Monthly Archives: February 2009

No news is good news

Ragnar Tørnquist has posted “no news” about Dreamfall Chapters that got me more excited than any actual gaming news I’ve heard in months. Lots of promises to live up to here. The Longest Journey series is one of my favourite in gaming, and I hope the next instalment can summit to the potential the last didn’t quite reach. I’d love to see a game that finally gets the action/adventure blend right. I’ve never really understood why it’s not been done yet. The MMO interface is now so ubiquitous, and to the casual observer would seem perfect for such a task: a blend of full 3D movement with point-and-click for world interaction, in a fashion that many millions of gamers are instantly familiar with. Going back to Dreamfall after WoW the restrictive camera just seems infuriating. I want to look around the beautiful world, but I’m not allowed. It rather breaks the immersion. I can’t help feeling that the mini-games he mentions would too. He does say he wants to make The Longest Journey 2 as well as Dreamfall Chapters though. That’s got to be good news, right? I have faith.

Tornquist also says that Dreamfall suffered massively from piracy, despite the fact that it came with one of the most hated DRM systems ever. I assume he saw the news about Spore being the most torrented game ever. I would actually prefer to buy the game(s) online, and to have them validated online, as long as that means Steam, not SecuROM. I’d also like full SteamWorks support, including achievements and saves synced to the cloud. And I’d like a Steam client for the Mac, with all my games portable between the two formats from release day. I’m a dreamer.

Unsurprisingly, John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun got in quickly with the definitive commentary on this story, but I couldn’t resist adding noise to the signal.