While writing Episode 2 Jalapeno purposely left a lot of it out of order. So when it came down to the stage of integrating it all together, I was left with a bunch of missions and forums that I could introduce to the player in any order I wanted.
In Episode 1, we dabbled a bit with non-linearity, but we only had about 10 forums so we didn’t flesh it out very much. There are a couple of parts in the storyline where you can do things in the order you choose, but most of the time it’s a straight line.
In Episode 2, this is quite different. It works more like Grand Theft Auto, where you are given multiple contacts at once. You can do their missions in whatever order you wish, but new missions are only unlocked after you finish the original ones. Sometimes, finishing one of several missions unlocks several other missions.
It will be interesting to see the order that people play through the game once we open up the Episode 2 beta! I honestly have no idea what route will be the most popular.