Everything's subject to change since it's still early days, of course, but what I'm imagining is something that's essentially MARDEK but with some bits inspired by Taming Dreams. MARDEK's free-roaming wouldn't have worked in Taming Dreams because I was planning to release all those short episodes, but since these ones will be much larger, there's much more opportunity for quests and things that are woven through the entire chapter/episode (I still don't know which of those words to use!).
In my current plans, the first/fourth one is mostly linear, like MARDEK 2 was, except for some stuff that becomes available at the end. The other two are a lot more freeform, allowing the player to choose the order they do the quests. Or I suppose it's like MARDEK 3, where you can sort of do things in any order, but you have to do certain things before others unlock, so you end up starting and pausing several quests rather than just starting then finishing them in sequence.
It seems like the best way to do it, since it's what a lot of people have mentioned liking about MARDEK, and I enjoyed it myself in my recent playthrough!
In my current plans, the first/fourth one is mostly linear, like MARDEK 2 was, except for some stuff that becomes available at the end. The other two are a lot more freeform, allowing the player to choose the order they do the quests. Or I suppose it's like MARDEK 3, where you can sort of do things in any order, but you have to do certain things before others unlock, so you end up starting and pausing several quests rather than just starting then finishing them in sequence.
It seems like the best way to do it, since it's what a lot of people have mentioned liking about MARDEK, and I enjoyed it myself in my recent playthrough!