Revolution Software Rebooting Broken Sword Universe with New Title and Full Remaster
Revolution Software, the British developer known for the Broken Sword series, has exciting news for fans. The company has announced that it will be rebooting the Broken Sword universe with a new title called Broken Sword: Parzival’s Stone and a full remaster of the original game, The Shadows of the Templars: Reforged.
The development is not limited to one platform, as both games will be available for mobile, console, and PC. Fans can expect to get their hands on Shadow of the Templars: Reforged in early 2024.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Broken Sword follows the thrilling adventures of lawyer George Stobbart and journalist Nico Collard as they travel the world, solving captivating historical mysteries. Parzival’s Stone will continue this tradition, as it puts the two heroes on the trail of the fabled holy grail.
One of the highlights of Parzival’s Stone is its unique visual style, which series creator Charles Cecil calls “super 2D”. The game will feature hand-drawn textures applied to 3D geometry, creating a visually stunning experience for players.
The Modernization of Game Design
Revolution Software has taken a modern approach to the development of the reboot, embracing the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The original game consisted of an impressive 30 thousand hand-drawn sprites, with each sprite taking around an hour to create. The estimated cost for creating these sprites ranged between £450,000 and £600,000 ($566,464 – $755,286).
However, for the reboot, Revolution Software decided to produce several hundred sprites and then collaborated with an AI research team at the University of York. They used a generative adversarial network (GAN) to train the AI to generate additional sprites. Though the initial results were not satisfactory, a helpful tip from an Nvidia engineer enabled the company to achieve greater success using AI.
Revolution Software managed to significantly reduce the time it takes to create each sprite, from an hour to just five to ten minutes. By training the AI model on their own sprites, the focus was on the outlines and detail in the body, as creating realistic hands and faces still required manual work from the developers.
The use of AI in game design has been a topic of discussion among industry experts. At the BIG Festival, a panel of professionals explored the potential and impact of AI in the gaming industry.