Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

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.