the longest journey and dreamfall

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey review

Clumsy combat and adventure games just don't mix.

GamesRadar+ Verdict

The engaging storyline

Jack Angel's voice acting as Wonkers

The plausible puzzles

The half-hearted combat

No plot resolution

Waiting for a sequel

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Imagine a majestic bald eagle soaring through the sky, not a care in the world except for where its next furry meat-snack is coming from. Now imagine that same eagle trying to flap its wings with a brick tied to its talons. That's pretty much how we'd sum up Dreamfall: The Longest Journey - a high-flying adventure that's been weighed down with several unnecessary and awkward fighting sequences.

Dreamfall is a sequel to The Longest Journey , a highly regarded PC adventure game from 2000 that was big with the "point-and-click" crowd of adventure purists. To make Dreamfall more accessible, the sequel travels the action/adventure route in this follow-up.

Well, kinda. Heroine Zoe Castillo can wander her fully 3D surroundings freely, but any interactions with the environment - climbing, chatting, picking up items, even walking up stairs - are triggered only when an on-screen icon says you can do so. It's an interesting departure from the traditional, "3D person walking around a 2D background" system that this genre grew up using.

Dreamfall 's adventure roots are also apparent in your character's Focus Field, a mode that puts your attention on a particular object or person in the form of a big blue beam of light. Its use is only required a few times during the entire game, though; you may forget the mode even exists until you get stuck.

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Preaching to the converted.

Videogames can be brash affairs, with their guns and cars and tits and stuff. Pop culture entertainment and big name brands bound together with startling technical wizardry and graphics-as-porn. Forty quid gets you 15 hours of in-your-face fun. Have some of that, you monkeys!

Some games - adventures games if I'm to get to a point - sit outside this world of in-your-face entertainment. Adventure games need to have a confident style, rich character and intelligent storytelling if they're going to make an impact in a world where bigger guns make a game better than the last. And while many fans look back at the good old days of point and click adventure games as a golden era, titles such as Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Bone and Fahrenheit have all delivered enough wit, kookiness and charisma to prove they're just as relevant to this generation as the past. There are not enough developers (or publishers, for that matter) willing to take the risk on this sort of game, but that's a different story.

To its credit, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey pulls off the style and narrative demands of the adventure genre with flair. The story is strong, and it unfolds, twists and develops at a welcome pace. Conversations with the inhabitants of the worlds are meaty but never overwhelming. Ten minutes of chat isn't laborious, but insightful and intriguing. This sequel to the much fawned over PC adventure, confusingly titled The Longest Journey, will be a welcome return for those that succumbed to the charms of the original game six long years ago. With three playable characters and contrasting worlds to explore, Dreamfall has a deep story to sink into.

The move to three dimensions prompts the player to explore, but it's still a shallow affair. You point your character in the right direction and when it's possible to interact with something or someone an icon appears. Adventure games always rely on puzzles, but in Dreamfall there's no real challenging solutions to your dilemmas. There's barely any complexity to a puzzle that asks you to find an item and take it to a specific location. There's an unwelcome amount of handholding throughout Dreamfall, whether from characters practically telling you what to do, or just very obvious game design, making the experience a meander through the game rather than a challenge. And there's scarcely anything more depressing in a modern adventure game than being confronted with yet another lock-picking mini-game. If I could sacrifice one of my little fingers in order to never have to play such a thing ever again, I would.

Elsewhere, the 'action' aspects of the game can only be described as really, really bad. Fighting doesn't happen a lot, but when it does it's a clumsy, unresponsive punch-drunk shuffle with no style, rudimentary animation and piss poor mechanics. "Hey, it's an adventure game, it's not about fighting," I hear you cry. Well then, why the blinkin' flip are these barely-baked sections even in the game? It makes Fahrenheit's feeble use of quicktime moments for brawling seem like Virtua Fighter.

Stealth makes an appearance too, and feels about as welcome as a jackboot at a testicle party. I'm no ninja, but even I know that to creep past unnoticed I should do my best to avoid broken glass. And that's your lot. No wall-hugging, no using the shadows to your advantage, no light meter or strategic use of scenery. Just crouch down and keep out of your enemy's field of vision and you'll be fine. And try to avoid going in to narrow corners as much as possible, because the camera seems to have been designed by someone with a lazy eye.

Some stealth and confrontational situations can be avoided by turning to conversation, and it's good to know you're given the option to try different approaches, but it's worth noting that there's only ever one outcome. Decisions your character makes will rarely change the course of the game.

The presentation of Dreamfall compliments the story well. It's not a great looking game (even the PC version on Ultra settings is a big disappointment), but it's distinctive with a visual style that helps create the convincing alternative worlds. The use of sound is excellent too, from ambient noise to instrumental soundtrack and strong voice work. Conversations are a little choppy, but that's probably due to the sheer amount of speech recorded for the game. Generally, it's this kind of care and attention to detail that enforces developer Funcom's adventure game credentials.

Dreamfall has clearly been designed for those that like to follow an unfolding story, for those that are happy to listen to other people's conversations and immerse themselves in character exposition and plot revelations. We can't berate something for wanting to be an 'interactive experience' when it does it so well. So many games try to be something different and end up flat on their arses that we can say Dreamfall is an adventure game success.

But in many ways it's only preaching to the converted. Characters from the first game return, so if you've not experienced part one you can be a little baffled, or simply oblivious to who they are and what they've done in the past. Even if you have played the first game you might not remember the finer details very well - it has been six years after all. And just like a long running TV series, there's no real conclusion to the story. Be aware that however many hours you put into the game (around the 15 hour mark, by the way), you won't come away feeling satisfied with the outcome. Do we have to wait another six years?

And that's a shame for newcomers, because they're missing out on a story that has been so lovingly crafted. If the stealth and fighting sections are there to tempt those that aren't usually aroused by this sort of game, or to breathe life back into a crusty genre, they've done the worst job possible. And with puzzles that don't tax the brain, it's not really a thinking experience either.

The addition of more traditional 'gamey' elements is a complete failure, and Dreamfall lacks the crossover appeal found in something like Fahrenheit, with its self-contained story. It doesn't do anything new and neither does it go very far in welcoming the curious. If you liked The Longest Journey then you'll be eager to delve back into the story, but even that's hampered by the fact that there's a clear set up for Part Three, so don't expect closure. The best that can be said for Dreamfall is that you can sit down with a copy knowing that there's little to do, but you'll enjoy investigating the story and experiencing an interesting sci-fi fable.

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Buy The Longest Journey

Packages that include this game, buy the longest journey + dreamfall.

Includes 2 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, The Longest Journey

Buy The Longest Journey Bundle BUNDLE (?)

Includes 3 items: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , The Longest Journey , Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut Edition

"The Longest Journey is not only the best adventure games in recent years, it's one of the best games ever" - GamesDomain

About This Game

• Over 150 locations spanning two distinct and detailed worlds
• More than 70 speaking characters
• 40+ hours of gameplay
• 20+ minutes of high-resolution pre-rendered video footage
• Cinematic musical score

System Requirements

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• The Inventory

Why You Should Play The Longest Journey and Dreamfall

With the first episode of Dreamfall Chapters coming out today, now is the perfect time for me to inform you why you should play The Longest Journey and Dreamfall . (Spoiler: it's because they are awesome.)

Related Content

In the time before I discovered JRPGs, point-and-click adventure games were my favorites. From Space Quest and King's Quest to Full Throttle and the Legend of Kyrandia , I spent many a day on my mother's PC (with its revolutionary new “sound card”) going on adventures and solving puzzles. By the time I entered high school, the genre had largely disappeared. It wasn't until shortly after moving to Japan that I—in a bout of homesickness—looked up the old genre. To my surprise, I found that list after list of “must play point-and-click adventure games” had one game I had never heard of at or near the top—despite it not being a Sierra, Lucas Arts, or Westwood classic. That game was 1999's The Longest Journey .

The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey is the story of two worlds, one of technology (Stark—i.e., our world) and one of magic (Arcadia), linked together in an intricate balance. But now, the balance is in danger.

Enter April Ryan, an art student in Stark who has been having fantastical dreams involving dragons and has been seeing more than a few odd occurrences during her waking hours as well. As she tries to figure out if she's just going crazy or not, April is thrown headlong into the world of Arcadia, where she finds the fates of the two worlds rest on her shoulders—whether she wants the responsibility or not.

This setup makes The Longest Journey both a futuristic sci-fi story and a high fantasy tale rolled into one. Locations range from a technological cityscape to a magical underwater metropolis populated by creatures that look like seahorses with wings. Both worlds are quite interesting to explore. They are fleshed out in numerous captivating conversations and observations. In fact, every click you make on a background object elicits a response from April—including one awesome little story about the greatest supermarket advertising campaign ever.

But as interesting as the twin worlds are, the star of the show is April herself. April is just a normal person like you or me. She has no skill with weapons. She's not a hacker. She's not particularly strong, tough, or fit. She's just a struggling artist and nothing more. As such, being thrown headlong into a worlds-spanning adventure is not something she is in any way prepared for. Yet, as she meets more and more people who are depending on her, she does her best to rise to the occasion—even though she really wants nothing more than to run away and return to her boring old life. The way she grows and develops over the course of her journey makes her one of the “realest” characters I have ever come across in gaming.

2006's Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is set ten years after the first. It follows Zoe Castillo, a college dropout trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. But when her longtime friend, a reporter, disappears while investigating a story, Zoe decides to do whatever she can to find him and help him. Of course, then there's the other matter of a Ring -esque little girl appearing on static-filled TV screens who keeps repeating the same mysterious message to Zoe: “Find April Ryan! Save April Ryan!”

The story also occasionally follows an assassin priest of an expanding holy empire in Arcadia named Kian Alvane and, of course, April Ryan herself.

The theme of Dreamfall is faith—the loss of faith and finding faith. Zoe always had faith her life would turn out happily; but with no goals and motivation, her life has fallen completely apart—both professionally and interpersonally. Thus, her quest to find her friend is also one of restoring her faith in herself.

Kian is on the other side of the equation. A religious zealot, he sees the world in terms of his faith and nothing else—though his encounter with a certain individual shakes it to its very core. And as for April, let's just say that the events of The Longest Journey leave her as an individual opposed to the very nature of faith—in both others and herself.

While an enjoyable game, Dreamfall is a step down from The Longest Journey in a few ways—namely aspects of the gameplay. Instead of a point-and-click adventure, Dreamfall is a 3D adventure game. It has a terrible fighting system that is stiff and unwieldy and a stealth system that is rudimentary at best.

Its other big issue is that it is clearly the first half of a two-part story that has been missing its second half. Of course, today, with the release of the first episode of Dreamfall Chapters , this finally changes. Plot threads that have been hanging for eight years now will finally start getting resolved.

All in all, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall build a pair of worlds that are a joy to explore, filled with their own myths, legends, and colorful characters. April and Zoe are likewise a pair of excellently realized leads that make the story as personal as it is epic. If you are a fan of adventure games or fantasy narratives and have somehow never managed to play these two, you should definitely pick them up. And as for Dreamfall Chapters ... well, you'll just have to stay tuned for our impressions of the first episode later this week.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @BiggestinJapan .

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Updated Impressions - The Beginning of the Story

We finally take a look at the spiritual successor to the highly acclaimed The Longest Journey. Exclusive first footage and first developer video interview inside.

By Andrew Park on March 9, 2005 at 2:24PM PST

SAN FRANCISCO--Norwegian studio Funcom created what many adventure game fans consider to be a classic in The Longest Journey back in 2000. But the successor to that acclaimed game won't be the traditional point-and-click adventure game its forebear was. The developer is purposely attempting to make a game that's different from most others on the market. Designer Ragnar Tornquist explained that he finds it difficult to classify Dreamfall: The Longest Journey within any standard game genre and that, frankly, this doesn't bother him one bit. In fact, the designer likens the game--which will combine elements of adventure games, stealth games, and third-person combat--less to a traditional adventure game and more to a page-turning "thriller" novel, especially since the game will emphasize its multilayered story and characters.

While we were shown only a few brief sequences from an early part of the game, we were able to get some idea of what the developer is trying to create. An early part of the game begins with Zoe Castillo, the game's primary protagonist, lying in bed on a sunny day in a futuristic version of the Moroccan city of Casablanca. Sunlight streams through the windows past her watchful father, who, after the death of Zoe's mother, has only his daughter left. There's only one problem: Zoe has, for whatever reason, ended up in a coma. This opening sequence is narrated by Zoe herself, who suggests that the only way she could be communicating with you, the player, might be because she's having an out-of-body experience and who explains that the world is in terrible danger, especially since everyone else who could have helped prevent the impending danger is already dead.

After this cryptic introduction, the game flashes back about two weeks to a time when Zoe was more conscious, but just as confused. Zoe, much like April Ryan from The Longest Journey, begins her adventures as a young adult who isn't really sure what to do with herself. A former student in Casablanca's thriving Capetown University bioengineering program, Zoe recently dropped out of school, broke up with her boyfriend, and now lives with her father in the wealthy and relatively safe town, whose local economy is built on advanced biotechnology and a rather loose interpretation of the law. And even more strange, she has started to see things--most specifically, a black-and-white picture of a small girl who whispers only, "find her, save her," and seems to appear in every TV and computer monitor Zoe looks in. At the beginning of the game, Zoe is convinced that the apparition is the result of either a viral marketing campaign or a dropping signal generated by "static," the effects of solar winds on the worldwide wireless network. As Zoe wakes up, she finds that her mobile phone is ringing--the object will act in the game as a sort of quest log that keeps track of where she needs to go next.

The game will also have a traditional (but minimalist) inventory for items you pick up...and very little else in terms of an interface. Tornquist explained that the game is attempting to be both highly cinematic and more accessible to a wider audience, so as a result, it won't have any huge opaque windows cluttering up the screen. Much of the game's interaction will take place using the "focus field," a narrow beam of light that emits from your character and lets you interact with whatever it falls on, such as an item you can use or a character you can talk to. This interface seems to work quite well with an Xbox controller and may very well be the answer to how to create a good point-and-click interface equivalent on consoles.

Once you've targeted an object, you may then have a choice of ways to interact with your target. These will be shown onscreen, not as big long lines of dialogue to read through and choose from but as brief text cues in a radial menu, which have a text explanation at the bottom of the screen. In a dialogue, it's assumed that your character has said something that corresponds with whichever option you've chosen to move the conversation along.

We watched as Zoe descended the stairs to speak to her father, who makes it clear that he's concerned about his daughter's recent decision to abandon her degree. While this kind of buildup of Zoe's character might seem out of place for a game, Tornquist explained that the game will attempt to flesh out its characters before they're thrown into the action. The designer pointed out that by the end of the early part of the game, players will have met not only Zoe, but also her father, her best friend, and her ex-boyfriend, and they will hopefully understand her motivations better before tossing her into action.

An Even Longer Journey?

"Action" for Zoe includes wandering the sunny streets of Casablanca, where her friend Olivia runs an underground hacker shop (complete with boxed copies of The Longest Journey on the shelves). Apparently, Zoe's good friend loves challenging herself with trying to bypass The Wire, which is, according to the game, what the Internet evolves into in a few centuries--an all-seeing, all-encompassing wireless network to which everything is attached. Olivia has hacked together a cloaking device that shields Zoe's cell phone from The Wire--an ability that will apparently come in very handy later on.

While, in the early level, Zoe is running late for her self-defense class at the gym (about the only thing she does these days besides hanging out at cafes), she gets a call from her ex-boyfriend, an investigative journalist who has a dangerous hobby of looking for behind-the-scenes stories that blow the lid off of big-money corporate scandals. Our heroine gets a job to pick up a package at a company building downtown and meets a secretary who claims that the contact Zoe was scheduled to meet is unavailable--but at that moment, the monitor behind the secretary shows a person who could be the contact, apparently trapped someplace and trying to get out. You can leave the scene, attempt to distract the secretary, or point the secretary to the scene on the monitor. Doing the latter causes the secretary, who has apparently been instructed to keep everything a secret, to leap over her desk and engage Zoe in hand-to-hand combat.

When in combat, the game screen updates to show small bars that indicate each character's remaining health, similar to a traditional fighting game. Zoe knows how to throw some punches, having studied self-defense, but she's no prize fighter, and she can apparently complete all her adventures without throwing a single punch if she instead relies on reasoning with key characters and sneaking past those that won't listen to reason. Tornquist explains that the game's combat is intended to be very physical and very visceral--and in Zoe's case, it may be something you'll want to avoid altogether (though some of the other characters will be much more proficient in battle).

After vanquishing the receptionist, our heroine finds her way to a back room where a mysterious man has just blown the lock on a glass chamber containing the trapped woman. He runs past her and escapes, and it's up to Zoe to save her contact, who is in danger of dying from the noxious gas leaking into her chamber. Unable to open the jammed door, Zoe notices that her contact keeps pointing at the ceiling of her soundproof cell--this is the clue Zoe needs to clamber atop a nearby booth and release a hidden valve that manually opens the cell. As her contact staggers out of what could have been her tomb, Zoe learns that she might be mixed up in something much larger than delivery jobs. This becomes even more apparent when she visits the apartment of her ex-boyfriend. The front door is ajar, and as Zoe enters, she finds that the place has been torn apart with no sign of her former beau, until she finds a corpse lying behind the couch. Suddenly, the TV screen comes to life and again shows the mysterious little girl--then cuts to a live feed of the riot commandos who are scrambling up the stairs to the apartment.

In what Tornquist refers to as a "set piece," Zoe is faced with a scene in which the outcome is more or less fixed. That is, there's no real way for her to escape the highly efficient soldiers and their sonic stun guns, but if she chooses to try to confront them or to openly surrender, she'll simply be apprehended. If she chooses to try to hide nearby, she'll actually be able to overhear bits of information that may come in handy later. Even though the game will have a mostly linear structure in the interests of telling a strong story, it will still have many hidden bits of information and secrets that you'll be able to find by looking carefully and examining your surroundings. Tornquist explained that the game is intended to have a "complex and multilayered story," and he hopes that players will be encouraged to play through the game more than once, since there will be bits and pieces of story, and specific explanations, that players may miss their first time around.

Dreamfall already comes across as a very promising game with beautiful environments and dialogue that seems every bit as snappy as that of The Longest Journey. The new game's added emphasis on story, character development, and personality (through the use of character and facial animations, rather than relying on line after line of pure text dialogue) seems like it will go a long way toward contributing to the game's cinematic look and feel. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is scheduled for release later this year.

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

• Screenshots

• 2006 ( Windows )
• 2006 ( Xbox )
• 2008 ( Xbox 360 )
• Aspyr Media, Inc.
• Micro Application, S.A.
• Empire Interactive Europe Ltd.
• dtp entertainment AG
• Funcom Oslo A/S
• Cenega Poland Sp. z o.o.
• #403 on Xbox
• #1,580 on Windows

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Credits (Windows version)

333 People (317 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

Average score: 77% (based on 73 ratings)

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 94 ratings with 9 reviews)

Excellent story and characters, but short on gameplay

The Good The story. This is really a novel in game form, and everything takes a back seat to the story. The game comes on six CDs, probably because it includes so many lengthy cutscenes. The story is long for a game (as was The Longest Journey), and takes the time to build up properly.

The characters. It's rare to see a game with significant character development, but Dreamfall takes the time to do it. There are a few scenes that could have come across as cheesy, but since we've traveled with the characters and sympathize with them, they work.

The scenery. As in the Myst games, many of the game locations are beautiful, and you just want to wander around and gawk (which you're free to do). The Bad It's too easy. As I said, everything takes a back seat to the story, and this includes the gameplay: there are precious few puzzles, and none of them are very hard. The only time I had to consult a walkthrough, it turned out that I had the right idea, but wasn't doing it in just the way that the game wanted. In some cases, the "game" consists in nothing more than getting a plot point from one cutscene, then walking across town to watch the next cutscene.

Linearity. The story of Dreamfall is told in one particular way, and the player has to follow along. Consequently, there's only one thing to do at any time. As a corollary, if you get stuck on one task, you're stuck. Unlike a game like The Secret of Monkey Island, there's nothing else to work on.

The interface. Unlike The Longest Journey, Dreamfall is a third-person 3-D environment. This means that you can now look around in all directions, but comes with some problems. The camera tries to be smart, and swivels around the main character rather unpredictably. At the same time, movement is camera-relative, not character-relative, so if you have Zoë walk toward you, and the camera swivels to avoid a wall or something, you'll find that she's now walking at a right angle to the way you want her to go.

Combat. Yes, this is an adventure game that includes some combat scenes, and your character can die. But if he or she does, the game gives you a chance to try again. I'm not a big fan of timed sequences in adventure games (where you have a limited amount of time to complete some action), since I prefer puzzles that make me think, rather than test my agility; and the combat sequences in Dreamfall have all of the disadvantages of timed sequences, doubled.

The graphics. Yes, I know I said the scenery is beautiful. But it's also 3-D, which means that everything has to be rendered in real time as textured polygons. If this had been a node-based game, they could have prerendered the scenes in a lot more detail (compare Myst: Uru to, say, Riven to see what I mean).

The voice acting. Most of the actors give decent performances, but a few were just bad (yeah, I'm talking about you, French magic-user!).

The ending. There's going to be a sequel to Dreamfall, and this couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tacked on "To be continued..." at the end. The Bottom Line Well worth playing, IMHO. The story is engaging, and the characters reasonably three-dimensional. The game is long enough to let us know the characters and empathize with them. Just don't expect challenging puzzles, or even a lot of gameplay.

Windows · by arensb (7) · 2006

The story continues, and it's a pretty decent sequel.

The Good April Ryan returns in the sequel to The Longest Journey , along with two new characters to control, Zoë Castillo and Kian. You'll actually be controlling Zoë for about half the game. There's several characters and locations that will be familiar if you played the first game, but a lot has changed in the ten years since the first adventure, the story however is as developed as ever and the gaps will be filled in as you meet old friends and foes, and that's what this game is essentially all about, story, it's a game excuse for telling a reasonably long story, and it's told with a bit of film style directing.

And it's fun, sitting back and relaxing and listening to the conversations and watching the cutscenes is, well, relaxing. There's conversation options, which affect what you say or how you say it, they’ll be a descriptive sentence telling the thoughts of the character you happen to be controlling under each option, which is typically one word, such as a persons name or a reaction. It's not too involving, and everything ends up in the same place, Dreamfall is an extremely linear game, but it adds a flavour of variety.

There's the obligatory spooky girl ala The Ring / F.E.A.R. who visits Zoë via visions and TV screens, she has seemingly infiltrated ‘The Wire’, which is a worldwide network that everything is connected to (undies, toasters etc), the concept is certainly feasible, you'll even be using a mobile phone to keep in contact with friends and family (and hack corporate security systems).

Tapping the right mouse button lights up a blue line of sight beam from your character's toes to the top of the screen which can then be swept left and right highlighting any objects of interactivity or comment-worthiness.

The sets can be large and are usually quite pretty.

There’s combat, a strong attack, a normal attack, and the ability to block. Dreamfall’s combat has received a lot of criticism, or at least some people may be questioning it’s inclusion, and I can see why. I did however enjoy knocking out that secretarial security woman near the beginning of the game, and afterwards was as surprised as Zoë that the whole thing had actually happened! The Bad Although the sets can be large and usually quite pretty they're not very interactive, for example there’s only one pub that you can actually enter in Marcuria, despite their being several other establishments as just scenery with signs and front doors and all the indications of something actually being there, but with no way of interacting with them.

Like in the first game the conversations can drag a little and seem a little ordinary on occasions, though there's a decent story here too - and one that's told from perspectives of several characters (player and npc's alike).

The voice acting for Zoë is very bland with only the slightest hint of occasional emotion, I kid you not, I began to think that maybe it was the script, but other characters, some returning from the first game, do a much better job. The Bottom Line Dreamfall ends on a cliff hanger, it's essentially half a story, and half a story I enjoyed very much, I've had my Sunday roast now I want my crumble and custard and coffee by the fire, and a tale or two to finish the evening off. What I mean to say is that there are very few loose ends tied off, if any, there's going to be a sequel, and I'm looking forward to it.

Make sure you let the credits roll, as there’s a final scene at the end.

Windows · by Jack Lightbeard (2685) · 2006

That’s what happens when you mix ideas of pretty much every great adventure made

The Good The plot is rather good, but while playing the game a perceptive person cannot avoid noticing the similarity between this game and others famous gems. While this doesn’t make the game less enjoyable at first glance, it's rather dull, when you stop and think: haven’t I played this before? Fortunately, as the plot is very straight, you may hang for a while without thinking this too much. The graphics are also very good. It’s clear that they put a lot of effort in them. You probably will stop some times just to look at the surroundings. The cutscenes taking place during the dialogues are entertaining too, even though the facial animations are not as great as the graphics in general or the voice acting, that is terrific. The descriptions you receive from your current character (there are three that you must direct through the game) when looking to something are fantastic, they are the main mechanic that reveals theirs full personality, without any long introductions or such. Making the player take attention to them is a great way to attach the player to the characters, making the plot significantly more interesting. The Bad One major problem is the emptiness you will few when exploring a whole new city. You won’t be able to enter a single place that isn’t direct linked with your next objective. I know that a different approach could be a enormous task, however, I don’t think that would hurt the developers if they added access to at least all the taverns. That would have a good impact in the game, making it appears less hollow, like it does sometimes. Giving the player some options would be fantastic too. Dialogue in this game is pretty useless, as almost every option leads to the same place. In the entire game, there is just a couple of "wrong" answers that are pretty obvious. The linearity of the plot is awkward. In one part of the game you will be controlling one assassin named Kian and you will have to choose if you want to kill your target or not, but even if you want to, you really can't, as your character will refuse to do so. In the last part of the game there is an even worse mandatory action: while watching the cutscenes, your character chooses a to agree with a very bad idea, that if you were taking attention to the plot unfolding, you would know that this action is something risk and probably in vain. Would hurt the developers if they featured some "real" dialogue options? Would hurt them if they created some alternative endings? While these may look like petty matters, there would be a real difference in the game if they were well implemented. Still, due the lack of options (how many adventures released in late 00's, had so much hype?), it's a game that should definitely be played. The Bottom Line I could start this part of my review in a different fashion, however I can’t hope but to let know straight what I think happened when the game was been developed:

-Hey everyone, The Longest Journey was really good, but it didn’t filled our pockets with endless money, so we need a sequel, and it must be a real good one, in order to sell well. Does anybody have an idea?

-I do, sir. Why don’t we put a hot girl as the main protagonist? We could show her in the cover as well.

-But we had a sort of that in the last game, and what about the rating? If we push too far it won’t even be sold in most game stores, you know .But, eureka, we could just show her a bit underdressed sometimes, and in the rest of the time, the gamers imagination should be fulfilled with all kind of suggestive stuff, like “a boyfriend’s bed that bounces”, “the salty seamen”, “the cock and the puss”, "April's rod of Joie covered with scented lubricant" or "Reza's dreams with Zoe, naked, sweating and moaning". Yeah, that’s really good.

-And why not make every character in the game beautiful as well? More is better.

-That’s a good idea, in fact we could put two or three protagonists now. Anachronox did it, and did it well.

-So let’s just recycle that April, from the previous game, we could recycle a bunch of he story as well. Traveling between parallel worlds hasn’t been so cool since Outcast .

-Talking about Outcast , we should be aware of the combat system and it’s length. Back in 1999, Outcast was praised, but some guys hated it because of the huge amount of quests you can do at once and because the difficult combat for some. So let’s do the following: We take the Outcast gameplay, but this game should be linear and the combat very easy if the protagonist are supposed to win in order to advance the story.

-But let’s just add some conversation options, alright? This way the players will not notice that they will end in the same place no matter what they choose to say, and if anybody thinks it’s a bad idea, it is exactly what happens in the Lucas Arts adventures, like Full Throttle or Grim Fandango , no matter what the protagonist says, it will never make you become stuck. And above all, Manny Cavalera turning his head towards important items was quite a help.

-That’s right, but let’s just make a couple of obvious wrong answers in the game, so the critics cannot say the dialogue is useless. Getting rid of difficult puzzles should also be an important matter. If advancing in the plot is easy, I think non-hardcore adventure players may buy the game too.

-Good, that’s just something I think we forgot: Deus Ex . What can we borrow from it? That’s too great to simply ignore.

-I don’t know. Maybe we should just take the French boîte from Nicollet and place some other night club in this game, with the same atmosphere, preferably right before a major twist in the plot. Let’s also replace those UNATCO guys with something like it. I don’t know maybe “The Eye” is a good name. Every game should have a big and mean govern agency or corporation.Why not a core level too?

-This will do. Ok guys, I think we have enough, in fact this is enough to have our hands full, as I don’t think we will be able to release the game on schedule if we implement all these ideas and write an end for it. So let’s start the work, end if we don’t have time for a proper end, let’s just put a cutscene like there will be a sequel or something like this to be released soon. We already flooded the game with cutscenes with that Samara Morgan wannabe.

Well, that’s it. If you read everything until now, you should be aware of how the game is.

Windows · by Open_Sights (466) · 2010

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

1001 Video Games

The Xbox version of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Curiously, four out of the seven *.CAB file archives located on the game CDs (2, 3, 4, and 5) are 666,000 kB large and the total size of all files on the first CD is also very close to that number.

The Azadi culture in the game is based on the real world Persian culture (today's Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan). The word "Azadi" itself is a name of a tower in Tehran, the capital of Iran, which was built in 1971 and has since become the symbol of the city. Ironically, the Persian word azadi means "freedom", which doesn't exactly fit the fanatical nature of the Azadi in the game.

Damien's apartment

The two Chinese characters which can be seen on the background during the cut-scene in Damien's apartment are 平和, which are pronounced heiwa in Japanese and mean "peace".

Dreamfall is an anniversary game for Funcom, as it is the 25th game they developed.

Sexual references

Intentional or otherwise, the two closed taverns that Zoë can see when she is first in Marcuria are "The Cock and the Puss" and "The Salty Seaman", which both have ambiguous sexual undertones.

• There are several references to Funcom's Anarchy Online series in the game. A copy of the Anarchy Online novel is visible in Zoë's apartment, and the music that plays on the first floor of Reza's apartment is also a track from the MMORPG.
• There are various Dreamfall and The Longest Journey boxes throughout the game. Such as in Reza's bathroom shelf, Zoë 's floor near the TV, behind the Merchant at the crossroads, as well as many other places.

Although the game's minimum requirement on the box and "readme" file states that you need a GeForce FX 5700 or a ATi Radeon 9550 display card to run it, the game is playable on older cards such as GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500. In fact, it only uses pixel and vertex shaders version 1.1 not version 2.0 and beyond. However just like every shader model 1.1 powered game it won't work with GeForce 4 MX.

• 2006 – #3 Xbox Game of the Year
• 2006 – #8 PC Game of the Year
• 2006 – PC Adventure Game of the Year
• 2006 – PC Adventure Game of the Year (Gamers' Vote)
• 2006 – Xbox Adventure Game of the Year
• 2006 – Best Music of the Year (PC)
• 2006 – Best Story of the Year (PC)
• Issue 02/2007 – The Most Interactive Movie in 2006

Information also contributed by Karthik KANE , Sciere and Unicorn Lynx .

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Related Sites +

• Dreamfall Hint File Universal Hint System file viewable online or downloadable for use with the UHS Reader. Provides the solutions in question and answer format so you get only as much as you need.
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Official game website (Dutch, French, German and English)
• Jorgen Tharaldsen on Dreamfall Funcom Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen is interviewed by Adventure Europe about the game
• Walkthroughs and Guides GameFAQs files for the Xbox version.

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• MobyGames ID: 22143

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Ten years past the inexplicable technological collapse of 2209, in a renewedly rallying future world, twenty-year-old Zoë must set out for a journey to help a friend expose an ultimate consp... Read all Ten years past the inexplicable technological collapse of 2209, in a renewedly rallying future world, twenty-year-old Zoë must set out for a journey to help a friend expose an ultimate conspiracy that may be connected with the recurring visions she have been seeing lately. Ten years past the inexplicable technological collapse of 2209, in a renewedly rallying future world, twenty-year-old Zoë must set out for a journey to help a friend expose an ultimate conspiracy that may be connected with the recurring visions she have been seeing lately.

• Ragnar Tørnquist
• Ellie Conrad-Leigh
• Sarah Hamilton
• Gavin O'Connor
• 20 User reviews
• 2 nominations

• Zoë Castillo

• Brian Westhouse
• (as Jonathan Dow)

• Olivia DeMarco

• (as Daryl Alan Reed)

• Wonkers the Watilla
• The Chinaman

• Marcus Crozier

• Na'ane

• Helena Chang
• (as Michael FitzGerald)
• Gabriel Castillo
• (as Patrick Fitzsymons)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Crow : So, hey, if we hit April with a really big frying pan, she'll come to her senses, right?

Zoë Castillo : What? No!

Crow : Yes, yes! It's called 'therapy'. I read about it somewhere. Well, not 'read'. More like 'heard'. In a seedy tavern near the docks. After eleven thimbles of Merry Minstrum's Yellow Fire. Just before dawn. On a Monday. But I Remember the fella who told me! Big lad. Arms as thick as oak trees. A stunning collection of scars. Nice eye-patch. A real therapist he was. Or wait... maybe he was 'rapist'...

• Crazy credits Filmed on location in Stark and Arcadia
• Connections Featured in 2006 MTV Video Music Awards (2006)

User reviews 20

• markdigital69
• May 3, 2006
• April 17, 2006 (United States)
• Den lengste reisen: Drømmefall
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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The Longest Journey

• High Quality 16.2 MB
• Low Quality 7.2 MB
• High Quality 9.4 MB
• Low Quality 5 MB

Get ready for the adventure of a lifetime. The Longest Journey is more than a game - it's more like a book, a movie and a game all rolled into one. Explore an interactive and beautifully created universe from the perspective of April Ryan, a young art student who soon discovers that there is more to her world than meets the eye.

With the power to pass between worlds like others pass from waking to sleep, April must embark on the longest journey of her life; a journey not only across twin worlds, but also into her very own heart and soul. Embark on a voyage across phenomenal worlds, encounter a fantastic cast of unforgettable characters, and unravel one of the most epic stories ever told.

Experience what critics around the world are calling one of the best adventure games of all time. Experience The Longest Journey !