voyage to mars

Monday, October 11, 2004

Dear Ragnar,

Thank you for The Long Journey. A masterpiece.

April is your valuable property. She could, with proper marketing/PR over the next 18 months start taking over from Lara Croft (especially given the last Tomb Raider game!) as the female gaming character for the 21st century. More hip, less boob job, more IQ, less bum, more sassy.

Problem is, you've taken her out of Dreamfall. Not totally, but to all intent and purposes, she's gone.

Quickly now: What was the name of Gabriel Knight's assistant?
What was the town Sam and Max lived in?
What is the name of the organisation Sam Fisher works for?

You see, it's about characters. Your most valuable property as far as I am concerned is April Ryan. And you are wasting her.

Please reconsider her part in Dreamfall. To have a campaign as much around April as around the other parts that make TLJ/Dreamfall makes so much sense in today's market. Write her more into the story, Let her guide Zoe to where Zoe has to be for Zoe to do whatever. Not have Zoe look for April, find April and then move on. It's just not right! With one strong character taking centre place in all the TLJ games makes it much more likely you'll have merchandising (tee-shirts, dolls, whatever) and much more likely to get movie deals. So much could come from making April the centre of Dreamfall instead of the Periphery!

If April is written out of Dreamfall, as I feel she currently is, then I do not see how you are going to get the coverage and word of mouth you'll need to have a hit with Dreamfall. It is the TLJ fans that will lift this game high. It will be that foundation that will bring other gamers onboard.

Without April you will not have that foundation to anywhere near the same degree. Questions are already being asked in forums around the world. It is not all negative, but handled differently it could be so much more positive, building to a crescendo as Dreamfall comes to market.

Thanks for listening. I don't really expect anything to happen. Maybe playing TLJ four times over five years makes me feel April is a friend that's being stabbed in the back. If other people feel the same way you are going to have a "Long Journey" to making Dreamfall a hit and that is a shame for me, for you, for Funcom and for the adventure market. It could be "the death" of all of us! :(

Good luck

John

Thanks, John. I am quite certain, however, that only a few key people outside the core team have actually read the Dreamfall manuscript, and the extent of April's involvement in the story has yet to be revealed to anyone else. She is, without question, a key player in the saga, and though she's being joined by two new characters - Zoë and Kian - that doesn't mean she's being usurped. Quite the opposite: the fates of all three characters are closely intertwined. So no worries, John: she's not being written out, left behind, stabbed in the back. On the other hand, we don't want to reveal too much about her role until the game is released, either. I can understand if that's frustrating to you and to other TLJ fans, so we will probably release some juicy morsels this spring, and cast a bit more light on April Ryan's shadowy future at that time - but for the whole story, you'll have to wait until next autumn. ¶ 09:08

Comments:

Hello,

I was just hoping that you can set something straight for me. I've been following along on Dreamfall for months and months and fairly recently I saw on gamespot that the release date is January 10, 2005. Needless to say I was more than just a little pleasantly surprised because that was a lot sooner than I was expecting it. But in your post you kinda, sorta, more than little implied that maybe it's going to be later than that. Please don't break my heart and say it is later.

Waiting with crossed fingers and toes,
Ani

# posted by Anonymous : 1:42 AM

Place no confidence on any release dates mentioned by anyone but Funcom or Ragnar. Certain game sites like that one tend to put up a projected date when they are left without. So I'm sorry to ruin your hopes, but it is in no way confimed.

# posted by Anonymous : 6:03 AM

Time goes fast, the game will come out before we know it.

I hope they avoid the sequel trap. Sequels are often inferior to the original. More money, more people, and more talent doesn't always produce more inspiration. It's funny how previous success can be self-defeating to future rounds of effort.

# posted by Anonymous : 8:00 AM

GameSpot is wrong. I don't know where they got their date from, but we've always said autumn 2005. Which means it'll be out between September and November next year. We have a specific date in mind, but we're not making that public yet. Not because we don't know if we'll make it or not (we will), but because we like keeping secrets.

# posted by Ragnar : 10:13 PM

A couple of people noticed this before and I believe Jørgen Tharaldsen cleared it up back then by saying GameSpot was wrong. I think GameSpot just mixed up the month with the day. So in stead of putting October 1st (10/01/2005) they put January 10th (01/10/2005).

-RaMa

# posted by Raoul : 6:35 PM

01/10/2005 would be the right way to say "1st October 2005" in Europe - our dates go day/month/year over here. So GameSpot didn't get it wrong as such, just that the way they chose to write the date doesn't translate well internationally.

Much as I share some of John's concerns about April (I've just completed TLJ for the second time and fell in love with her all over again), it seems to me that so long as the writing and acting is as strong in Dreamfall people won't have too much trouble accepting a new protagonist. After all, one of the real selling points of the original game is that ALL the characters were good - particular favourites of mine were Crow, Brian Westhouse and Roper Klacks, but even the bit-parts like the policemen in Stark showed surprising depth and believability.

Zoe is just as attractive from a visual/marketing standpoint as April but to me it was the empathy I felt for the characters rather than their looks that made them so popular.

# posted by Anonymous : 3:24 AM