Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged, the newly remastered edition of developer Revolution Software’s classic point-and-click puzzle adventure, finally has a Switch release date following its recent delay, and will launch next Thursday, 7th November.
Shadow of the Templars first released in 1996 (a Director’s Cut remaster arrived in 2009), charting the adventures of American tourist George Stobbart – later with assistance from photo-journalist Nicole Collard – as he becomes embroiled in a global conspiracy after witnessing a bombing on the streets of Paris, perpetrated by a man dressed as a clown. It deftly weaves historical fact and fiction into a thoroughly engrossing, occasionally thrilling whole that quickly earned it fans, and it’s been considered a classic of the point-and-click genre ever since.
Revolution Software’s Reforged edition of the game launched for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation back in September, introducing a variety of upgrades, including “beautiful” re-drawn 4K backgrounds, re-animated sprites, enhanced audio, and other quality of life improvements. Its Switch release, however, got a last-minute delay in order to “ensure the quality of play remains equally high across all versions of the game”.
Six weeks later, and Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged finally has a release date of 7th November on Switch’s eShop, where it’ll cost £24.99/€29.99/$29.99. In a message shared on Kickstarter, Revolution noted the Switch version will include all fixes and enhancements made to the PC version since launch, with other Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PS5 set to receive them “very soon”.
As for what’s next, a sixth game in the Broken Sword series, Parzival’s Stone, was announced last year. It sees George and Nico caught up in a terrifying conspiracy featuring Nazi treasure hunters, brutal mediaeval histories, and Quantum Physics, where ruthless technology entrepreneurs, corrupt government agencies, and billion-dollar global energy corporations are battling for possession of a manuscript pointing to the secret location of the mythical thousand-year-old Grail – just perhaps not the one we’re used to hearing about. Parzival’s Stone was originally due to launch in 2024, but was delayed to an unspecified future point earlier this year.