User Reviews

If you disapprove of men who abuse women by tormenting and killing their pets, you need this spoiler, or this game will floor you. A cranky but endearing goat has become the emblem of this Broken Sword series and throughout the second part of this episode, much is made of the female hero Nico petting and feeding it, whilst the male hero George treats it as an adversary. At the end, he lights a sausage and attaches it to the animal, reassuring her that it is safe because the stick isn't actually dynamite and joking about animal protection groups. The goat isn't seen again until it reappears on a kebab stick and she is ridiculed by him ( and apparently influenced by his promise of romance)into accepting what has been done to it. Since there is no obvious means of cooking the meat, we can assume it burned to death slowly and that the assisting snide Cockney criminal (who is also ridiculing Nico) butchered it. He jokes about the fig flavour. She has fed it a fig.

This whole sorry plot device is symbolic of what has happened to this once-powerful and innovative adventure series. From aiming at a broad, intelligent general audience, it has fallen to trying to appease a tight, uncritical fan base which will accept any deterioration in ethics and intellect providing there is some (heavily self-financed by them) restoration of symbols or characters from the past. When I discussed it with other previous enthusiasts for the series, the point was made that one was reminded of the moral of Agatha Christie's Bertram's Hotel: that trying to preserve a wonderful institution exactly as it was results in corruption and destruction.

The original excellent writers and designers of this series have long ago left it, and so should anyone who loved it long ago.