Andrew Tepper, the developer of A Tale In The Desert, recently sat down with Ophelea of Stratics Central to discuss the next incarnation of ATITD:

Are you building ATITD2 or ATITD1.5? Andrew Tepper: It's more of a 2.0. It's certainly not a whole new game. There is an end game for the First Telling (which I can't talk about yet). We'll go from end game in 1 to something new in the other. One thing I've told the players, for those who have a meaningful role in the end game - defined rather as you've passed 3 or more tests in any one discipline - I think this will be the best game experience you've ever had. I had all the Game Masters to Pittsburg two months ago and said "now tell me was I overdoing it when I said that" and everyone in the room said no. Most of the content from Tale 1 will be there. Lots of other stuff, we've made all kinds of changes to the graphics so that terrain in the distance is very detailed now. We've created a whole vegetation system where plants are parametrically generated so they move in the breeze and you pick up the springiness of the grass. It's kind of a 2.0. Everything resets and everyone will be on equal footing to start with.

From the beginning, ATITD planned to have orderly closings to game periods.  Although chapter one has gone a little longer than originally expected, the end of that period and the impending new chapter are part of the natural progression. 

Some screens from ATITD2 have also been added:

The entire interview (which covers a wide range of topics) can be read here.  Follow this link for the official website of A Tale In The Desert.