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Finally, Some Info On Dreamfall Chapters

Posted by Joe Keiser

Ragnar Tornquist’s ethereal adventure games are one of the medium’s greatest joys: The Longest Journey is an established genre classic, and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was a genuinely affecting piece of work with an unforgettable (in either a good or bad way, depending on who you ask) ending.

They were brilliant, and those among us who are priveleged and wise cannot stop thinking about them, demand more of them. But the Dreamfall team has spend the intervening years on NCSoft’s next big MMO project. Now The Secret World is fascinating in its own right, but it’s not more Longest Journey. Tornquist knows what we crave, so today he pushed aside the typically opaque curtain of publisher secrecy to explain as much as he could about the upcoming Dreamfall Chapters. It’s all unofficial, but to see more of Dreamfall at all is a delight.

Most importantly, he let us know that these things are still distant. In fact, they are not even in production, at least not officially—this might be code for “Dreamfall Chapters is the only thing The Secret World team thinks about in the shower,” but even that might be making more of it than it is. Tornquist also explained that Chapters would primarily be sold through digital distribution, with Windows a certainly and consoles a nice thought. The implication is that DRM will be rigorous, though that will probably depend on the state of the industry whenever these games come out.

There’s good news, too. Tornquist says he wants to make a lot of these little episodic games, to tell all kinds of different stories. He also has a full The Longest Journey 2 in mind to wrap up the series completely, though I expect by the time that comes out senility will have made my whole life a Dreamfall-like fever dream anyway.

Perhaps it’s better coming from Tornquist himself. At his blog there’s more info on some of the new play mechanics he wants to implement to “modernize” the adventure game, which is a meaningless notion these days (I’ve lost count of the number of times adventure games have been modernized—hell, Tornquist himself already did it twice) but some of the ideas are interesting.

Related Links:

The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say
Your JRPG Narrative is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
The Writers Guild Isn’t the Only One Who Loves Dangerous High School Girls

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Posted Feb 27 2009, 04:30 PM

Filed under: adventure games, joe keiser, the longest journey 2, ragnar tornquist, dreamfall, dreamfall chapters, the longest journey

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