Eight! Years!

Eight! Years!
- Crow, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

So I finished my last game before being able to play the PS3 last night. The adventure game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I have a lot of negative things to say about this game, which is unfortunate and misleading since I really liked it, but let's cover a little history about the game first. You know, in case anyone reads this.

So this game, from famed Norwegian game maker Ragnar Tørnquist, is the pseudo sequel to his critically beloved The Longest Journey. The Longest Journey was released in 1999, during the last sort of hey-day of adventure games (my preferred genre). So desperate was I for an adventure game at the time of decline, that I bought a copy of that game from Amazon UK, before it was even clear that the game would get a US release. And it was good. It told the story of twin universes, one the Earth 200 years in the future, dominated by science and would eventually be known by the name Stark, and it's magical twin universe of Arcadia. The protagonist was a young woman named April Ryan who had to help preserve the balance between the two worlds. It was a simple point and click style adventure game, with some very ridiculous puzzles, beautiful bitmap backgrounds, pretty ugly character models, and a story that sucked you in.

Fast forward to 2006. He releases Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, a story centered on another young woman Zoe Castillo, but with help from April and others of the first game, with further perils and adventures in Stark and Arcadia. This is perhaps one of the last good adventure games before the genre died out completely. And it did die. It's gone. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. The adventure tab in Steam has stuff like Prince of Persia, which are action games thank you very much. The adventure genre is dead, outside of the occasional loose kin that crops up, like Heavy Rain.

I have many complaints about Dreamfall. First of all, the control scheme is utter shit. Utter shit. I had to tweak and tweak and tweak the controls to get something I could work with. No excuse for a game from 2006 to have that heavy handed control scheme. Second, stupid gameplay elements were added. Such combat mechanics and stealth mechanics. I'm sorry, those do not belong in an adventure game. They don't. I shouldn't have to try and solve a puzzle while using stealth to dodge trolls or fight off rebels. That's crap. They don't belong there. Plus, they weren't any good. The combat had three controls: block, hit lightly, hit hard. It consisted of dodging out of the way when your enemy attacked and then hitting him in the butt. And the stealth involved holding the Ctrl key to sneak and then timing your hiding behind corners. They weren't fun, they sucked and took me out of the game.

But I really liked the game. Why? I'm going to use a superlative here. And I'm not going to use it just for a point. I'm going to use it because it really is the -est of the situation I have experienced in my life. Without inflation, it is the most.

This game is the most cinematic game I have played in my life. It is as close to a bastard child between game and movie I have ever seen. Ever. EVER. I'm not just talking cutscenes, though there is that. The game is divided into 14 chapters, and the last two chapters you don't even control your character, it's just cutscenes. And it's not a bad thing, because it's all about story progression and resolution. You don't go "man I wish I could take back control of this character", you go "holy crap, what is going to happen next?"

But it goes beyond that. The game is built like a movie. If you have extended dialog with a character, the camera will cut to a different angle, just like a movie. You don't stay with one character the entire time, you play from at least 3 different character perspectives, shifting back and forth over time, so that multiple narratives are interwoven, like in a movie. There is one time where you play each character and get them to arrive at the same spot at the same time for a big climax. Hell, there is one time where you actually play both sides of a conversation between two of the characters. It's like a movie, there are multiple things going and when the story calls for following a different person, you do. Along those lines, the majority of the puzzles fall directly in line with the story. Only a couple are stupid.

And the music. The game is scored like a movie. And I'm not talking just like symphonic background music, though there is that and it's very good. I'm talking when there is a montage when a character is traveling, or when a character is sitting on a bed crying, there will be an actual song, written by an actual person, SUNG by an actual person, that sounds like something you would hear on the radio, playing over it. Just like you would find in a movie. I still wonder if they licensed some Norwegian pop tunes to use or what, cause these don't sound like songs written for a game. They sound like songs someone made that got used.

If you want a game that makes the narrative paramount, this is it.

But that takes me to my final and perhaps major grief. It's only half a game. I don't mean that like KOTOR II (I'm still bitter about it). The best analogy I have is Fellowship of the Ring. While it has its own internal story arc that comes to a resolution, the major point of it is to set up a number of larger and grander and more important story arcs. And it does just that. Then it stops, and you are left without resolution to the larger issues you have come to care about. It is very clear, the game was set up to have a sequel.

Multiple sequels as a matter of fact. I did some digging and it turns out Funcom intended to release the follow up game in episodic format, called Dreamfall Chapters. That was in 2007, it was announced. Then shortly thereafter Funcom ran in to financial troubles and they lost their CFO and the head of the company said that Dreamfall Chapters was being put on the backburner. He said indefinitely, Ragnar says temporarily, but that was about 2 years ago and there has been pretty much no news since then, other than Ragnar occasionally popping up and swearing the game is still planned. Apparently there is a story written and everything, but everyone that worked on Dreamfall, that would work on Dreamfall Chapters, is currently working on another project at the moment, for a game I have never heard of. So hope in this manner is slim. It really seems like they made this game to make another game, and the latter won't see the light of day.

But what do I know? There was 7 freaking years between the first two games, maybe Ragnar isn't the type that gives up. I hope not, there is some good writing, and some really inventive ideas at play here. Plus, Ragnar is really really good at funny side characters. From Theoretically Blind Bob, to reformed evil wizard Roper Klacks, to the sidekick from both games that I consider on par with Mort and Murray as funniest sidekicks, Crow. There were a couple times in Dreamfall that I nearly laughed my ass right off my frame, and most of the time it involved Crow.

So there were are. Last of the list is done. Time to move on to the PS3. I should play Heavy Rain, seeing as I already put a couple hours into it showing my girlfriend, but I think I'm going to Red Dead Redemption it up. I'm a little adventured out and I want to kill some things.

Time to be a bad man.