Paris in the fall, the last months of the year and the end of the millennium…’
The opening dialogue from George Stobbart always makes me feel immersed into the Broken Sword world and a perfect escape of reality. This time, it’s the continuous in, out, shake it all about lockdown rules, not maintaining cases and public guidance that the UK government is still incapable of doing. With that, I returned back to the series.
Diving into a world about history, religion and death for the past 20 years now, and Broken Sword still captives me with it’s mystery and comedic wit. The games focus on George Stobbart, a stereotypical White American male who always seems to be in the middle of something disastrous yet makes light of the situation with humour. Then there’s also Nico Collard, a French journalist who seems to get away with things due to beauty and accent and is right behind him in involvement. I always enjoyed Nico’s parts in Broken Sword 2 (Smoking Mirror), 3 (The Sleeping Dragon) and 5 (The Serpent’s Curse) because being a female gamer, I wanted to play characters I could identify with by gender, race and interest. Any female character that I could control on my mouse or controller was a plus despite differences in features.
Since I was a child, the Broken Sword series has been one of my favourite PC games that I have ever played. I can still replay most of the games in the series and learn something about the story or the recurring characters even to this day.
Broken Sword 1 and 2 are everyone’s favourites, there’s no doubt about it. My dad purchased the first two when PC games were in big boxes with the CD-Rom and back cover summary splashed all over for me and my sisters when we were younger. Diving into these games and exploring the world with George and Nico for the first time was ground-breaking. The optional selection to go to either Spain or Syria was a nice change from many other games that forced you to directly head to a new destination. And I loved the mystery of finding out that the killer clown was a part of a bigger threat than just murder and mayhem.
