Norwegian developer/publisher Funcom announced Dreamfall Chapters today, an upcoming episodic continuation of its The Longest Journey adventure series. Funding for the series was achieved with a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund, which since 2004 has been endorsing the Norwegian game development industry. As of now, Dreamfall Chapters is only planned to be distributed online for the PC, although Funcom is predicting that in the future, retail releases of combined chapters may be seen for consoles and the PC. The press release also hinted at a potential The Longest Journey MMO. Other information regarding the nature of Dreamfall Chapters was not available at press time.
Arne Aas, CEO of Funcom, exclaimed plenty of excitement for the episodic releases. "We will be researching an online-only continuation of the epic Longest Journey saga, and we very much look forward to develop new chapters to the Dreamfall gaming community. To see the Norwegian government take such an active role in nurturing the local game development industry is impressive. In return for their trust we aim to deliver a modern adventure game with unique qualities."
Upon their respective releases in 2000 and 2006, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey achieved critical success and praise from the adventure community for containing a deep story, memorable characters, and rich dialogue. It did however suffer from one piece of criticism, as is evident from the six year gap between releases–the titles’ long development cycles. Now with the popular episodic trend, Funcom will be able to issue more frequent episodic releases in hopes of not only continuing its adventure series, but also of minimizing development time. The revelation of a possible The Longest Journey MMO is certainly a pleasant surprise to fans of the series. Funcom has been planning quite a few MMOs as of late, including continued support for its ongoing PC space/sci-fi MMORPG Anarchy Online and future PC and Xbox 360 MMORPGs: The World Online and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.
