Adventure fans have been tracking the progress of Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon for many months, but Revolution Software’s ambitious project has now officially been premiered to the gaming press at the ECTS games show in London. As Charles Cecil set forth in a presentation, Broken Sword 3 presents an important evolution from the traditional point-and-click adventure game. His confidence makes you believe that he's really onto something revolutionary. Broken Sword 3 is pioneering a new generation of streamlined 3D adventures that – if successful – will send point-and-click down the same road as the text parser interface.

“This is the game I have always wanted to write and it is certainly the best I have ever designed,” Charles proudly boasts. “I personally believe that it represents the 20 years that I have spent writing adventures.”

Revolution was founded in 1990. After their debut title Lure of the Temptress, Revolution quickly established itself as Europe’s leading adventure game developer – first as the adventure division of the now-defunct Virgin Interactive, later as a fully independent studio.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars and its sequel Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror are their biggest commercial successes to date, with exceptional sales numbers on both the PC and Playstation.

The Broken Sword series sees George Stobbart, a young American lawyer, team up with French journalist Nico Collard to solve a murder mystery entangled in ancient myths. While Broken Sword 3 will introduce many new characters, it’s very much an amalgamation of the previous games. The story reintroduces the Templars from the first game and brings back the concept of the geomantic powers from the second game. The Sleeping Dragon promises to wrap these elements into a well-rounded trilogy.

Charles started the press conference with a statement that will surely cause for much controversy among adventure game traditionalists. “The point-and-click adventure is dead,” he exclaimed. “No two ways about it. It is no more. However, long live the adventure. As a genre the adventure is extremely healthy and probably has as much – if not more – potential than any other genre.”

With the current drought in adventure games, the future of the genre has been a lively topic on many adventure-related message boards. Some believe the genre has to stay the same. Others believe it has to change. Perhaps paradoxically, Broken Sword 3 does both.

Next: the problem with point-and-click adventures.