RPS: When you say ‘independently funding’, I recall that we spoke a while ago and you did mention that the Kickstarter explosion had got your attention? Is crowdfunding something you’re still considering?
Tørnquist: Yes it is. We will be doing a Kickstarter. Not right now, but we will be doing it in the near future, simply because although we received a grant from the Norwegian Film Institute, which was announced today, that is only for the preproduction phase. That allows us to get started on a prototype but in order to fully develop Dreamfall Chapters we’re going to need more money and we will be going to Kickstarter.
RPS: TSW feels like an experimentation in storytelling and MMO design, whereas an adventure game doesn’t necessarily have that same scope to experiment with the way a story is told. Is it just a way of telling a good story?
Tørnquist: Yeah, maybe. But having said that, Dreamfall Chapters will do some new and interesting things on the story side as well. We’re toying with some hopefully interesting ideas. It’s going to be an adventure game, it’s a going to be all about the story – there won’t be any twitch combat or button mashing or anything like that.
RPS: My feeling would be that TLJ didn’t try to introduce new mechanics to adventuring. It was conversation and puzzles.
Tørnquist: I’ve learned a lot in my twenty years making games. TLJ was one of my first games, and it did lean a lot on slightly obscure adventure point and click mechanics at that point. But at least it had a lot of it.
It was in some ways a very mechanical game. It had a lot of adventure mechanics. Dreamfall went away from that quite a bit, and that’s both good and bad. Chapters will hopefully unite the two, have enough of a challenge and enough interesting puzzles and mechanics to keep players engaged, but making sure that the story keeps moving, with momentum and drama.
RPS: I think a lot of people are going to be happy that you just said ‘Dreamfall will never be a multiplayer game’. You mentioned handheld devices earlier – will Chapters be taking the leap?
Tørnquist: Right now we’re only saying the game will be on PC and Mac. Thjat’s our primary focus and that’s where our core audience is. We’re looking at other options but it’s PC and Mac right now.
Yeah, I'm really excited.
