Red Thread Games Launches Dreamfall Chapters Kickstarter

[Sarah LeBoeuf]

Red Thread Games Launches Dreamfall Chapters Kickstarter

Crowd funders have until March 10 to help Dreamfall Chapters meet its $850,000 goal.

When Red Thread Games revealed that it was working on the Kickstarter campaign [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120452-Dreamfall-Chapters-is-In-Development]. The developer is hoping to raise $850,000 for Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey; after one day, the Kickstarter is more than 10% of the way to its goal.

The $850,000 Kickstarter campaign will add to the $175,000 grant Red Thread Games received from the Norwegian Film Institute. Backer rewards include digital copies of Dreamfall Chapters, special boxed editions, soundtracks, and graphic novels, with high-end tiers allowing backers to "make fun creative contributions to the game." If successful, Red Thread hopes to make Dreamfall Chapters available on the PC in November 2014.

The campaign has raised over $88,000 so far, with more than 1,500 backers contributing to the Kickstarter. If you're interesting in making Dreamfall Chapters a reality, you have until March 10 to help crowdfund the game.

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[Harker067]

More Zoe? Shut up and take my money O.O! (holds out credit card)

 

[dragongit]

Me: Oh boy, I just figured out my budget for this month, and there arn't any games out that I want to buy, I can finally save some money!

Kickstart: Nope.

Me: damn...

 

[anian]

YAAAAAAAAY!
I just hope they'll be able to get all the money they need to finish the story after all these years.

 

[Spacefrog]

Woot, "happy dance"

I have been waiting for this ever since I finished the last one (and finished raging over the ending to myself)
This one have been stuck in limbo for so long, that I had given up on a third game.

 

[Terramax]

I would only contribute if the game allows me to torture April Ryan to death, in the slowest, most painful way imaginable.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, to be honest I am not too sure of what to expect from Ragnar and any other Funcom Alumni at this point, their expectations seem to be far divorced from reality, and looking at what happened with TSW, a niche game that somehow was promoted internally as a blockbuster "WoW-Killer" causing Funcom's stock to tank when it failed to perform as one... I just don't know if I trust them enough to donate without knowing a lot more about their specific plans and expectations for the game.

Funcom is great at making exciting IPs, and having all kinds of ideas, not so great at delivering them. Ragnar was their lead creative designer (might still be) and seemed to also be running the show as "the honcho".

Dreamfall is a great IP, but I think people might want to see if Ragnar can actually succeed with something on his own before they get behind trying to crowdfund him. Seems like a good guy from the media, but I'm not sure if he's someone I'd actually trust to get this done. Unlike other projects which had guys like Brian "Mad Dog" Fargo, or Tim Schaefer acting as the "face" whose successes were sufficient for me to trust that they were setting their goals adequetly.

Also fitting into this besides the financial is that Ragnar's games seem to almost never deliver what he promises. For example with "Age Of Conan" (where he was the honcho if I remember, acting as the face for it) we were promised like 40+ character classes, Star Wars Galaxies like city building in an open world with rival "NPC" communities of picts and such developing to threaten them, formation based PVP involving hundreds of players who would have to form ranks and such to fight like real armies as opposed to running all over the place trying to stab each other in the face, and numerous other things. AoC was a decent game, and showed a lot of promise in it's tutorial, but didn't deliver 90% of what it promised initially, and you saw the features and scope of the project literally falling off of it as it neared release.

Other than it's expectations for performance, you'll also notice "The Secret World" promised entirely free form character development, where you could pretty much choose whatever skills and abillities you want for your character without limitations. Instead we got a very tiered, and linear system of progression, while there are no "official" classes, each weapon type is basically a class where you need to advance throug the abillities in a very linear
fashion, unlocking bigger and better ones as you accumulate exps, and while you can have two "classes" at one time (like say Final Fantasy, or RIFT... wherre you can have three) you can't choose any other abillities, and also have very limited skill slots, which also means you wind up developing a lot of abillities you never wind up using or even wanting to play with because you need to advance through them to get to what you want (or think you want) and the limited number of skills discourages you from really playing around with the so called "fly over skills" , especially at the high end.

"The Secret World" is probably my favorite MMORPG IP, but I realie it's flaws, and what happened with the development, and how it differed on release from what was promised (much like Age Of Conan).

So ask yourself, do you trust the Ragnar of today to produce a solid project, and deliver what he promises, marketing it properly? It's been a long time since the other games in the "Dreamfall" series, and while the IP is good, the people involved aren't quite who they used to be.

Just some thoughts, and apologies to anyone who is offended (even Ragnar if he reads this) I have to call it like I see it. I might still play "TSW" and step into Conan once in a blue moon, but that doesn't change the basic truths of their development and marketing, and I have to think of this kind of thing when it comes to investing money... it's a point of consideration I think people thinking about this Kickstarter need to keep in mind.

 

[thespyisdead]

best of luck to you guys!

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

Woohoo can't wait! The longest journey games are two of my favorite games and I've been waiting for this since I played Dreamfall when it came out.

 

[anian]

So ask yourself, do you trust the Ragnar of today to produce a solid project, and deliver what he promises, marketing it properly? It's been a long time since the other games in the "Dreamfall" series, and while the IP is good, the people involved aren't quite who they used to be.

Just some thoughts, and apologies to anyone who is offended (even Ragnar if he reads this) I have to call it like I see it. I might still play "TSW" and step into Conan once in a blue moon, but that doesn't change the basic truths of their development and marketing, and I have to think of this kind of thing when it comes to investing money... it's a point of consideration I think people thinking about this Kickstarter need to keep in mind.

I do agree with some of your points, but the thing is they're not really offering some technological options that are breaking the mold of a certain genre (and your grudges seem to be based of on not delivering on some technical or gameplay aspect).
If the videos and the last two instalments are anything to go by, they're sticking to the Dreamfall gameplay style and what they're offering is the new story part and puzzles and, from that aspect, Ragnar actually has a good history. Don't you agree?

 

[FinalDream]

I...I'm lost for words over how excited I am for this, Zoe Castillo is one of my favourite heroines of all time. This is amazing news!

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I would only contribute if the game allows me to torture April Ryan to death, in the slowest, most painful way imaginable.

What did she ever do to you? Besides turn emo.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

The news I have been waiting for has finally arrived! I'm heading on over to Kickstarter right now! I'm totally excited to be able to see Arcadia in glorious high definition.

Ragnar can have ALL my money if he provides a satisfying conclusion to Dreamfall. Hell, any conclusion would do!

 

[Mikejames]

More Zoe? Shut up and take my money O.O! (holds out credit card)

God willing we'll see more closure for the whole casts' ambiguous fates. April, Kian, the White Dragon, etc.
Heck, bring back Theoretically Blind Bob too.

Ragnar can have ALL my money if he provides a satisfying conclusion to Dreamfall. Hell, any conclusion would do!

Heh, watch us end up with even more cliffhangers.

 

[Terramax]

I would only contribute if the game allows me to torture April Ryan to death, in the slowest, most painful way imaginable.

What did she ever do to you? Besides turn emo.

Steal several hours of my life, in the hope that TLJ got enjoyable over time. It didn't.

 

[LordDPS]

I've handed them my money but that's still not good enough. I just need to get the form to sell my soul.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I would only contribute if the game allows me to torture April Ryan to death, in the slowest, most painful way imaginable.

What did she ever do to you? Besides turn emo.

Steal several hours of my life, in the hope that TLJ got enjoyable over time. It didn't.

That's about how I felt about the game, but I'm willing to give part 3 a chance to see if it turns out that it was amazing all along and I just didn't realize it until the magnificent conclusion. I'm leaning toward the belief that they've been making up the story as they go and just adding in stuff that they thought was cool, but I'm open to being proven wrong.

I did love April as a protagonist, though. One of the few female characters out there that I found well-written, realistic, and relatable. Until she turned emo anyway.

 

[Terramax]

I did love April as a protagonist, though. One of the few female characters out there that I found well-written, realistic, and relatable. Until she turned emo anyway.

I think we must've played a different version of the same game. I didn't experience an April Ryan anything like the above. In fact, wasn't she more emo to begin with (on the account that she was a moody sod from the getgo)?

IDK. I would be interested in playing another one again though. I really ought to rebuy the first Dreamfall and give that another try. I gave up after all the puzzles just appeared to be there for the sake of dragging the story out further.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I did love April as a protagonist, though. One of the few female characters out there that I found well-written, realistic, and relatable. Until she turned emo anyway.

I think we must've played a different version of the same game. I didn't experience an April Ryan anything like the above. In fact, wasn't she more emo to begin with (on the account that she was a moody sod from the getgo)?

IDK. I would be interested in playing another one again though. I really ought to rebuy the first Dreamfall and give that another try. I gave up after all the puzzles just appeared to be there for the sake of dragging the story out further.

She didn't seem emo to me in the first game, just kind of directionless and confused. Very relatable for me as a college student at the time. She was definitely emo in the second game, but at least she still had more personality than Zoe. (I really don't get what people like about her.)

Just so you know if you do decide to give the series another chance, there are hardly any puzzles in Dreamfall (The Longest Journey was, of course, notorious for its nonsensical adventure game logic that really felt like padding), but in their place are some truly awful combat and stealth sections. There is one adventure game style puzzle in Dreamfall where you're trying to get information from one person and you end up traveling all over town doing everyone's chores for them, and it seemed like it was put there as a kind of parody/homage to the first game. But "ironic" or not, it was still terrible. Thankfully, they seem to have taken to heart the criticism of the first two installments' gameplay. Whether they're capable of improvement remains to be seen.

Anyway, there was just enough cleverness and creativity in the series that I really want to like it, but it's going to take a lot to impress me at this point. Which makes me sad since it's supposed to be a classic adventure series with a great story, both of which I really enjoy.

 

[Terramax]

I did love April as a protagonist, though. One of the few female characters out there that I found well-written, realistic, and relatable. Until she turned emo anyway.

I think we must've played a different version of the same game. I didn't experience an April Ryan anything like the above. In fact, wasn't she more emo to begin with (on the account that she was a moody sod from the getgo)?

IDK. I would be interested in playing another one again though. I really ought to rebuy the first Dreamfall and give that another try. I gave up after all the puzzles just appeared to be there for the sake of dragging the story out further.

She didn't seem emo to me in the first game, just kind of directionless and confused. Very relatable for me as a college student at the time. She was definitely emo in the second game, but at least she still had more personality than Zoe. (I really don't get what people like about her.)

Just so you know if you do decide to give the series another chance, there are hardly any puzzles in Dreamfall (The Longest Journey was, of course, notorious for its nonsensical adventure game logic that really felt like padding), but in their place are some truly awful combat and stealth sections. There is one adventure game style puzzle in Dreamfall where you're trying to get information from one person and you end up traveling all over town doing everyone's chores for them, and it seemed like it was put there as a kind of parody/homage to the first game. But "ironic" or not, it was still terrible. Thankfully, they seem to have taken to heart the criticism of the first two installments' gameplay. Whether they're capable of improvement remains to be seen.

Anyway, there was just enough cleverness and creativity in the series that I really want to like it, but it's going to take a lot to impress me at this point. Which makes me sad since it's supposed to be a classic adventure series with a great story, both of which I really enjoy.

Thanks for the tips. Bottom line is, I found the first game to be pretty average and, in a way, a little pretentious. The second game was ok, but both of them really failed to grab me. It didn't help that I played it at a time I was going through games like Broken Sword 1, Grim Fandango, Discworld Noir, Myst III & IV, and other better adventure games. They just seemed to make it glaringly obvious how second rate TLJ was.