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Article: The Longest Entry in the World

The Longest Entry in the World
skizzo

15 May 2007 | No Comments

"Der längste Eintrag der Welt"
Originally written by Daniel Butterworth on November 5th, 2002.

“Guerin, you can do better than that”, “Well done, Rob”, “Tooms, stick with it”, “I would change that, Haggi” – Examples of events in the everyday life of a project leader. A day which can stretch in length like a piece of chewing gum. As a day-nursery attendant, I mean leader of one of the largest adventure projects in Germany *exaggerate* it isn’t always easy to oversee everything. But everything is still in accordance with the timetable. And even if there are a few problems (which of course never occur on my watch *cough*) I can always turn to my predecessor for advice – who was that again?

However, not only do I have to work with very engaged colleagues, but also – which I like very much – with the fans who bombard me with questions, with representatives of online magazines which want to quench their thirst for information, and some other species who I believe call themselves “notorious naggers”.

Something which has impressed me greatly in the months that I have been project leader has been the resonance which our game had with YOU. Many mails, an incredible amount of positive posts, but also posts with constructive criticism were posted in our various forums and every day I read other forms of being interested. These things give me and the entire team the strength to continue this stressful “job” (because that’s what it is, without question) with motivation and we will most certainly not just throw in the towel.
I will be honest with you: such a moment came to us about 6 months ago. We arrived at a phase where we were about to throw in the towel. It was at that time that we became really aware how extensive, stressful and professional, to unexpected dimensions, Broken Sword 2.5 could become and is becoming. Screenshots, which normally surpass their predecessors, the huge stimulus of the fans, synchronisation, contact with and support from Revolution, reports from various online magazines, etc. Those were points which we had never thought of and which were threatening to overcome us. Thank God we kept our heads cool and we just held on. Many a project would have died there.

Even today I can still clearly picture in my mind the early beginnings of the game. How we exchanged our first ideas, how we discussed the story concepts, how we designed the smaller graphics and worked on our first page in full excitement. In those days we were talking about a game of roughly 15 MB in size. A small and simple game – just simple entertainment! What has become of that idea you can see today.

Besides being one of the project leaders, I’m also busy (recently together with Tooms and Guerin) with designing the story. With the writing of the basic story, and also with the first seven chapters of the extended storyboard, it was extremely important to me that we would catch the charm of the first two games in it – at least partially. With the story I wanted to make the player feel like he or she were a part of it and I wanted to connect old with new. On the one hand I did not want to exclude the historical aspect of the Templars, on the other hand I also had to look at them from a different, new and unfamiliar angle.

The dialogues were – and still are – very difficult. The puns and jokes of George Stobbart, the bold character of Nicole and the scornful tone of André. Those were not easy things to come up with, but we hope that we have done an adequate job in this and that the end product will steal a chuckle from the player every now and then.

Lastly I want to tell you how proud I am of the team. Their indescribable talent, their amazing will to push the project forward, the professionalism with which each one of them takes on their assignments and the companionship that exists, which is not always that common with these kind of projects. Even when one of the team members slows down for whatever reason, and I need to be firm. Even then I really enjoy working with this team.

Guys, you’re the best…

With this in mind,
Foxhunter alias Daniel Butterworth (project leader)

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