Shadowrun: Dragonfall Now Has Standalone Director's Cut
Running Shadows, Falling Dragons
Shadowrun Returns returns! Or rather, its expansion Shadowrun: Dragonfall is returning, this time as a standalone release called Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut. To justify the title, the cyberpunk RPG expandalone is being expanded further with five new missions, a re-designed interface, new endings, new music, and a bunch more. There's a trailer below which details the biggest of the changes, and it seems there's good news for both new players and old.
The good news for new players is all that polish and extra features mentioned in the trailer above. Weren't you paying attention? The good news for existing players is that if you've previously bought the expansion, you'll get the Director's Cut updates for free.
You can read Alec's review of the expansion (or Jim's review of the original), but the relevant part of Alec's piece on Dragonfall is perhaps right in the first paragraph:
Now that's more like it. Choice! Side-missions! A hub! A strong supporting cast who are up for a bit of a chat! Little-to-no mandatory decking sequences! A mother-lovin' save (almost) anywhere system! Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall being ‘just’ DLC for last year’s cyberpunk/fantasy mash-up RPG is bittersweet, because it may well be that only existing Shadowrun Returns owners give it a spin. Really, though, this is the point where new players are best off getting involved – a new, superior campaign with no ties to the last one, and quite a few of the major problems dealt with. Now’s the time to play Shadowrun Returns, basically, but please, start with this.
Which makes it kind of nice that developers Harebrained Schemes are making the game standalone, and thus making it easier for everyone to follow Alec's advice.
Shadowrun Returns was an early Kickstarter success, gathering $1.8 million in funds from an initial $400k goal. Development was delayed as the team met various stretch goals and reviews of the eventual release were mixed, with criticism focused mainly upon the saved game system, but that (among other things) were fixed or improved in the Dragonfall expansion.
The Director's Cut is due for release next month, on September 18th. You know what I dislike, though? That one of the RPGs not set in a trad-fantasy world is still putting "Dragon" in its name.