Revolution Software program just isn’t a giant developer. Proper now, it’s six folks, primarily based within the historic English metropolis of York, plus freelance contractors. It was a bit greater within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, when Charles Cecil’s crew launched its largest hit, Damaged Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, a point-and-click journey sport a couple of lawyer and a journalist stumbling upon an historic non secular conspiracy, and a detailed cousin to LucasArts classics like Monkey Island. However the style fell out of vogue, publishers misplaced curiosity, and at one level, Cecil needed to let everybody go.
Because of the arrival of smartphones, Kickstarter, and on-line storefronts, in addition to the rising affect of area of interest fan communities, Cecil has been in a position to slowly rebuild Revolution into one thing harking back to the Eighties cottage trade he as soon as labored in. Sequels and reissues within the Damaged Sword sequence have been key to that course of, however the sequence has now been dormant for almost a decade — the longest lull in its historical past.
That’s now set to vary, with the announcement {that a} sixth Damaged Sword sport is in growth, alongside a full remaster of Shadow of the Templars. Cecil meets me in London over espresso to introduce the 2 initiatives, which he describes as a “renaissance” for Damaged Sword, and he’s proud to disclose that Revolution has been in a position to self-fund them. However there are limits to what this tiny indie studio can obtain.
Followers have lengthy known as for Shadow of the Templars to be launched on trendy platforms, however Cecil knew that might require a full remaster of its stunning, however low-resolution, animated visuals. And that may be a enormous process: It includes 30,000 hand-drawn sprites animating hand-painted backgrounds. It was merely an excessive amount of to ponder; Cecil estimates that every body of an animated sprite would take an hour to attract. “30,000 instances one hour, instances, you already know, £15 to £20 an hour, is an terrible lot of cash,” Cecil says.
So Revolution investigated whether or not AI might be skilled to assist replace the distinctive look of the Damaged Sword video games with out affecting the general vibe. “What I needed to do was to recreate this sport that everybody remembered and cherished, however not change it besides to boost it,” he says, noting the adverse response to modifications within the Monkey Island video games’ artwork model. Early experiments with upscaling the backgrounds didn’t work out; fortunately, Revolution nonetheless had the unique line drawings by Hollywood animator Eoghan Cahill, so it had human artists work from these as a substitute.
For the sprites, Revolution produced “a number of hundred” by hand and took them to the College of York, the place an AI analysis crew used them to coach a GAN (generative adversarial network). The outcome “wasn’t fairly adequate,” Cecil says, however a tip from a Nvidia engineer about find out how to use AI to interpolate frames in between hand-drawn key frames prompted a breakthrough.
“As an alternative of taking an hour to do each, it takes between 5 and 10 minutes to do each,” Cecil says. “We’re coaching the mannequin on our personal sprites… What we’ve actually targeted on is the outlines and the element within the physique, as a result of there’s no method that the fingers and the top are going to [look right]. So we have now to manually draw their fingers and faces.” The fingers and head are pasted on after, with animators taking care to flesh out facial expressions that the unique artwork didn’t have sufficient element to resolve.
![In hand-drawn visuals, a blond man enters a detailed store filled with clown costumes and puppets](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IMjT0rtI-_tTsDP1H0WJSxhw-B0=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24868371/broken_sword_shadow_of_the_templars_reforged_2.png)
“The flexibility to make use of AI on sprites is an absolute sport changer,” Cecil says. “We simply merely couldn’t afford to do it. In any other case, it could be not possible. And you already know, I share what reservations folks have about AI. However within the case of sprites, it truly is, you already know, permitting actually gifted character artists and animators to take the unique and mildew it into one thing actually particular, somewhat than having to undergo the drudgery of redrawing all the pieces once more.”
It must be stated, the top outcome, with dynamic shadows utilized, appears to be like unbelievable — higher, arguably, than the glimpse that Cecil gives of the sixth sport, Damaged Sword: Parzival’s Stone, which is being made in 3D in Unity. It’s the perfect of any remaster: the sport as you keep in mind it trying, not because it really regarded.
However Cecil just isn’t above making a number of modifications to “a few of the issues, which, culturally, have at all times barely nervous me” concerning the 1996 sport to make it “a bit bit extra culturally applicable for 2023.” He cites the examples of a Syrian carpet vendor character, modified to be much less “stereotypically imply, he’s barely extra jovial,” and a clumsy second between the sport’s pair of heroes, American patent lawyer George Stobbart and French journalist Nico Collard. “There’s one other level the place Nico is tied up, and George can kiss her when she’s tied up. And you already know, that’s just a bit bit unusual. […] It’s simply three or 4 very, very minor issues. However, you already know, the instance of that character, I’d been embarrassed about it just about from the start. So it’s simply fantastic to have the opportunity simply to tweak it […] however with out shedding the core attraction that existed.”
![Charles Cecil, in winter coat and scarf, stands in front of the ancient city walls of York](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9RhipgLomGquqgK8Snopd5HcwWE=/0x0:2832x4256/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2832x4256):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24868330/453591316.jpg)
Should you’re unfamiliar with Damaged Sword, the video games’ plots — at all times involving Stobbart and Collard touring the globe to unpick sinister but educational conspiracies involving historic artifacts and secret societies — would possibly sound eerily much like The Da Vinci Code and the opposite blockbusting airport novels of Dan Brown. “Our followers are completely satisfied {that a} younger Dan Brown should have performed Damaged Sword, due to the similarities. Now, I by no means make that declare myself, as a result of his legal professionals are a lot better paid than I can afford. OK, so I hold quiet on this, however I’m allowed to cite others,” chuckles Cecil, with a glint in his eye.
It appears like he’s going to cease there, however Cecil — a chatty, affable, educational kind in his early 60s — can’t assist himself. He has a ardour for early medieval European historical past, the tales of the Holy Grail, and the Christian sect of the Cathars, and Brown’s obvious dilettantism within the space will get his goat. He rips at size into Brown’s obsession with The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, a well-liked Eighties work of speculative historical past that posits that Jesus had youngsters with Mary Magdalene, making a bloodline of southern French kings defended by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. Cecil describes this very talked-about conspiracy concept as “completely loopy,” “insane,” “full lunacy,” and “a load of nonsense.”
As soon as, on vacation in France, Cecil and his spouse occurred to stumble upon Jean-Luc Chaumeil, an writer who had interviewed the supposed Priory of Sion grandmaster Pierre Plantard (“a nasty little antisemite”) and uncovered him as a fraud within the Nineteen Seventies. “However his voice has been drowned out by this type of cacophony of people that discovered Holy Blood and the Holy Grail so compelling.” Together with Brown, in fact. “Originally, Dan Brown says, ‘Reality: There is a company known as the Priory of Sion.’ No, Dan, that isn’t true. That’s simply nonsense. Sorry.”
Not that Cecil minds exploring the grey space between historical past and legend himself. In reality, he loves it. His dialog is stuffed with wild, historic tangents and humorous, personable anecdotes; I’ve by no means seen so many snaps from household holidays within the south of France throughout a sport presentation earlier than. Laying out the setting for the brand new sport, Parzival’s Stone, Cecil unexpectedly brings up a selfie he took with the cult horror film director Richard Stanley. Grasp on, what?
It seems that Stanley can be an fanatic of Cathar and Grail historical past, and lives in Montségur within the French Pyrenees, which was as soon as the positioning of a Cathar fort. After watching a TV documentary Stanley made about Otto Rahn — a German Grail historian within the Nineteen Thirties who ended up being recruited by the occult-obsessed Heinrich Himmler into the SS, regardless of being “each homosexual and half-Jewish” — Cecil made contact with the South African director. They met up in Montségur and Stanley led him on an odd expedition into some supposed secret Cathar caves within the hills. Cecil met a pal of Stanley’s who known as himself “Sorcerer of the River of Colours,” and the best way was opened for them into the caves by a witch. He exhibits me a smiling selfie of himself in a cave. “There’s a hoop of fireplace — which you’ll’t see on this picture, I ought to have taken it — that was created by a witch. And he or she was simply to the left right here. I ought to have taken her {photograph}.”
![A man rides in the back of a tiny three-wheeled van into a picturesque southern French village square in the mountains in Broken Sword: Parzival’s Stone](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IzXMFs034RBa7AvAr_HNkdEpB_k=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24860190/Broken_Sword_Parzivals_Stone_Screen02.png)
That is all making much less and fewer sense, however Cecil plows on, producing some small black stones from his pocket which, when wetted and rubbed collectively, produce a purple liquid. “Grail stones! They’re very uncommon, and also you received’t discover something about them on the web,” Cecil claims, improbably. Rahn, it seems, was a scholar of one of many earliest sources for the Grail fable, Wolfram von Eschenbach, who posited that the Grail was not a cup however a bleeding stone.
“So I actually do assume that a lot of that is nonsense,” Cecil says. “However I do love the thought of the Grail being Wolfram von Eschenbach’s model, which is that this bleeding stone.” These are the tales that Damaged Sword: Parzival’s Stone will probably be primarily based on, and the transient part Cecil exhibits me options George exploring the village of Montségur.
There’s extra — a lot, far more. Cecil offers me a short rundown of Cathar history, involving Mary Magdalene’s suppressed gospel giving rise to the Gnostic after which Cathar actions; the Cathars’ campaign in opposition to corruption within the Church; and the Church’s campaign in opposition to the Cathars, culminating in 10,000 crusaders laying siege to 100 Cathars in Montségur for a decade. He exhibits me a photograph of his son standing subsequent to what he claims is a trebuchet ball from that siege, 800 years in the past. “I imply, it’s all simply sensible stuff. Completely sensible stuff,” he enthuses.
Again to Otto Rahn. “And so mainly what [Parzival’s Stone] is doing is following this concept of, you already know, the Nazi treasure hunt,” Cecil says. “You recognize, what’s it that made the stone particular: The Cathars believed they may look into the previous and the long run, in the event that they have been the guardians of the Grail. So to me, that is good, as a result of it’s received the gameplay of, you already know, an genuine historical past. One of many issues that we’re decided to do is not only write a point-and-click journey; we nonetheless need the point-and-click components, but additionally the flexibility to mess around with time, all of which inserts completely into this historical past.”
This final bit — a obscure trace at some sort of time-manipulation mechanic, or possibly time-skipping narrative — is about the one new element I get concerning the sixth Damaged Sword sport throughout our chat. I’ve sat speaking with Cecil for over an hour and it’s largely been rumor, hypothesis, anecdotes, and jokes — which, when you concentrate on it, couldn’t be extra completely becoming for the return of Damaged Sword.