My previous post was delayed almost a week for various reasons, including a hardware upgrade at the office. I finally have a PC which can actually play
Dreamfall! For the past four years, I've been using a Pentium III 500Mhz, which is all right for Word - where I do most of my work - but rather useless for everything else. Since I upgraded my home-office laptop a short while ago - to a Dell Inspiron 8600 - I'm now technologically up-to-date. It won't last, however, so I should enjoy it while I can. Hopefully,
Half-Life 2 will be out before my hardware is outdated.
There's been quite a bit of mail lately, and I've yet to wade through even half of it, so if you're waiting for a reply to a question, please be patient. For now, here's David with a few concerns and ideas:
Hello again,
A long time ago you said two things, one of which concerns me, while the other has recently been brought to the surface. The latter was regarding language and controversial matter in TLJ. I think it appeared in an interview, although you may have posted it in your journal, but it basically said that we can expect to see lesbians and/or gays, as well as course language in TLJ2. A few days ago in an IGN interview, you said that you were seriously considering toning things down. I'd like to strongly advise you against this, as mature gamers, most especially fans of the original TLJ, would see this as "dumbing down" the game, and one of the things TLJ was praised for was it's inclusion of a normal same-sex couple and course (or as I like to call it, realistic) language. While these elements do not necessarily make a game good, they show the writers are not afraid to communicate to their audience on a mature level as well as giving the game more depth and a greater sense of realism.
The other thing I wanted to ask you is if you have played TLJ from beginning to end yet, as you said in your journal that you have never done so. If not, I suggest you do so to make sure you stay true to the spirit of the original, and be sure to pay special attention to the ending. That is one thing that NEEDS to be resolved. When I passed TLJ, I felt several things; satisfaction, sorrow, and a feeling that there was a small thing, a few little details, or perhaps something to be said that wasn't. Almost as if the ending wasn't an ending at all, merely an intermission (albeit a very long one). You really need a nice, LONG flashback to that moment when the credits began to roll, and preferably with high-res pre-rendered video, as while in-game, interactive cutscenes are great, there's nothing like being able to sit back from the keyboard and watch a beautifully rendered sequence that you'll be able to go back and watch again and again. I'll say it again, because it's so important - you can have interactive cutscenes, rendered in-game, and as good as they look, they can never match a pre-rendered cutscene for sheer satisfaction, partly due to the fact that an in-game cutscene is always worse-looking then a pre-rendered one, partly because in-game graphics don't offer you change from what you've been looking at before, partly because watching them again is never as good as watching pre-rendered ones, and also let's face it; Adventurers (and many other gamers) just love em.
I took the time to write this, and I hope you will find time to reply, either by posting this in your journal or replying by email. These issues are important to me, and I wouldn't have written an e-mail this long if I didn't want a response.
Thanking you in advance,
David Jeffries
(Pirateguybrush)
PS. I love the new screens, and although April looks strange, I kinda like the new look. The other characters look great, but I hope there's not too much forced combat and sneaking during Kian's segments.We won't be dumbing down the game, nor will we be pulling any (necessary) punches. I was referring only to the language, and nothing has been decided. We don't want to alienate anyone - but that goes both ways. Rest assured that the story will be as 'adult', as mature, as it was in the first games, and that we are striving to give depth and realism to the characters and the universe. We don't want to play it completely safe, and we like shaking things up a bit. There is a ratings issue which we have to be conscious of, but we won't let it compromise the quality of the game.
As for playing through
The Longest Journey: it's true that I haven't ever sat down and played the game through from beginning to end, uninterrupted - but that's only to be expected. The entire story, every single line of dialogue, every puzzle, every character - these are all lodged in my brain for eternity. I can literally play through TLJ with my eyes closed, so there shouldn't be any concerns that the spirit of the original will live on in the follow-up: on some levels - especially in terms of story, themes, and characters - they are both highly personal games.
Lastly, when it comes to pre-rendered cut-scenes, don't expect a lot of these. Our graphics engine is quite capable of rendering beautiful real-time cinematic sequences - much, much nicer, in fact, than the full-motion videos in the first game.
...oh, and the 'new' April is, in fact, a realistic evolution of what we wanted April to look like in TLJ (but for various reasons weren't always able to accomplish; every incarnation looked slightly different). Check out the
American box-art for that game and compare it to the
one-decade-older April: they are quite clearly the same person.
