Man, what a ride! Really enjoyed playing this game a lot, especially with playing around with the psychic powers. The story was what made me want to keep playing this game because it’s very intriguing and has a lot of mystery to it and unravels the more you progress in the game. There was also a twist reveal later in the story that caught me off guard and actually surprised me when I thought I already figured out before then. Besides the psychic powers and puzzle-solving, the shooting gameplay was also fun. The gameplay and the controls were surprisingly smooth and easy to handle, especially with a Gamcube controller, with only a few minor design flaws that could use more fine-tuning. I’m glad I bought this game thanks to the story that got me invested the whole way through.

When I looked through the extras of the Broken Sword Director’s Cut version, I noticed that they also included the original version of the game. Apart from the beginning which is different compared to the original version’s opening, and of course including Nicole Collard as a playable character, I thought the dialogue and gameplay would be pretty much the same besides the change in graphics and cutscenes.

Out of curiosity, since I haven’t played the game yet, I checked out a random longplay video and checked the comments section, and noticed from one commenter that in that time stamp, they completely changed the dialogue for George Stobbart, the main lead character for Broken Sword 1. This was already good enough evidence to make me question the authenticity and quality of this remake or “Director’s Cut”, so I decided to try out the original game instead.

Needless to say, I was immediately hooked and intrigued by not only the story and characters, but also the 2D animation and background drawn and digitally colored in photoshop, this was developed in 1996 by the way, by animator Mike Burgess who worked for Red Rover animation studio. Of course, the cutscene animations were pixelated, same with the in-game graphics, but at least they were attempting to resemble or replicate that classic animated film style they were going for.

When it came time to play the remake version of the game, the first big red flag was that they completely changed the opening monologue of the story, and had Nicole narrate it. Having Nicole narrate wasn’t a big deal, and of course they had to write it from her perspective to differentiate from George’s, but I preferred the opening monologue from George in the original over the remake. They did reuse the original opening credits song from the soundtrack of the original which was, again, no big deal. Then, after the credits, listening to some of the dialogue, especially Nicole’s, and watching the in-game cutscenes definitely made me cringe a little. It wasn’t all bad, but I could tell they poorly stitched up this remake between the new ones, like Nicole’s 3D in-game model for example, which stuck out like a sore thumb when you play as George, and the old ones.

First off, The in-game cutscenes, especially the animated cutscenes, were decent enough, or at least not too bad, but there were parts of the animation that made it look really obvious that they patched the cutscene animation together with Adobe Flash.

What was really disappointing to me was that the in-game models were animated in 3D instead of 2D. It wouldn’t be too bad except that they don’t always use these 3D models, or even use them at all because when we get to George’s point-of-view, they reverted to the 2D animation style of in-game models, or just straight up reusing the in-game models from the original game. Also, do I need to mention how terrible these 3D in-game models look?

The developers also changed up the art style and art design for the remake, so they hired Dave Gibbons for some odd reason. Why they did this, I don’t know, but Dave Gibbons’ style in this game is serviceable at least, but nothing spectacular, at least with the Adobe Flash animation job anyway. However, what’s the point of changing the art style for the cutscenes and character models when they’re reusing animation from the original game? Apart from the character portraits, they might as well just stick with polishing up the graphics of the original, or transition the graphics from 2D pixelated animation to 2D drawn animation, if they’re just rehashing or reusing old assets from the original. Overall, hiring Dave Gibbons to create additional art and changing up the art style for this game was completely pointless besides Gibbons ripping off Moebius for the remainder of his comic art career.

Then, there’s the dialogue, including the rewritten dialogue compared to the original. Like I said earlier, not all of it was bad besides the shitty rewrites, including for George, but at the beginning for Nicole’s prologue scenario, I was getting some bad Joss Whedon vibes from some of the pseudo-snarky talk from Nicole. That kind of cliche, shitty pseudo-talk that brainlet leftoids like to use just need to die in a hole along with disco and the rest of the millennial trends and fashions that many leftoids stole from previous eras. Then, there was George’s dialogue at the beginning which the commenter in one of the longplay videos mentioned before said that they rewrote or changed the opening line from the original. That’s the type of shitty dialogue I would expect from Niel Druckmann. Why, in the first place, did they completely change the overall tone of a guy who just survived a bomb explosion, nevermind the ENTIRE tone of the whole story to some pseudo-snarky “oh it’s a pretty serious situation but not really” kind of story-telling that would make Joss Whedon blush? Also, despite not playing further into the original game, it’s completely out of character for George to say that, and then the rest of the dialogue is just reused or rehashed from the original, including the AUDIO from the original game, that the developers used for this “remake.” It’s also so out of place for someone reacting to a BOMB EXPLOSION that could’ve KILLED HIM, never mind the injuries and/or deaths of the people inside the cafe (at least for two of the characters who were inside the cafe, anyway). In the original, what George said was very profound and well-executed over an event that pulled himself, including the players, into trying to unravel this mysterious conspiracy. In the remake, “Oh, he’s a typical snarky American who had his vacation ruined by a murderous clown, and he’s gonna find out who did it because JUSTICE MATTERS, and Americans are all about truth, justice, and the American way, and also I’m gonna crack about being about money since I’m a lawyer because Americans LOVE money, right?” Seriously, where the hell did all the subtlety go? Not just in the story, but in the writing as well?

Overall, this looks like a piss-poor remake of a video game, and I’ll be avoiding that version of the game so it wouldn’t ruin my first-time experience in playing the first game in the Broken Sword series, especially for the let’s play series. It’s disappointing to say the least, but I’m glad I checked out both versions before doing a playthough of the director’s cut. It’s not as disappointing or insultingly terrible as the Warcraft III “remastered” version. However, it’s still pretty bad for a remastered version nonetheless. With terrible Joss-Whedon-esk and Niel-Druckmann-esk dialogue, unimpressive art style and 3D in-game models, it’s general rehashing, overall pointless Nicole scenes, shitty puzzles to start off with, and reuse of not only the cutscene animation, but also the dialogue and some minor and shitty changes to the dialogue, this DIRECTOR’S CUT is one that I’ll avoid playing, but at least they had the decency to include the original.

Avoid the "Gold Edition" version of this game at all costs. It has terrible UI, having to click to place multiple times even if I didn't, and trying to exit the inventory at times was a pain. I'm also not a fan of it trying to be "casual gaming friendly" with the inclusion of a hint system. I get that some players may have trouble with figuring out what else to do, and that's fine, but sometimes in this game the hints don't help well or is extremely vague, or it repeats it twice on what you've already done. That isn't to say that this version is entirely terrible and unplayable. It still plays well for the most part and they carried everything else fine, but the best version of this game that I recommend is the original which you can get digitally on GOG.com. It's still the original game, and it's also the Collector's Edition version of the game which means it also contains the soundtrack and making-of-video [minus the walkthrough, unfortunately]. All in all, great game, but terrible re-release with the "Gold Edition" of The Last Express.