Tørnquist's Dreamfall: Chapters Update

Stark, Arcadia…and beyond

Funcom's situation might be looking increasingly dire, but at the very least, Ragnar Tørnquist seems intent on assuring us that the followup to a major achievement in interactive storytelling, Dreamfall: Chapters, is still headed on the right direction. he states, "The dream of Dreamfall is very much alive, and it’s more than a dream." Following are some of the more juicy details from his latest blog posting.

First off, no release date yet, not even a vague one. However, he does give us this:

It’s still very much on my list of priorities, however, and while I can’t make any promises regarding time frame, it is going to happen. There are just too many people asking too many questions for the project to lay dormant for long.

That's always good news. The Longest Journey franchise has always seemed to be pretty dear to Tørnquist and very dear to us fans, so I'm personally thrilled to hear him give us something of a guarantee, granted a pretty loose one. He goes on to give us a little disclaimer, basically telling us that these are his words and not in any way Funcom's or "official."

On the topic of story, Tørnquist clues us in to the fact that he and his team already have a story in place and that it's going to pick up right before the conclusion of Dreamfall, to give us a "look at the events in Dreamfall from a different perspective" (April Ryan's cough cough). It will also follow several characters, much like in Dreamfall, but now including some new ones.

Moving onto gameplay, Chapters will of course mix the usual fair of third person exploration, puzzles, conversations, mini-games, etc.; but the pretty drab combat system from its predecessor will receive a much needed makeover. Even more interesting is his statement that Chapters "will look and play and feel like an adventure game, but a modern one: it won’t be point-and-click but it won’t use the focus field either, at least not in the same way." We'll have to wait and see what exactly he means by this although he did state that the control scheme would be more or less Dreamfall's, albeit with "tons of tweaks."

Chapters will definitely be episodic (I don't see how he could accomplish his goals any other way), and they'll be combating piracy by making players "be online to get it and possibly to play it." A small price to pay in my opinion. Interestingly, Tørnquist said that he'd "love to see it distributed through Xbox Live, PSN - the Wii Store, if at all feasible" in addition to PC, obviously.

Finally, in perhaps both the most exciting and frustrating news bit he gives, Chapters will in fact have a proper ending to it. However, it will not end the overall storyline as a while, which will come in The Longest Journey 2 (he doesn't consider Dreamfall to be that). He ends with his hope that "Chapters can keep running for a good while, since there are tons and tons of stories we’d like to explore before wrapping up that part of the TLJ universe. Big stories and small stories from every corner of Stark and Arcadia…and beyond."

That about wraps up what he had to say and although we really didn't get to much solid info, every little update on the project is very exciting to me. Here's to the best of luck to Tørnquist and his team at Funcom on both this as well as their (hopefully) still upcoming MMO, The Secret World.