Broken Sword: Shadow Of The Templars

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game, and the first in the Broken Sword series, co-written and directed by Charles Cecil, and developed by Revolution Software. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart , an American tourist in Paris, as he attempts to unravel a deep conspiracy involving a sinister cult and a hidden treasure, seeing him travel to various locations around Europe and the Middle East. The game's storyline was conceived to feature a serious tone and heavily influenced by research on Knights Templar by Cecil, but was also interlaced with humor and graphics in the style of classic animated films. Development of the game saw considerable work to achieve its presentation. Artwork was conceived by Eoghan Cahill and Neil Breen, who particularly drew the backgrounds in pencil and digitally colored them in Photoshop, the game's design was handled by Tony Warriner and David Sykes, while the game's musical score was composed by Barrington Pheloung. The game spawned a number of sequels that would collectively form the Broken Sword series: Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror in 1997; Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon in 2003; Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in 2006; and Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse in episodic format, between 2013 and 2014. The player uses a point-and-click interface to interact with the environment and to guide protagonist George Stobbart through the game's world. To solve puzzles and progress in the game, the player collects items that may be combined with one another, used on the environment, or given to non-player characters . Clues and other information are obtained by clicking on items in the inventory and on objects in the environment. Unlike in most adventure games at the time, the protagonist's death is possible, after which the player starts from the last save point. While on holiday in Paris, American tourist George Stobbart witnesses an assassin dressed as a clown steal an old man's briefcase from inside a café and kill him with a bomb. George then meets and teams up with photo-journalist Nicole Collard; she was supposed to meet the old man, Plantard, and is investigating a string of assassinations involving the same person in different costumes.