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Talking all things Broken Sword and Revolution Software - Charles Cecil Comicon Napoli Interview

For an event about drawings and comics and artists, having the creator of Broken Sword as one of the stellar guests made all the sense. Here we catch up with Charles about the point-and-click graphic adventure series and about what's going on at the British studio.

Audio transcription

"We are at the 25th Comicon in Naples, and this is not only about manga and comics and movies and TV shows, this is also about video games, and we had the pleasure to have Yuji Horii before you, and now we have the great pleasure to have Charles Cecil with us, and thank you so much for your presence."

"Thank you very much. Hola.
Hola. How are you enjoying, ciao, your time here and the Comicon?
Well, do you know, Naples is one of the cities I've never been to before, and I've always wanted to, and everybody talks about the chaos and the beauty and the food, but the chaos is what hits you initially, isn't it?
With the scooters and the, it's just insane, but it's wonderful, and it's got energy, and I love the fact that there's so much passion for Broken Sword amongst Italians, and Spanish."

"I'm very proud of that, so it's a pleasure to be here.
Talking about passion, about Broken Sword, what can you tell me about the feedback you got from the release of Reforged, which, if I'm correct, released digitally, and now it's going to come out physically, so what can you tell me about what you guys gathered?
Well, it was, it's extraordinary how much passion there was from people who played the game originally and have played it since, and there are two main audiences, there's the nostalgia audience and a new audience, and the nostalgia audience is brilliant, and the game has done really well, particularly on PlayStation, actually, and on PlayStation, the game released in just a few months after the PC version, and it was cover mounted on the official PlayStation magazine in France and Germany, probably in Spain, certainly in the UK, so millions of people played it, and a lot of our fans come from that, so we have a very strong PlayStation [version], obviously PC has been fantastic, and the level of feedback has just been phenomenal, it's fantastic, and the game has sold well, which is great, and what we hope now is we're hearing from new people who didn't know the game, who are enjoying it, because we have a story mode which aims to stop people getting frustrated, so if people play in the story mode, then instead of just not knowing what to do, a little hint comes up, and it's a very subtle hint, and then it gets more obvious, because what I think people want to do is they want to play the game, feel smart for solving the puzzles, get excited by the way that the story is being driven forward, and not get frustrated, because the moment you need to look up a hint, the magic's been broken, you want to feel that you're the one, and I think a little hint, a little sparkle somewhere doesn't spoil that, so we're absolutely thrilled."

"You mentioned two things that are of my interest, one is puzzle design, and nostalgia as well, graphic adventures were very different back in the day, where they could get frustrating, so how do you deal with, what do you think about the genre nowadays?
It looks like a comeback for the genre, and you are feeling that from the release of Reforged, and other than these hints, how do you think players have to be approached?
So what our games have always tried to do is to be logical, so the puzzles are logical within the context, not a monkey with a banana that goes into your pocket and becomes a monkey wrench, and I love Monkey Island, but it's different, it's slapstick humour, and the problem with that is that often people will just use inventory objects, use every object on each other, until eventually you succeed, and then it's a gag, and it's funny, so that's the reward, we try to do it slightly differently, well, very differently, in that there's a logic, so that the player, if they explore the world, they learn more and more about character motivations, about what's going on in the world, so hopefully they will then work it out, and then it will be a lightbulb moment, that's what the solution is."

"Then they feel great, which happens with more modern puzzles.
So with games, what we enjoy about games is that if you fail, not adventures, you know why you failed, and you know what to do better next time, the potentially frustrating thing about an adventure game is you don't know why you failed, you don't know what's blocking you, so that was what we tried to overcome with our story mode."

"And then you have to search online, which doesn't feel, at least to me, it doesn't feel good.
And then the moment you say, because we give hints, but the moment you get hints, what we noticed, because we tested the game very, very thoroughly, and we watched how people played, and people were very keen to solve the puzzles themselves, but the moment they went for the first hint, then they would only spend a minute or two each time, and then go back to the hint."

"The magic of feeling smart had been broken, and that's what we're desperate to try and get back to, this feeling of smart, being smart.
So one of the things that we do is we put a timer on the hints, so that we try and put people off going back and just getting new hints."

"They have to wait a certain amount of time, and hopefully we can nudge them away from getting the hints towards exploring and then waiting for just a subtle hint when they get stuck.
A thing I found interesting, I recently played Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and one thing they did with puzzles, just in case it's something interesting, was that many of the solutions were randomized in the game, so that you couldn't go online and check."

"They were hinting more or less, but at the end of the day you felt better or not.
Okay, all this feedback that you said you've gathered, is this something that you would apply to a potential inevitable Broken Sword 2 remake, or to a potential hopefully coming new entry?
So two things. First of all, for the games that we've written before, we've been very upfront, we've said these are the games, but we've enhanced them."

"So we've only changed them in a way that I will justify, and now I'm gonna explain.
So there's no [new] dialogue, we've included dialogue that was never played, but it was recorded at the time.
So it's part of the canon. So we've only stuck with the canon."

"And that's a really important element.
What I have had the opportunity to do is go back over and fix continuity errors.
And the funny thing is, I point things out to people, and nobody ever noticed that there was..."

"But it does matter, because there's this sense, particularly, you know, adventure players are smart, and what they do is they take in all this information, and if there's a continuity error, then there's just a little niggle."

"And worse than that, they'll think that maybe that niggle relates to a clue.
So, you know, for example, just to give one example, at the beginning, well, two examples, actually.
At the beginning, there's a clown that appears, puts a bomb on a stool, runs away."

"When the game starts, the bomb explosion is from the centre of the room, not from the stool.
Now, again, nobody noticed, but it does stop the continuity.
So for the new game, what we've done is we've blown up the stool, and the radius is around that, because that makes much more sense."

"And then later, in the game, without wishing to give too many spoilers away, you find some material from a jacket that the killer wore.
And then later, you find out where his hotel is, and you see him walking in.
And he's wearing the trousers with the same material, but he's wearing a purple jacket."

"And in his room are the purple trousers.
It's like, why? How did that happen?
And the player's thinking, did he come back to the room?
So just small things, like we've just now drawn him just wearing a shirt without a jacket."

"So it's an incredible privilege to be able to come back after all of these years and to fix these issues that nobody noticed at the time, but I really do think it's a better story because it's much more consistent.
You won't tell me if you would apply that to a Broken Sword 2 remake or a new entry?
Well, as far as a Broken Sword 2 remake, obviously we would love to do it."

"We did a Kickstarter for Broken Sword 1.
Very successful.
Very successful, and we are still to deliver the physical items, which I'm very, very aware of."

"And it's coming along really well, but we're now six months late.
I don't like being six months late.
So at the moment the focus is on Broken Sword 1.
For Broken Sword 6, which we announced, that uses a mixture of 2D and 3D, where we apply 2D textures to 3D, and I'd like to think that it looks really fantastic and very dynamic."

"And that's certainly what I want to do going forward, is to write games that feel hand-drawn, but wherever they can use the technology to their advantage, they do.
And in Broken Sword 6, we didn't attempt to do very much with the characters."

"The characters are clearly 3D, so we will be doing the same thing.
At the moment, we have been focusing on Broken Sword 1, and we'll be going back to Broken Sword 6.
We haven't actually done very much for the last year or so."

"It's very interesting that you brought up the art style and how you are dealing with it.
Of course, the first games were groundbreaking in terms of how you draw traditionally and animate it.
Those were something we hadn't seen before."

"So here, this is an event all about artists and authors.
So how do you feel about that, about both what you guys did back in the day and how to modernize the traditional art becoming animated in video games?
It's slightly complex."

"And it's lovely. There are some fantastic artists.
Remember that, for Beneath the Steel Sky, we worked with Dave Gibbons, comic book artist of Watchmen, a phenomenal talent."

"And we were constrained, of course, by the low resolution.
On Amiga, we were limited to 32 colors, and the resolution was 320x200.
So what was great about that was that Dave could create a comic book and you saw the characters, and then you saw the little pixels."

"And in your mind, you connected the two.
But one of the huge advantages of a comic book was that it came in the size and you could read it, and you saw in great detail much more so than if it had been a cut scene."

"Because even cut scenes were limited by the speed at which you could feed off the floppy disks.
They were limited by the screen resolution, by the number of colors.
So actually, I think it worked very well."

"And then for Broken Sword, of course, we worked with animators who'd worked at the Don Bluth studios.
And a lot of the game feels very Don Bluth-y.
A layout artist, Owen Cahill, who was an absolute genius, had his whole life working for Don Bluth."

"And he brought a lifetime of experience, which was phenomenal.
And then he got his daughter, Celine, who was an animator, and she'd worked at Don Bluth.
So yes, absolutely."

"And as far as comic books are concerned, clearly you have extraordinary talent, you have new ideas, you have new art styles, probably more so than in animation.
But then again, maybe you're too young, but the first time I saw Akira..."

"I don't think so.
But the first time I saw Akira...
I saw it.
...in 1990.
Yeah, exactly."

"It was so different.
Still is.
And it still is amazing.
And then from that, you obviously get Studio Ghibli, and I still look at Princess Mononoke."

"Yeah, of course.
This is so beautiful.
So yes, always taking inspiration from comic books and animated films.
I wanted to ask you about Concha or Steel Sky, but I don't have any more time, so closing one, please."

"I wanted to ask you about Revolution.
The studio, the operation, how you guys are doing, and what are the prospects for this year now that we are getting a new platform, entering the fray in a month this time."

"So how do you feel about the whole climate?
GTA VI, this morning, an hour ago, we learned, is coming on May 2026.
So you can release games in the fall.
Fantastic."

"Well, to be honest with you, the games that we write don't really compete with Grand Theft Auto.
Of course.
I am a huge fan.
It's like a meme, right?
Nobody's going to release."

"I know, and I'm a huge fan of Grand Theft Auto.
I think they're absolutely awesome.
But it's good to know that, sadly.
It's breaking."

"Because everybody was worried about that.
We're doing well.
We did a very successful Kickstarter.
It's wonderful to be able to engage with such a passionate community."

"It's wonderful to come to Italy and meet so many Broken Sword fans.
We never borrowed lots of money.
It's very old-fashioned.
We write games, and if they're successful, we do well."

"And if they're not, we go bankrupt.
It's kind of what happened in the olden days, rather than leveraging and getting lots of venture capital.
So we rely absolutely on the relationship with our community."

"And so we're doing well, and we're very happy, and we're in a happy place.
And Broken Sword 1 has done well, and we've got lots of other games.
We're only limited by the size of our team."

"But that's fine, because adventure games, if it launches this year or next year, it doesn't really matter.
Fantastic. You're all York-based?
Yes."

"Fantastic.
So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much.
I loved this interview. Enjoy the show.
Thank you so much."

"And I'm looking forward to trying out Broken Sword 1 Reforged on the physical version.
Thank you so much.
Hola and grazie mille."

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