Broken Sword 2.5 interview by VGamers
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20 Oct 2005 | No Comments

Vgamers.de recently interviewed Daniel Butterworth, the project leader of Broken Sword 2.5. You can read the original interview in German, here.

Broken Sword 2.5: A Story From Their Own Hand

What do you do when you've already played your favourite game for the millionth time, but there is no sequel in sight? Exactly, you make one yourself. In this manner, a handful of fans of the successful "Broken Sword" series decided to make a sequel of their own. At the end of 2001 the planning began and today the results are slowly forming. The project took on a giant size. Rendered sequences, self composed lead music, high-quality synchronisation, detail-rich backgrounds and graphics. There is no longer a small group of dedicated fans behind the project, but a 15 people strong, well-adapted team. The work is clearly divided as with every big developer. You have the art designers, the colourists, the animators, the musicians and the sound designers. Organisation is taking place in the major part over the internet.

The team has been working under the name of mindFactory for about 3 years now on this project. Occasionally images, sounds or other info from the game see the light of day and a progress table silently pushes the game further towards completion. When exactly this adventure game will get a playable demo-version or even reaches the gold status is still unknown. We wait full of hope…

In an ample interview with the project leader "Daniel Butterworth" we got some interesting info.

VGamers:
For how long have you been working on the project?

Daniel Butterworth:
Weive been working actively on BS 2.5 for about three years now. When we first started with some initial ideas in the winter of 2001, we didn't realise yet how much this work would occupy us and how big such a project is. That's why we'll still need some time to be able to deliver a flawless and free product to the fans and other interested players.

VGamers:
Do you occupy yourself with the development every day and if so, for how many hours? And how is that with your colleagues?

Daniel Butterworth:
When I was still writing the scenario about a year ago, I worked on writing the dialogues and the puzzles for about 2 hours a day. Now I am, as the project leader, responsible for the organisation of it all. This means that my work for the project is divided over the week. You can no longer define it as so many hours a day. When something needs to be done, I'm there. As for my colleagues, they work about 1 hour a day on the project, depending on what they are doing. The graphics are moving very fast now, as is the programming.

VGamers:
How did the idea arise to make a fan adventure of Broken Sword?

Daniel Butterworth:
When we started with the development (2002) of the game, a third part in the series wasn't considered yet. Revolution Software had announced that the second part was the last of the series. But there was a large BS fan community and some of us came up with the idea: why not make a Broken Sword game ourselves? So, here we are now.

VGamers:
How did you meet your colleagues and how do you organise everything with your team members? Do you have deadlines for development and do you live up to those?

Daniel Butterworth:
We've all met each other on a German BS fan page. Among others there were webmaster Matthias Holz, our up to date Sebastian Nisi, as my substitute Marius Gosch, who used to own the page. The organisation is taking place over internal forums in the major part. A thread for every area. Another important means of communication is ICQ, and sometimes we phone each other. We do not set ourselves clear deadlines. That will only bring unnecessary annoyances, because we all have our private lives and work and college and that sort of things and those take priority. Nevertheless we do have some sort of schedule which we try to live up to.

VGamers:
How did you get the people who do the voices in the game? The quality of the synchronisation will set new standards in the fan adventures and judged by the material made available can even compete with professional adventure games.

Daniel Butterworth:
That has taken very much work indeed. Because all people who do the voices work for us for free. You cannot just simple google for some names, but you need to have contacts. Most of the professional speakers have worked with us very well and we've had no problems whatsoever. Stefan Fredrich (the German voice of Jim Carrey) has, for example, called me out of bed more than once, before he eagerly started his recordings. And most of our speakers did their takes between their movie recordings, that you should realize. But also the semi-professionals did a great job participating in our project and have made it sound great. I just want to say again how much the team owe them for helping us out.

VGamers:
How do you organize the synchronisation? Where and with which technical strains are they recorded?

Daniel Butterworth:
The recordings often follow the same schedule. The speakers get a large folder with information on their characters sent to them by me and often record their dialogues in a professional synchronisation studio. After that, the finished takes are sent to me, mostly on CD and then go to our sound technician Yogi Loeschner.

VGamers:
Large recordings in sound studios often cost a lot of money. Do you also (partly) work together with the sound studios or do the speakers simply use their connections?

Daniel Butterworth:
The professional speakers often use their connections and record the dialogues in the breaks between their professional movie recordings. That saves us the hiring of an expensive sound studio. But when the need arises, our sound technician Yogi has his own sound studio in which we can do voice recordings. On top of that, we also work closely together with sound studio "Toneworkxx" which does some of the voice recordings and also helps us in other ways.

VGamers:
What do publisher THQ and developer Revolution think of your unofficial project? Are you in contact with them? Do you get support from them?

Daniel Buttersworth:
With THQ we have no contact whatsoever. I do not believe they even know of our project. That's different with Revolution, which also owns the rights to the Broken Sword series. Charles Cecil and his right hand Tony Warriner gave us green light to the project immediately when they heard of our project and also supported us technically. On last year's Games Convention we presented what we had up until then for the first time to Revolution Software, who were stunned by it. That alone should ensure the waiting fans that we are handling the name of Broken Sword with care. This starts with the programming and stops with the smallest dialogues. If it says Broken Sword, it should be Broken Sword. And we seem to have succeeded in that thus far.

VGamers:
Now for something technical. What engine do you use for the programming?

Daniel Buttersworth:
We use C++. A very extensive programming language, but still very recommendable for our project. Many new PC games are programmed in this language.

VGamers:
What was the reason to go for Rendered sequences instead of drawn sequences like its predecessors? Would that have been too strenuous?

Daniel Buttersworth:
Exactly, the technical strain for hand-drawn images is huge and for us simply undoable. You have to realize how many people worked on the intro of Broken Sword. I've once calculated that there were more than 12 professional sketch artists needed for that. Therefore we have chosen for rendered sequences, which quality you can see on our website. Still, the feedback we get on that from our many fans is good on overall and most of them understand that we could not use the much loved 2-D for them. The sequences already look really good and they will be by far the best, that the fan adventure scene will have known thus far.

VGamers:
And now for the contents of the game. A great aspect of its predecessors were the many journeys of the main characters to foreign lands and places, the adventurous investigations and the ever new scenes. Will this be continued in BS 2.5?

Daniel Buttersworth:
Absolutely. George will again travel to foreign lands in BS 2.5. We will focus mainly on Europe this time (because that will better fit the theme), but this will not hinder the gameplay whatsoever. The accent is on dialogues, as with its predecessors, in which you obtain clues to how to solve the riddles in the game. You will be able to chat with all characters in the game. We give the player much room in this way. It was very important to us to create the authentic Broken Sword atmosphere and I believe that we have succeeded in that.

VGamers:
Then there will be one or two sudden story-twists too?

Daniel Buttersworth:
Such twists are everywhere in BS 2.5! I have to admit that I missed those typical twists that set you on the wrong track, like you have them in the movies in the predecessors. Of course there were some surprises in BS 1 and 2, but they were very weak in my opinion. That will be different with our game. We will mislead the player on a few occasions. That already begins with the not-death of Nico, while George got a letter that she was dead. I will reassure you now, though: there won't be any major twists. Every little twist is logical and will make sense to the player.

VGamers:
What about the actual size of the game compared to its predecessors? How many hours of gameplay will it contain?

Daniel Buttersworth:
An often asked and difficult answered question. We cannot say for certain until we've played the completed game ourselves. We're trying to make it about half as long as BS 2. But we'll have to see if we're going to make that.

VGamers:
The original form of adventures, the "2-D Point and Click Adventures" are nowadays fading into the background more and more. Developers use 3D more and more, which is not always appreciated by the community. What do you think about the current position of adventures in the gaming industry?

Daniel Buttersworth:
Adventure is on a comeback, even after it was declared dead. Point and Click is also coming back. Just look at some of the games out there, like Runaway or the great Moment of Silence. I suspect that in the near future developers will use 2-D backgrounds more and more, because the 3 dimension delusion will take over soon and then gamers will long for fantasy rich, creative worlds again. And the adventure platform offers the best opportunities for that. Unfortunately, it is also true that people want a sequel faster and faster. Adventures take a lot of time to make and it takes several days before it will become clear if an adventure game has been successful or not. Very different from FPS games. There you simply kill the monster, quickly open the door and jump through to the next level. The solving of more demanding riddles is up till today, sadly still "out". But, as I said before: that will come to an end. The publisher just should not make the mistake of putting only half finished adventures on the market. With those you simply can't recruit the average player for your adventure games. But developers like House of Tales and Revolution Software give us high quality adventures frequently.

VGamers:
What are your favourite adventures and which do you play currently, when you're not working on your project? Do you have some secret adventure tips for our readers?

Daniel Buttersworth:
At the moment I play very few games. But a good adventure game can always inspire me. That happened to me little time ago with Black Mirror. A wonderfully dark tale, packed with beautiful graphics and wonderful synchronisation. A must for every adventure games lover. But also the already a bit older The Moment of Silence is a must for adventure gamers. My all time favourites are nevertheless the BS games. If you haven't played those, you don’t know what you're missing.

VGamers:
Do you already have a new project planned after BS 2.5? What are you going to do after you finish that?

Daniel Buttersworth:
At the moment there is no project after BS 2.5 in the planning. I suspect that the team will part ways after finishing BS 2.5 and we will make place for innovative ideas in the fan adventure communities. We will most certainly not be the last professional fan-game. We will look at the reactions to BS 2.5 first and maybe the fans will ask for another mindfactory-adventure. Who knows.

VGamers:
Can you imagine yourself as a professional project leader with an adventure game?

Daniel Buttersworth:
No, not exactly. I would like to solely concentrate on the storyboard. The tasks of a project leader are often very stressful and time-demanding. I honestly don't know if I have the nerves to do an even bigger project than this one.

VGamers:
Then I would like to thank you for this interview. Is there something you want to say to our readers?

Daniel Buttersworth:
Don't cross the road, until the little man shows green.

VGamers:
That was a good advise.

Daniel Buttersworth:
And I hope, that every BS-fan will understand this little inside joke ;-)


Interviewed by David Kleimeier.

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