Adventure game sequel Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey will indeed be out by this November, but in episodic form rather than a full release.
Book One: Reborn, the first of five episodes, will be released on PC, Mac and Linux this Autumn, according to a Kickstarter blog post from creator Ragnar Tørnquist.
Dreamfall Chapters is the long awaited follow-up to cult adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. And yes, titling for this series is on the verge of becoming confusing. It was actually originally conceived as an episodic title, but the team had switched to a more traditional single-release model back in 2012- ”partly because we didn’t yet know the scope of what we were making, and partly because that’s how we’ve always made games”, according to Tørnquist.
The decision to change back to an episodic structure came after the team decided that sticking to one November release would mean dropping a lot of story content. Of course, it also gives them time to finish polishing and bug-fixing.
”We could have made deep cuts,” says Tørnquist, ”removed a lot of the characters, story-lines and locations — but we would have ended up with a different game than the one that’s played inside our heads for the better part of a decade, a different game than the one we’ve promised our backers. We would have lost much of the magic and narrative depth. And we would’ve still had to delay our release into next year.”
”We’ve also realised that while, as a small studio, we are capable of producing a massively ambitious game like Dreamfall Chapters, we’re not satisfied with our ability to properly finish, polish and bug fix the whole game in one go. The amount of work that goes into every chapter of every book is enormous, and we do not want to compromise on the quality of our game and our story.”
The extra income generated by Book One’s sales will be pumped back in to the subsequent chapters.
”By releasing Book One this autumn,” Tørnquist continues, ”we hope to start generating income, all of which will go right back into improving the quality and scope of subsequent books. And by dividing our work into five standalone releases, we’re able to give each book the focus, polish and attention it needs. This will benefit the game in terms of quality and stability, and it will benefit the team in terms of how many balls they need to juggle at once.”
The full post goes into a lot more detail, so if you’re a backer or a fan looking forward to the next entry in the Dreamfall saga, it’s worth checking out. We’ll get back to you with an official release date for Dreamfall Chapters: Book One when Tørnquist and development studio Red Thread confirm one.
