Cerise Magazine

By Teresa Lee

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Empire Interactive, Windows , 2006

Does Ragnar Tornquist think he’s George Lucas? Because Dreamfall would appear to be the equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back in what will be The Longest Journey series, which has at least one more installment on the horizon, as well as an MMORPG spinoff. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you go in expecting a happy ending, or any resolution, you will be disappointed. I’d have to call this game The Longest Trailer; It has a powerful story, but it can’t stand on its own without the first game or promise of a sequel. If you haven’t played the first game, you really should before you even think about picking up this one. Dreamfall assumes you know what happened in The Longest Journey, and as much character development as there is in this game, you won’t care or understand any of it unless you’ve had prior experiences in this world.

Storyline

The Longest Journey actually took place in two parallel worlds: the rational, science-based world of Stark, and Arcadia, a world where magic is real. Both worlds are held in balance with each other by The Guardian. However, when The Guardian disappeared, it was up to April Ryan, a young art student with the ability to move between the two worlds, to set things right. Instead of violence, April used her curiosity, intelligence and wit to solve problems, and like many players, I identified strongly with her and couldn’t wait for a sequel.

Dreamfall takes place several years after the events of The Longest Journey. After April left Stark for Arcadia, all the technology in Stark failed in an event known as The Collapse. A worldwide communication network known as The Wire was established, and organizations The Eye and The Syndicate ensure that The Wire does not fail and another Collapse is less likely to happen. However, there is an increasing interference by something known as The Static, and chaos may be threatening the worlds once again.

Characters

As a sequel, Dreamfall mostly delivers. April Ryan is back, but you spend half the game anticipating meeting her before you are actually given control of her. Most of the game, however, is spent in control of the new protagonist, Zoe Castillo, who is looking for her boyfriend Reza who disappeared while investigating The Static. Zoe is a lovely and psychologically deep woman, but she lacks April’s personal ambition and self-confidence, leading you with a feeling of “But you’re not April…”. When you do get to be April, it is only for a fleeting moment and she doesn’t feel like April anymore. It may look like April Ryan, but the character only appears for big fights so she feels more like a space marine than a young art student. I understand that she’s different now and feeling disillusioned after sacrificing her personal ambitions during the first game, but there’s very little for her to do in Dreamfall and she has none of the depth she built up throughout The Longest Journey.

Zoe’s character design is disappointing from a feminist standpoint. She is a well-written character, but when we first meet her she is in her underwear, and several of her outfits are clearly designed to be provocative rather than practical, even though she is ostensibly an action hero. I should note that April also first appeared in her underwear, but her clothing was slightly modest, she was actually dreaming at the time, and she made a snarky comment about it being “inappropriate”. Zoe’s lack of clothing, however, is presented much more like fanservice, and it undermines the heroic things she accomplishes during the game. It is cool that she is trying to rescue her boyfriend, but in the end it feels hollow and disappointing because this goal ultimately changes and Zoe falls in love with somebody else during the course of the game. This could have worked, but it reeks of male sexual fantasy, since the actual relationship between the two isn’t properly developed. Just because you help a girl break into a computer system and then let her spend the night doesn’t mean she’ll instantly fall in love with you, guys. Geez.

Characters

It also feels wrong that Zoe, being a rich, bored child of privilege, has kickboxing skills. At first you have a choice of fighting or finding nonviolent solutions to your problems, but the choice quickly dissolves into a lot of action game combat. I felt very clever breaking into a hotel and tricking the flunky guard rather than brawling with him, but later in the game you are forced to resolve situations by fighting, which may well offend fans of the first game which was completely nonviolent. It is an interesting departure from adventure game genre conventions, but I’m not sure it was a good one, because the combat system is rather complex compared to the point-and-click controls of traditional adventure games and it is difficult to control using a keyboard. The combat parts of the game are probably more fun in the Xbox version.

The most disappointing part of Dreamfall to me was that the gameplay actually detracted from the story and characterization. You get four controllable player characters, but Zoe is the only one you really get to know and you are expected to know April already. Brian Westhouse, a man from Stark who fell into Arcadia long before April did, seems to be an important character, but in both games the player spends too little time with him to understand him, so his inclusion in Dreamfall seems pointless. Another playable character is Kian, a moody soldier from Arcadia, but he also never develops into a real character. While an important plot development involves him questioning where his loyalties lie, not even this can flesh him out and he remains cardboard throughout.

Where this game is most successful is in environmental immersion. The environment art and particle effects are the best I’ve ever seen in an adventure game and are comparable to what you usually only see in shooters. It’s about time. The use of sound to immerse the player and add tension is incredibly successful, and even though the soundtrack contains some dreadful 80s-style pop songs, these are used appropriately to establish the feel of bland, kitsch environments.

Overall

Dreamfall could have been a great game, but instead it’s a flawed gem that builds expectations higher and higher before ending with an anti-climax and many unanswered questions. This game would seem to be evidence that the adventure genre is evolving by merging with other game genres, but the mandatory combat may alienate an audience who traditionally avoid action. In fact, on the Dreamfall forums I noticed several threads where fans were requesting a saved game file to get past a particularly difficult bit of combat, since the fighting was their least favorite part of the game. I myself was driven to go to the forums to make sure I was doing the right thing to solve the puzzles, because the frequent, mandatory combat makes figuring out the solution on your own simply too annoying to be worth it. Shouldn’t it be a rule of game design not to have monsters attacking you when you are doing something you have to think about? Otherwise, the visual clues to the puzzle need to be much stronger and easier to read than a cryptic code of symbols and faint, easily-missed ambient sounds we are given. And that’s the biggest problem with Dreamfall; There is not enough action for shooter fans but too much for adventure fans.
Parts of this game made me nostalgic for The Longest Journey, and parts of it made me want to throw the CDs against the wall. Why was “The Longest Journey” part of the title on the box when this game isn’t half as long as the first one? The Longest Journey took me three weeks to beat even with a walkthrough, while Dreamfall took barely three days. Yet I was emotionally engaged for the entire three days and I’m now ravenously waiting for sequels again. All I have to say is, there had better be another game that wraps up all the cliffhangers and loose ends left hanging at the end of Dreamfall, and that April had better not really be dead.

Article © February 2008 by Teresa Lee.