The “Break it Down” Blog

A little over a year ago I was in a gaming-slump… I had nothing interesting to play and was bored and wanted a good story to get lost in. After some seriously searching and sorting of “best games ever” lists, I finally came to the conclusion that FunCom’s The Longest Journey, even being almost 10 years old, was something I would give a try.

Fast-forward a week or so and I had found one of my new favorite games of all time. You can tell it obviously wasn’t because of the graphics (screenshot above) which made the job of the storyline all that much harder to carry the game — but it did… it absolutely did.

If you are a fan of sci-fi/adventure as well as the “fun” feeling of the classic LucasArts games like Monkey’s Quest, King’s Quest, Hero’s Quest and so on — do yourself a favor and just go buy The Longest Journey from Steam for $9 and play it.

After I had finished The Longest Journey I was a bit obsessed with learning more about where the story game from, who wrote it, what kind of fan-fiction existed around it and other bits of information to fill that gap that forms when a story you love ends — sort of like Star Wars or every single weekly show of Lost.

I soon found out the game was written and directed by what I can only guess is one of the original founders of FunCom, Ragnar Tornquist. At the time I dug in to do this research FunCom and Tornquist had already produced the sequel to TLJ — Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

As excited as I was to see the story continue, I also saw rumblings of FunCom’s plan to release an upcoming followup to the series call The Secret World. More or less crapping my pants at the idea of a 10-year trilogy with an epic conclusion, I kept digging and was dismayed to find that FunCom’s plan wasn’t to release a 3rd title in the series but rather a completely separate MMORPG that is set in the universe defined by The Longest Journey titles.

As much as I like the TLJ universe, I’ve never seen a MMO sell a story to individual players very effectively — the environments are always static, quests repetative and RPG points a grind to get.

The debut cinematic trailer for The Secret World was launched yesterday and the characters certainly look inspired by TLJ universe — I don’t recall any Clive Barker-esque creatures in either of the previous games, but if this is a new franchise I can understand the changes.

Overall I’m cautiously optimistic right now. FunCom has some hickups with Age of Conan MMO when that was released, hoping to attract a more adult gaming crowd by introducing nudity into the MMO market only to find out that nothing can stop the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft and tight gameplay mechanics.

Let’s hope that The Secret World is either a different kind of MMO with an ever-growing-story in a world where other players provide inconsequential experiences in the world allowing the main game to drive the majority of the experience as opposed to the individual players most constructing the experience all together as is the case with most modern MMOs.