Is this for financial reasons?

I have no idea, really, but I don't think so, for both parties involved.

FunCom doesn't want to make single player games any more, and they are not stupid as well: They KNOW that a Longest Journey MMO would just bomb hard. It doesn't make that much sense for them to demand a license back if they'd just sit on and do nothing with it.

Still, taking the perspective of FunCom... I'd feel strange if another studio built its entire reputation on my intellectual property. Maybe this is indeed a wait and see approach. If RTG continues to thrive even on their own IPs, "The Longest Journey Home" will eventually happen.

From the perspective of RTG, the financially safest bet would of course be to just continue with The Longest Journey stuff. It's a risky and commendable decision to not go that route. They'll do a short horror adventure game called Draugen next, completely their own IP, and I guess they'll be making a bigger non TLJ related game afterwards.

I just hope they're making enough money to keep going and to keep the team together, make games and genres that I like, and of course keep distributing DRM free. It's the people you want to support in the first place, not the franchise, after all...

I'm of course eyeing 2020 for The Longest Journey Home, but for RTG, the next years definitely won't be TLJ related.

I think that 2020 might be bit optimistic. I assume that it's going to take 7-8 years before we will see the next game. Naturally I wish that it would be earlier, but considering the history of the franchise I'm not too hopeful.

Spoiler Alert

Towards the end of book 3, in the Enclave (the resistance hideout), Likho said, “If Kian had done his duty, those people would still be with us.” What duty did he not fulfil? I thought that Kian fulfilled everything that was expected of him. Initially I thought that Likho was referring to Kian not killing the Azadi officer (decision I chose to play) that was sexually abusing a young Dolmari in his keep. However, I replayed this part again and changed the scene to Kian "killing the Azadi officer", but this made no difference to the speech in the Enclave; Likho still said that Kian had not done his duty... Is this another bug in the game?

I just realised something I forgot to do in the game; I forgot to put the engineer's tool back in his toolbox after opening the pipe. So I changed this as well - I put the tool back, but this still made no difference to Likho's speech!

I think that this discussion would have been more appropriate in Book 3 thread. I answered to your post there to avoid unnecessary spoilers in other threads.

http://www.gog.com/forum/the_longest_journeydreamfall_series/let_us_talk_about_book_3_spoilers

Dreamfall Chapters book four out tomorrow folks!

Only joking!

Sadly. However, it looks like RTG is about to prepare their (first) GOG version of the Unity 5 port after extensive Steam testing.

From what I've heard, bugs are still intense yet performance improvement borders on the miraculous. They've completely reset lighting, so parts of the game may look rather different than before. Maybe warrants a replay.

Next week for U5 port of Books 1 to 3, I hope!

Bad tidings - well, more or less.

It's likely that there won't be a GOG version of the Unity 5 build before Book 4 releases.

That means that on release day of Book 4, because basically all files have been changed, it's inevitable that we'll get a spanking new installer, 8 to 10 GB, on release day, instead of an episode 'patch'. :(

There are two positive things to come out of this. First, all the beta testing will have been done by Steam players; and second: Book 4 is really close.

With 'close' I mean as early as next week, but I'm going out on a limb with the theory...

Thank you for the informative news and I do hope you are right about book four coming out next week. If the graphics are going to be enhanced by this change with the new engine, then I think, as you say, it will be well worth playing the game at the beginning again from book one and also worth the wait. It will be a shame to miss this whole new experience from the previous books.

No problem, I love to do this!

I had hoped to spend this weekend replaying Book 1 to 3 in the Unity 5 version. Alas! It's not what I'm doing right now (Ah fuck it, I have a game stream to attend to anyway). Still, I intend to do a complete replay once I finished Book 4, if only to make sure no bugs are left in the GOG version that the Steamites didn't find.

The Book 4 trailer is finished and could hit any day now.

Some rather spoilery screenshots were released today and hint at a bucketload of known faces from previous games.

Ragnar's convinced that the GOG release should be smooth this time.

We_are_close.

I am. I was.

Book Four will be out on THURSDAY this week. :) :)

Oh great, at last. I just hope the story etc was well worth the wait!

Thanks for sharing the good news!!! And it's definitely accurate as it's on their Facebook page.

Today's the day. And Ragnar Tørnquist has even stated that today, they may even wait until GOG has pushed out the episode before they launch on Steam.

Fingers crossed!