Can you tell us anything about the story?

I'm not going to give you a lot about the story, but I'm going to say that when we did Broken Sword 1, we stated that it was a trilogy. One of the questions everybody asked when we wrote Broken Sword 3 was, "Is this going to be the last?" To which my answer was, "We have no intention of doing any more, but I'm not going to rule it out." It would be very foolish to do that. But when we finished Broken Sword 3, we did expect it to be the last, so we had this amazing, climactic ending. And then THQ approached us and said, "Commercially it did pretty well, let's do Broken Sword 4." I thought, "Oh, no. Where do we go?" We felt that because we'd had such a climactic ending, that really we had to go right back down low, so we could build back up again.

So you're kind of starting fresh?

Yes. We start off with what I would say is iconic Broken Sword adventure; it's a scene in which some guys break into an Egyptian temple. We've seen, thousands of years earlier, an enormous energy source within that. So you get the sense of what's going to happen. Then we cut to New York in the rain, George working in a bail bonds area in Harlem. He's really down on his luck. The CIA interrogated him at the end of Broken Sword 3, and eventually they just wrote it off, but nobody would touch him. So although he's trained as a lawyer, the best job he can get is as a bail bond clerk. He walks into his office, and there's a beautiful woman waiting to see him. This beautiful woman says she needs his help, and he basically says, "Well, I'm a bail bond clerk, you want the police." She says, "There's no time for that," then suddenly the place is attacked. Slam the door, lock the door, they've got to get out. So he's really pitched into this adventure against his will. The reason that she's approached him is that she has a manuscript that has medieval symbols on it, and she needs someone to help. It leads to great treasure. As the game progresses, he falls in love with her, and at the end of the first act... Well, I don't want to give too much away.

It sounds like an intriguing story.

I've really focused on the story. With Broken Sword 3, it was a big jump. We were going from 2D to 3D. We were talking about technology, we were talking about interfaces. With Broken Sword 4 there's a lot I can take for granted, because we have the engine, we have a control system, which we're improving, but other people are responsible for the technology, other people are responsible for creating the art assets. I approve them, and I get very involved in them, but I don't have to worry about whether we use Maya or Max, or whether we have to buy new PCs, or any of that dull stuff. So I can focus on the puzzles and the story, and the guys that I'm working with on that are experienced on our games. I'm working with a guy called Neil Richards, who I worked with on Broken Sword 3. The two guys that are level designers / implementers, both were ex-Revolution. The guy writing the music, he wrote music for Broken Sword 3. A lot of the team are still together, it's just in a very different way than the way we were for Broken Sword 3.

Like you said, Broken Sword was supposed to be a trilogy, so I think people were surprised when the game was announced.

Actually, quite the opposite.

You think people expected it?

Oh yes. I think people rather assumed there was always going to be a fourth. We had a lot of people emailing us, saying, "You are doing a fourth, aren't you? All this trilogy stuff is not to be taken literally, right?" So it's very much people expecting a fourth, rather than us with a cynical marketing ploy.



What platforms will Broken Sword 4 be on?

Currently it is PC only.

Did the console releases of the last game do well for you?

They did pretty well. Of course, when you do a console version, it means you make compromises. The PlayStation 2 definitely compromised the PC version.

Did you decide to make this game PC only so you won't have to compromise it? What's the reasoning behind the decision?

Two things. One, it means that technically we can do an awful lot, which is great, it gives us the freedom. The second is that THQ felt that the natural home for an adventure is PC. We hope that a number of people who bought Broken Sword 3 on console will buy this one on PC if they can't buy it on consoles.

Do you already have a publisher agreement in place for North America, as well as in Europe?

Yes, with THQ.

They're publishing it globally?

Oh yeah, and it's great, we're delighted. They published Broken Sword 3 throughout Europe, and DreamCatcher published it in North America. It makes a lot more sense, frankly, for one publisher to cover the whole world. It means that everybody's working together. I really like DreamCatcher, and I enjoyed working with them. I just think it's more appropriate for one publisher to cover the whole world.

Is the game still coming out in June?

September. But it hasn't slipped. There's a very good reason for it to be September, which we haven't announced yet.

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