Length of (and between) chapters

[Upper Dave]

Anyone have any guesses about how long the chapters are going to be in terms of average hours to complete? TLJ was a huge game, as we know, and Dreamfall took a fair amount of hours to complete (20? Something like that), so with 5 chapters, can we expect each to last about 4 hours? I think that would be my guess.

More importantly, how long are we going to have to wait until the full game is available (all chapters)? Telltale do pretty well at this, releasing 1 chapter every few months, but Dreamfall Chapters seems like a bigger project than The Wolf Amoung us, for example. Are we going to have to wait 6 months per chapter? Any thoughts?

[proxy]

They promised a 9-th hourses.

[Tanash]

If I recall correctly I believe they said the first episode/book is around 3 or so hours, this may of course vary a bit. The other episodes, may be longer.

And defo not 6 months per chapter, I read book 2 is pretty close to being done so that may come in a couple months time maybe, but I don't believe they have given any information on this topic other than they aim to have all episodes out sometime next year.

[Cyber-Mage]

It's hard to accurately gauge play times because it's not the same for everyone, but assuming an "average" playthrough and not getting "stuck" somewhere, The Longest Journey was a 20 to 25 hours game and Dreamfall 10 to 12 hours (NOT 20 hours that Dave mentions). Compared to that (and using the same criteria), Dreamfall: Chapters seems to be aiming for a 15 hours experience, but it should be noted that -unlike its predecessors- it is said to also have elements of open world games (relatively big areas, like Europolis, where you can explore at your leisure and find easter eggs and many details that add flavor but are not essential to the main plot) and more significant "branching" via our choices (though there aren't multiple endings, just different paths towards the one end) so the "complete" experience may even be longer (and the replayability higher).

As for the length between chapters, it's what Tanash has said. They aim to finish all 5 Books within 2015 and work on Book 2 has progressed significantly already. If you do the math, that leads to around 3 months between each episode, but game development is not an exact science and never without unexpected occurences.

[Upper Dave]

Sounds logical, Cyber-Mage. 3 hours per book, 3 months between books. I'll probably buy at the end of 2015 then. :(

[Trent]

The devs had said that some early build testers have spent almost three hours with the first episode; future episodes might be longer. So I think we can conclude that depending on your play-style, the total could be anywhere from 10-20+ hours. They've also said that all episodes should become available before 2015 ends.

For what it's worth, they've also said: "the more money we make, the more money we can invest in subsequent books." So you could buy sooner...

[Patience]

Originally posted by Cyber-Mage:

It's hard to accurately gauge play times because it's not the same for everyone, but assuming an "average" playthrough and not getting "stuck" somewhere, The Longest Journey was a 20 to 25 hours game and Dreamfall 10 to 12 hours (NOT 20 hours that Dave mentions). Compared to that (and using the same criteria), Dreamfall: Chapters seems to be aiming for a 15 hours experience, but it should be noted that -unlike its predecessors- it is said to also have elements of open world games (relatively big areas, like Europolis, where you can explore at your leisure and find easter eggs and many details that add flavor but are not essential to the main plot) and more significant "branching" via our choices (though there aren't multiple endings, just different paths towards the one end) so the "complete" experience may even be longer (and the replayability higher).

As for the length between chapters, it's what Tanash has said. They aim to finish all 5 Books within 2015 and work on Book 2 has progressed significantly already. If you do the math, that leads to around 3 months between each episode, but game development is not an exact science and never without unexpected occurences.

Easter eggs? Did you find any?! I am not sure whether or not the posters of the duckie and bonker's are considered easter eggs. In the Longest Journey I remember finding a switch near the television in the downstairs lounge area where April was staying and it would play a video.

[jujohnso]

As far as length of chapters, I just finished only 1 play through of book one and it was an 8 hour experience for me. (I did talk with all NPCs about almost all possible topics.) I'm very pleased with the length of book 1.

If I spend as much time in the other books, it'll make a nice long game. (The previous Dreamfall game took me 13 hours, so book one of this game was more than half the length of the entire last game.)

Perhaps the longest thing about the Longest Journey series is the wait between games. Oh well, the waits have been worth it!

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by Tanash:

If I recall correctly I believe they said the first episode/book is around 3 or so hours, this may of course vary a bit. The other episodes, may be longer.

And defo not 6 months per chapter, I read book 2 is pretty close to being done so that may come in a couple months time maybe, but I don't believe they have given any information on this topic other than they aim to have all episodes out sometime next year.

We decided long ago to not discuss playing time, because it varies so much from player to player, and any discussion of length becomes a very subjective discussion about what the 'right' length is. Some prefer shorter, others think 6+ hours for a single episode is too short. It's hard to please everyone, and so we've decided to just make the game, release the episodes, and let you guys play it!

We actually did think the playing time of Book One would be 2,5-3 hours — and not the 4-5+ hours that some players are reporting — which shows how hard it is to give an accurate estimate, and how dangerous it is to talk about playing time.

As for when the next four episodes are coming: we have said that we're targeting September next year for Book Five. Do your calculations accordingly!

[CrazyOdd]

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

We actually did think the playing time of Book One would be 2,5-3 hours — and not the 4-5+ hours that some players are reporting — which shows how hard it is to give an accurate estimate, and how dangerous it is to talk about playing time.

Yeah, play time is a funny thing. The first person who sayed he spended 2,5 hours on his play through, was called a speed runner (skip everything to get a shortest possible time).