil thinks it’s too limited to be properly useful for the studio’s purposes.
“I think it’s naive to think that an AI can take hand drawn art in that particular style and put in detail where no detail existed,” he said. “Or indeed for an animation, to upscale the animation and put in human emotion. It’s something that humans need to do because that’s what humans do. Clearly AI is extraordinary in so many ways, but it does just do what went before, by definition.”
Cecil also teased improvements to the story mode, though he didn’t go into specifics. “The response has been so phenomenal that we’ve really doubled down on that for Broken Sword 2 and we’re putting in a lot of new ideas that we’ll port back to Broken Sword 1.”
I’m a big fan of developers using what they’ve learned from developing a sequel to go back and improve an older game, even if it’s not something I’ll be taking advantage of.
Revolution is also putting together a physical collector’s edition, which is being funded via Kickstarter. The campaign hasn’t kicked off yet, but it’s “launching soon”.
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