You can tell it's crunch time when this blog is dead.

It's been a working weekend here in Oslo. I came back from the US Friday morning, on an exceedingly crowded and ridiculously uncomfortable Continental flight from Newark. (Their philosophy on leg space, service, and decent food appears to be 'no, not really', and I'll do my utmost to avoid that flight again, despite the fact that it's the only direct flight from North America to Oslo.) I have basically been at the office ever since. Dreamfall's second autumn deadline is today, Monday, but seeing as we have another one coming up on December 10th, there will be little downtime before Christmas.

But it has certainly been worth it. This weekend has seen all the separate threads being woven together into a mostly coherent whole, and there's now actual, honest-to-God gameplay happening - together with some stunning visuals, fantastic sound, and great controls. Dreamfall has finally become a real game, and I'm as proud as can be. There's a long, hard road ahead, sure, but my faith in the project has been renewed. (Not that it was lacking: you just need confirmation from time to time that you're on the right track.) Previous deadlines have been based around either game features or visual iterations, and this is the first once since the E3 demo where everything has come together. It's quite lovely.

When will you get to see any of this? Soon-ish. There's something happening on December 23rd, but I can't reveal that yet. It's also likely that there will be an upgrade to the site just prior to Crimbo - a screenshot or two, maybe, or a brief, tantalising teaser video - but again: it all depends on a) time, and b) marketing plans. You'll get something, that's a guarantee - or at least as close to one as I can give you. (Usual restrictions apply.)

Despite the long hours, I have been able to invest a couple of hours in Halo 2, and while my first impressions were somewhat muted, I'm now hooked. It's fun. It doesn't look that much better than the first one, and the field-of-view is way too narrow - an unfortunate change that I haven't seen mentioned in the press; it limits what you can see, especially when you're wielding two weapons. While it's 'just' more of the same, with polish, you can't really fault it for that. The opening hour is a bit dull, but it improves massively once the story gets rolling.

Right: back to the grind. We've got a version to complete. (And to think, I'm actually sitting at my computer playing the game right now. You guys will have to wait until next year.)  ¶ 09:09