London. City of love, romance and dreams – so they say.
I used to say it too.
But ever since that day, the day when traffic was murder… I have always associated my beloved London with… sitting next to a sweaty guy on the bus.
I was at home having a bath when my editor called…
The place? The Apple Store in London. The event? ‘Broken Sword: A Celebration’. At first, I was shocked – a sign barring my progress – saying that no photography was allowed. Like the best Parisian undercover photo-journalist, I snuck a camera in anyway, saying that I was just using it as a dictaphone. If the security guy had asked me again, I would have said that the red light on the front of the camera was an ‘off light’, but he wandered off – blind sided by my wiles – and after someone with a larger, more impressive camera. Namely fellow RU babe Loz, armed with her uber professional camera, unable to use it in a building that was already full of iPods and iPhones covered in their own little cameras.
For those of you not familiar with the Broken Sword games, they centre around George Stobbart – an American tourist slash adventurer and Nico Collard a French photo journalist. They also usually involve those pesky Knights Templar, and got there way before Altair ever threw himself off a building into a hay cart, or Ezio strapped on Da Vinci’s wings. And well before Darren Brown ever wrote about Leonardo’s Code. The original game was released in 1996, and has found itself on most formats, including Windows Mobile and the Palm. Last year, a Director’s Cut version was released on the DS and Wii, including new art and animation by Dave Gibbons -perhaps best known as the artist and co-creator of ‘Watchmen’ – lesser known as the inventor of the ‘Comic Sans’ font. He worked with Charles Cecil, the director who chose what was to be put into his director’s cut on ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’; a favourite Amiga point and click that was ported to the iPhone last year. All of this seemed to be leading up to the inevitable – bringing ‘Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut’ to its spiritual home, the iPhone.
Recently released, it has already made its way into the top twenty purchased, but more importantly, top five highest grossing iPhone apps. When the main competition is from EA, Rockstar and Tom Tom – it marks a real victory for York based Revolution software, and that’s not only way that they are generating money – it’s pretty much the only game I know of that has a direct link allowing you to buy the soundtrack straight from iTunes.
So, the presentation wasn’t at all smug, but the people in attendance had the right to be very happy indeed – especially as the bulk of the game that they were selling was nearly fourteen years old. Given the age of the game, much was made of the innovation – the iTunes link, the new interactive puzzles, the seamless interaction that the touch screen of the iPhone allowed, the hint system, the dual narrative structure as well as the quality of the audio. That being said, there was still much to link it to the past, with the interview of the original voice actors from the first game (Hazel Ellerby sounded like Nico, but as lovely as she was, she didn’t really look like her) and the team that worked on the original product. The team was, by today’s standards, very small – but most of them seemed to have a large amount of fun making the game.
A lot of what they said was quite interesting, like the fact that a text adventure written in 1982 by Cecil called ‘Ship of Doom’ was raised in the House of Commons in 1984 because it recognised swear words. Which was the same in terms of violence as the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ apparently, according to MPs at the time. If that MP picked up ‘Left for Dead 2’ they’d probably have a well deserved heart attack. Cecil also revealed that he didn’t expect that he would still be working on revisions of ‘Broken Sword’ as he threw away the original DAT tapes of the cast recordings when Revolution moved offices (which goes to show how long ago THAT was). And Cecil also admitted that the goat puzzle was essentially a cheat.
Miles Gilderdale (the guitarist from Acoustic Alchemy, check out Blue Note records for more info) and Barrington Pheloung (who was a composer for Inspector Morse) performed a track they had created for the new Director’s Cut. Then we were reminded we could buy it on iTunes. Well, ‘Broken Sword: A Celebration’ did take place in the UK’s flagship Apple Store.
At the end of the presentation you could grab yourself a free copy of the first Broken Sword comic book, which was then signed by the games developers, so myself and Loz obviously wanted to get a photo with these for this very feature. Unfortunately this had to be done in a local StarBucks and then pick the person who looked the least like a thief to take the photo for us. Unfortunately, just because you don’t look like a thief doesn’t automatically make you a great photographer. Which was definitely the case here.
So what wasn’t mentioned in the presentation? Well, no real confirmation on ‘Beneath a Steel Sky 2’, no definite word on whether ‘Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror’ (or Broken Sword 2) would see its Mayan mystery transported to the iPhone – all we got was a ‘possibly’. No mention of iPad optimisation, or even whether my PSOne favourite ‘In Cold Blood’ would get an update. However, Charles Cecil did say that the next thing that Revolution did would be an original game. Given the success of ‘Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut’; the happiness of the connections with Apple and the general camaraderie of all the people who are still clearly happy and excited to work together – I wouldn’t be surprised to see some or all of those things happening in the future.
London and the winter. The first months of the year and the start of the decade. The city held many memories for me. Of Apple Stores, of music, of love- and of death.
(Cue a cut scene where a clown with an accordion blows up all the lovely iPods and MacBook Airs at the Regent Street Apple Store)
As I picked myself up, all I could hear was the ceaseless drone of traffic. Life went on around me, but ‘Broken Sword: A Celebration’ changed my life forever.
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