Adventure gaming is on the rise again. At the Leipzig Games Convention 2006 we had the chance to talk to one of the few Greats of this genre, Charles Cecil of Revolution fame.

Charles Cecil: It’s amazing. This whole show is amazing. I have never been here before.

Michael Ecke: So, you have been to Germany before?

Charles Cecil: I did a press tour. I went to Hamburg, Munich and then Vienna, Austria. That worked very, very well. So, do you have a website or…

Peter Clausen: Yes. Well, we also write for a magazine, but that’s mainly about animation, comics and stuff like that. But we recently started a new website to write about stuff we really care about. Anyway, we should get moving. So, the German title of the Broken Sword series is Baphomets Fluch or The Curse of Baphomet. But this doesn’t really apply anymore. It only really applied in the first game. How do you feel about this?

Charles Cecil: That’s actually not strictly true. And I’ll tell you why it’s not. Because, Baphomet was the core of the templar mythology. And the Broken Sword games have all been primarily about esoteric lost knowledge, which came through the templars. And the templars where then destroyed because they allegedly worshipped Baphomet. So that was the curse of Baphomet. And in any game that has a strong templar-link, Baphomet is probably relevant. And in this game we actually go back into the history of the templars and Baphomet is mentioned very specifically, and there is quite a lot of new information. So more by chance, than by judgement Baphomet is very relevant.

Peter Clausen: So it wasn’t the German title which made you think “Well, maybe I should…”

Charles Cecil: No. But I’ll tell you what we have done. One of the things I find very interesting, and this is pretty unique to Germany, is that the German fans want to play the game in English, but they also want to have the subtitles in German. And that doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it? I mean, that’s a reasonable thing to ask. So what we have done this time is that, because we have so much capacity on the DVD, we have put all the language versions on. And so you can install the speech on any of the versions. You can install the speech in English, French or German, and then you can install subtitles in English, French German and Italian. Whichever combination you like. So hopefully people will like that feature. Because a lot of the Germans I speak to actually prefer to play the game in English if they can.

Peter Clausen: Probably because German translations aren’t always that great.

Charles Cecil: Oh, the German translation is very good.

Peter Clausen: I can see that. I actually played the previous games in German, and they were among the few translations I actually liked.



Charles Cecil: Yes, the German version is as good as the English Version. And what you have that we don’t, is the voice of Gillian Anderson, well the German voice of Gillian Anderson, playing Nico. And she’s great! She sounds so sexy!

Peter Clausen: Yeah, and I also remember being very happy about George still having the same voice, when the third game was published all these years after the second one.

Charles Cecil: Right.

Michael Ecke: Actually I think there’s has been a trailer for the French version of the game. And people on different fan sites are having competitions between the German voice actor and the French voice actor, and they favour the German voice.

Charles Cecil: So, for which Broken Sword? Broken Sword 3?

Michael Ecke: No, Broken Sword 4.

Charles Cecil: Oh, really?

Michael Ecke: Yeah. I thought that was kind of funny.

Charles Cecil: It is kind of funny, because how do they know?

Michael Ecke: I think there was a trailer.

Charles Cecil: Ah. I see.

Michael Ecke: I think the Broken Sword series is actually one of the very few series that has a strong fan base which also likes the different language versions.

Charles Cecil: I feel very flattered about this. We have a very passionate audience. And we take that very seriously. And there really is no excuse to do poor language versions. And particularly the Americans would say “It’s in English. It’s a bloody nuisance to have to do it in French and German”. But the way I see it, our fan base in Germany is every way as big as in the UK. If not bigger. So in many ways the German version is even more important than the English version.

Peter Clausen: Speaking of American English, I find it quite strange when Americans complain about English accents. I mean, I am German and I have no problems listening to English accents. So Americans really should not have any problems there.

Charles Cecil: Oh I know, I know. But the interesting thing I discovered the other day: The way that Americans use different expressions than us, they are actually using old English in many cases. So, for example we say “full stop”, they say “period”. “Period” actually was correct in Elizebethan English. But we subsequently changed it. So in many ways the Americans are speaking an older version of English. And we also spell things differently. So the Americans will then come back and tell us “This is spelt incorrectly”, and one suspects many of them don’t actually know that we spell things differently.

Peter Clausen: But you have not changed any dialogue because of this?

Charles Cecil: What we tend to do is writing it in universal English. So, we will avoid words if we can. In English an elevator is a lift. In Britain we tend to call it an elevator, because for an English mind it makes no difference. But an American will not accept the fact that it’s not proper American English. But what I am not prepared to do is spell in American for the English market. So we have to different versions. An international English version and an American English version and each one spells correctly for that particular region. I think that’s similar to creating a good quality German version. It’s just respecting the audience. We respect the American audience in the same way we respect the English audience. I think it’s a great shame when particularly British developers don’t respect the audience enough to spell correctly for that particular area.

Peter Clausen: What do you care about most? Plot, characters or gameplay?

Charles Cecil: Hahaha. You can’t say one or the other, can you? Because a good plot integrates the characters.

Peter Clausen: And where do you start? Do you first think about where the characters are going, or what’s happening in the story in general?

Charles Cecil: No. What we do is… first all we think about what the gameplay changes are, because when you write a game it’s very important to take into account how the game will feel. Our medium has an additional dimension. The linear story writers, all they do is to write the script, that’s it. We have to actually think about whether it’s gonna turn into a good story or not. So when I think about the gameplay I also think about the background story before any of the characters. And then within that we then develop characters that hopefully are interesting. But I really think that providing them with a good story characters should be easy to write. Because they should tell their own story. The big thing is that we have a different medium. We have to accept that we have not only huge advantages in the interactive medium but also big constraints. And these constraints often lead to some really shitty stories. And that’s why so many games have bad stories. And to give you a couple of examples, I have been thinking about quite hard for Broken Sword 4, In a film or a book it’s actually quite easy to change the amount of knowledge your protagonist has as opposed to the audience. So in a horror film you would often give the audience more knowledge than the protagonist. And that creates great drama, because the protagonist walks into a trap that the audience knows about but they don’t. And you really emphasize with them. Obviously in a game if that happens, the whole trick falls apart because you control the character. If you know as the audience there’s something around the corner you won’t control your characters to go around the corner.
This is a tool we can’t use.

The other thing is that you have to have a convincing antagonist. You gotta build them up. In a film you have a cutaway to see what they are doing. You go between the two, knowing that they are gonna meet. In our medium you don’t wanna do that because that means endless cutscenes. So we are gonna find new ways to introduce an antagonist, and make it so that when they meet at the end it feels compelling and legitimate and it does not feel like melodrama. Do you have melodrama? Melodrama is where you just don’t believe it. Suddenly somebody comes and the actors are going “Oh my god”, while the audience is going “Hang on, this just doesn’t work at all”.

Peter Clausen: That’s funny, because it’s how I am thinking about Final Fantasy 4, which I am currently replaying on the GBA. Have you played Final Fantasy 4?

Charles Cecil: No, I haven’t played the fourth one.

Peter Clausen: Well, it has a storyline where every couple of hours a character commits suicide, or at least tries to in order to achieve some noble sacrifice. And as time goes on it really becomes a cliché where you start to think “Allright, this is the sixth character to commit suicide, it’s getting annoying”.

Charles Cecil: But to be fair, that was quite some time ago.

Peter Clausen: Yeah, and when I originally played it I must have been about fourteen and I thought it was really like great literature…

Charles Cecil laughs

Peter Clausen: It’s still a great game, and I love it dearly but this has just made me realize how far we have come in terms of interactive storytelling.




Michael Ecke: I think that’s a very interesting in general if you compare the approach in storytelling in adventure games like Broken Sword and japanese RPGs. They are both storytelling genres. But the japanese don’t do their research properly I think. They insert all kinds of different allusions to mythology, but it’s only to make people think “Look, isn’t that cool?”. For example you seem to know an awful lot about history.

Charles Cecil: Oh, I do and everything that we do is as legitimate as it can be. Have you played Broken Sword 3?

Michael Ecke: Yes.

Peter Clausen: Yes.

Charles Cecil: Have you played Broken Sword 1 and 2?

Michael Ecke: Yes.

Peter Clausen: I am afraid I missed the second one. Always regretted it.

Charles Cecil: Well, Two wasn’t that great.

Peter Clausen: Well Michael told me earlier…

Michael Ecke: I liked Two.

Charles Cecil: Did you?

Michael Ecke: What I liked about it was, that it had more puzzles. The first part seemed to me like a really long conversation.

Charles Cecil: Yes, there was much, much dialogue. But then people complain that in Two there wasn’t enough dialogue. But in my opinion there was too much dialogue. So you can’t keep everyone happy.

Peter Clausen: I also quite liked the crate-puzzles in Broken Sword 3. Never got what those complaints where about.

Charles Cecil: Did you? You are the kind of person I like talking to! But one of the things we didn’t do in Broken Sword 3 was using the Voynich manuscript. It was an exciting mechanic, and we didn’t use it in the game. I must have been insane. So what we have now is that we have a manuscript that is introduced early. And you interact with it, you click on things. One of which is Baphomet, which is where I come back to your first question. And you can actually interact with Baphomet and you get information. And you actually have to find a certain amount of information to progress. In Broken Sword we had a manuscript and people really liked that. But it wasn’t in any way interactive. Now it is. But I decided that the manuscript had to be written in Latin. That’s always great. And whatever language you are playing in George would then translate it in his head, cause if you remember in Broken Sword 1 you can speak Latin, he translates.

And I live in York, and I couldn’t work out who was gonna translate the Latin. And I couldn’t decide who was gonna translate the Latin. It was a real worry for me because I wanted it to be done really well. And I went to my children’s school and they weren’t very keen. And then… Well I do rowing, and some guy there told me he was a professor of medieval history at York University. And I asked him “You don’t speak Latin, do you?”, and he replied: “Well I do actually. Do you want modern Latin, medieval Latin or any other kind?”. So I am really pleased because it actually translates into proper medieval Latin. So it’s about as close as it could be.

Peter Clausen: So you also have respect for the Latin audience…