With autumn on the horizon, production has finally commenced in earnest on the one game you're all waiting for, and it's really quite strange and wonderful to see how many familiar faces have returned for the "sequel". Almost half the team consists of The Longest Journey veterans; mostly artists, plus one programmer (the original's lead), one designer...and yours truly. Keep in mind that it's seven years since production began on the first game, and that this industry is infamous for personnel moving from company to company. It's a miracle that so many of us are still with Funcom - but hey, as long as we get to make great games and have fun doing it, why go anywhere else? (Besides, you'd be hard pressed to find a better place to work.)

I'm more convinced than ever before that TLJ.s will be one of those great games, and there's already a lot of visual material I would love to show off...but of course I can't (and, no, bribes won't work - unless they're big enough). There's a long road ahead of both you and us, and in order to make the journey as interesting as possible, and to manage the high expectations, we'll have to carefully distribute the sweet candy along the way. There will be teasers, of course - a few of them in this journal, most of them on the official site - so keep your eyes open.

The game's complex (and long) story breakdown has undergone a series of revisions, but I'm now very, very happy with the results. I believe that we'll have a lock on the story within a few weeks, leaving us to focus on the game script, containing all the game's puzzles and set-pieces. That doesn't include the dialogue script, of course, which we'll get around to when everything else has been designed in detail.

The details of the story will remain under wraps (and armed guard) until release, but there's no harm in speculation, and since outré theories are fun to read, here are three important words pulled (more or less at random) from the script that might fire up under Internet scuttlebutt:

* White
* Crow
* Static (well, duh)

Expect more of those in the future. Piece 'em together, play the first game again, use your imagination - and with a bit of luck you might end up with some idea of what's in store.

I was also recently pointed in the direction of what I believe is the very first The Longest Journey .static fan-site: http://www.tljs.tk/ Looks very promising, and I'll definitely be checking in from time to time.

As for the second Funcom project I'm involved with - and which was shown, briefly, in video form at E3 to selected journos - things are moving forward, albeit not at breakneck speeds. We're working on the core technology, which needs to be solid, and we don't expect to be showing anyone anything (or even talking about it) until next year's E3...at the earliest. The rumour is that the game is "horror themed", and while that's certainly true to some extent, there's also a lot more to it. It's not an easy project to pigeonhole, nor can the premise be reduced to a single genre, theme, or word. 'Horror' is just one of them. 'Globetrotting' another. And 'period' a third. There's no reason to start counting the days yet, however, since NBT (or 'Next Big Thing') won't reach the market until after TLJ.s, but there's certainly reason to be excited.  ¶ 14:58