Even if it might just be a variation of frequency illusion, I am somehow lucky enough to have been exposed to a lot of movies at the exactly right time in my life, when its themes describe my current situation relatively accurately. While there are examples of this happening to me with a videogames story, they are way fewer and far between, which might just be a consequence of the overall lower writing quality of the medium, as a factor of its still relatively short life.
I have not even been 20 years of age for a month and still feel, like probably most people around my age, lost in the world and unhappy with the situation I’ve currently found myself in. I have started going to university last winter semester, studying something I have little to no desire to pursue professionally, only because I couldn’t have sat around barely doing anything for another year, so you might be able to imagine my reaction after Dreamfall: The Longest Journey made me have this conversation during its opening.
If you’ve ever heard the name Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you have probably also heard about its overall writing quality, which is for the most part deserved. The storyline Ragnar Tørnquist and his talented team managed to weave here is definitely above average for the medium, stringing together themes of being lost in your 20s and some good old anti-imperialism among others, definitely deserves its high praises, although without going into spoilers it did suffer from pacing irregularities at around the halfway point, Kian’s storyline feeling particularly half-baked, leaving you off with a few more unanswered questions at the end, than it should and (this is a gripe) overusing the trope of a character beginning to say something, just to correct themselves halfway through, as to not give away information they shouldn’t a bit too much. The voice acting was also a mixed bag, with some really great performances amongst some that unfortunately felt like they were just reading directly from the script, but it didn’t ever take away from the moments too much.
The gameplay, while not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, felt fairly unique. You can definitely feel the series beginnings as point-and-click adventure games, but in 3D now, which made it feel like it was made during the fifth generation, rather than the sixth (positive), with how it tries to reinvent the genre with a new camera-perspective, even with it obviously not being the first to do so.
I really liked the ability to, after clicking down the left stick, being able to see every interactable object, which even without said ability still were well telegraphed. Behind the story, the old adventure aspects of the game are probably its biggest strong suit. Using and combining items to solve puzzles kept bringing me great joy over its around 12 hour runtime and can be traced back to the fact that the game sometimes allowed multiple solutions for a given problem, greatly improving the ways a player may express themselves. There was only ever one example of a puzzle I found to be unintuitive in chapter five, although I may have just missed a clue considering how good they went about it otherwise.
The game also pulled a classic from the sixth generation by randomly forcing you into very rudimentary stealth and combat encounters. While I found the stealth segments to serve as a fun break of pace most of the time, it still baffles me to think about why the combat system in particular was kept in. While the stealth scenarios, even with- or maybe because- of their low difficulty, made me think differently about the way I would go about the usual puzzle solving affair in the rooms they were featured in, every single fight would go down the exact same way. More specifically switching from regular to strong attacks in perpetuity for around 5-10 seconds, until the enemy is defeated. It also didn’t help expand the regular gameplay loop, as enemies defeated during combat sections, unlike their stealth counterparts, never dropped any objects, thus their existence was merely for spectacle, which (to come back to the beginning) is not a word I would use to describe it due to their completely rudimentary nature.
Keeping all this in mind Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is still highly recommended to anyone looking for a simpler experience in the gameplay department, packed with some great writing, and I for one am definitely excited to experience the rest of the series.
I have not even been 20 years of age for a month and still feel, like probably most people around my age, lost in the world and unhappy with the situation I’ve currently found myself in. I have started going to university last winter semester, studying something I have little to no desire to pursue professionally, only because I couldn’t have sat around barely doing anything for another year, so you might be able to imagine my reaction after Dreamfall: The Longest Journey made me have this conversation during its opening.
If you’ve ever heard the name Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you have probably also heard about its overall writing quality, which is for the most part deserved. The storyline Ragnar Tørnquist and his talented team managed to weave here is definitely above average for the medium, stringing together themes of being lost in your 20s and some good old anti-imperialism among others, definitely deserves its high praises, although without going into spoilers it did suffer from pacing irregularities at around the halfway point, Kian’s storyline feeling particularly half-baked, leaving you off with a few more unanswered questions at the end, than it should and (this is a gripe) overusing the trope of a character beginning to say something, just to correct themselves halfway through, as to not give away information they shouldn’t a bit too much. The voice acting was also a mixed bag, with some really great performances amongst some that unfortunately felt like they were just reading directly from the script, but it didn’t ever take away from the moments too much.
The gameplay, while not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, felt fairly unique. You can definitely feel the series beginnings as point-and-click adventure games, but in 3D now, which made it feel like it was made during the fifth generation, rather than the sixth (positive), with how it tries to reinvent the genre with a new camera-perspective, even with it obviously not being the first to do so.
I really liked the ability to, after clicking down the left stick, being able to see every interactable object, which even without said ability still were well telegraphed. Behind the story, the old adventure aspects of the game are probably its biggest strong suit. Using and combining items to solve puzzles kept bringing me great joy over its around 12 hour runtime and can be traced back to the fact that the game sometimes allowed multiple solutions for a given problem, greatly improving the ways a player may express themselves. There was only ever one example of a puzzle I found to be unintuitive in chapter five, although I may have just missed a clue considering how good they went about it otherwise.
The game also pulled a classic from the sixth generation by randomly forcing you into very rudimentary stealth and combat encounters. While I found the stealth segments to serve as a fun break of pace most of the time, it still baffles me to think about why the combat system in particular was kept in. While the stealth scenarios, even with- or maybe because- of their low difficulty, made me think differently about the way I would go about the usual puzzle solving affair in the rooms they were featured in, every single fight would go down the exact same way. More specifically switching from regular to strong attacks in perpetuity for around 5-10 seconds, until the enemy is defeated. It also didn’t help expand the regular gameplay loop, as enemies defeated during combat sections, unlike their stealth counterparts, never dropped any objects, thus their existence was merely for spectacle, which (to come back to the beginning) is not a word I would use to describe it due to their completely rudimentary nature.
Keeping all this in mind Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is still highly recommended to anyone looking for a simpler experience in the gameplay department, packed with some great writing, and I for one am definitely excited to experience the rest of the series.