I read with great dismay about the decision to include "Action Elements" into Dreamfall. The longest Journey was an excellent traditional point and click adventure. The inclusion of action elements, in an attempt to woo more action oriented players, does not work and never will. All it does is alienate, frustrate and disappoint those who enjoy traditional adventure games, games that are in all too short supply. The beauty of traditional games is that you can sit back, relax and enjoy the story and use your brain rather than having to run, jump and continuosly labour over the keyboard and mouse. Action elements add nothing, and will never be enough for those who prefer action oriented games anyway. Why mess with the sequel. Please re-think your decision to include these "frustation" elements. Have faith in your original design and the traditional point and clicker and those who enjoy them.

We're not including action elements to woo a specific demographic, and our intension is certainly not to frustrate or alienate anyone.

Rather, our goal is to create a game where variety is the key word; not a traditional adventure, but also not a traditional action-adventure. Dreamfall will be rather unique, I think, in blending solid adventure gameplay with exciting action elements - not just combat - without the annoying bits. No falling to your death, then; no random battles or endlessly spawning monsters; no experience points or stats; no spiders, bats, rats, or zombies; no pitfalls, hidden traps, or timed jumps; no Super Mario style platform puzzles; and absolutely no crates. (We're staying far, far, far away from crates. Crates are bad. We have a big sign on that wall that says "No crates allowed". Honest.)

And on a slightly related note: some readers have inquired whether the PC version of Dreamfall will be affected by the parallel development (and release) of a console version...and the answer is "yes, of course" - but not in a negative way. The PC version will, of course, look better than the *** version (we're not going public with any specific console just yet); in addition to higher resolution textures, better effects, and shorter loading times, the PC version will have its own unique interface and controls. Players certainly won't be short-changed whichever version they choose to play. As for hardware requirements, those won't be announced until we're much closer to release, but I think it's safe to say that if you have a high-end PC today, you'll be okay.

Tomorrow, the final three words. Nine is the magic number. To recap: "White. Crow. Static. Snow. Dark. Dream." Keep posted. We're almost there.  ¶ 18:03