The Longest Journey

aka: Den lengste reisen, Den längsta resan, TLJ, The Longest Journey: D'un monde à l'autre, The Longest Journey: Najdłuższa Podróż, The Longest Journey: Remastered
Moby ID: 1439
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Description official descriptions

April Ryan is a struggling student artist in the year 2209, recently arrived in the big city of Newport. Lately she has been seeing strange, life-like dreams. Somewhere in the mountains, a mysterious white dragon talks to April, calling her the "mother of the future". When April wakes up, she dismisses the vision as a nightmare. However, an old enigmatic man named Cortez, whom April has spotted near her house before, unexpectedly tells her that she must face the reality in her dreams. Soon April learns that our reality is but one facet of a universe that consists of two parallel worlds: Stark, the world of science and technology, and Arcadia, the world of magic. Though raised in Stark, April possesses the ability of shifting between the two worlds, and must restore the balance in both of them before it is too late.

The Longest Journey is a third-person puzzle-solving adventure game. The player navigates April over pre-rendered backgrounds with fixed camera angles, interacting with people and objects through a simple point-and-click interface. The gameplay follows the traditional template introduced in LucasArts adventures, relying mostly on inventory-based puzzles and multiple-choice dialogues to advance the story. To help keep track of things, the game includes a diary, where April records her thoughts about important events, and a conversation log that records the text of every conversation.

Spellings

  • Бесконечное Путешествие - Russian spelling
  • 無盡的旅程 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

199 People (193 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 212 ratings with 17 reviews)

One of the most original adventure games ever made

The Good
Well, everything: the plot, the music, the atmosphere, the puzzles, the voice acting (at least on the original, Norwegian version which I played) - it's all done so well that its downstraight impossible for me to complain!

The Bad
No complaints, sire!

The Bottom Line
After that you have played the game, you are left with the feeling of wanting more; not becouse of dissatisfaction, but becouse it was such a great adventure it seemed more of an experience then a game - which I wish it was.

This is not a game - but a rare interactive artwork. If you are an adventure gaming as myself: this game is your cup of tea.

"The Longest Journey" has pushed the envelope of adventure gaming further, and is one of those rare and unique games that will leave a lasting impression.

In my book: this is the best adventure game ever made, and I heartly recomend it if you are an adventure gamer looking for a game with splendid plot, excellent atmosphere and top-notch everything.

Windows · by Stargazer (99) · 2003

Nomen est omen

The Good
The biggest boon of The Longest Journey is its world and lore. The story is about two parallel worlds - Stark, the world of science, and Arcadia, the world of chaos - which in itself is not the most original story idea. However, Ragnar Tørnquist obviously spent a lot of time working out every little detail, which makes even the most long-winded exposition dump a delight to hear. I especially like Arcadia, which manages to avoid most usual Tolkien/D&D tropes and offers original races and aspects.

The dialogue writing is only serviceable - they are way too wordy and exposition-heavy - but the characters are still interesting and likeable (at least the ones which are supposed to be). The plot itself is also not especially innovative if you cut out the fluff, but thanks to the lore and characters it always stays fascinating until the surprisingly heart-warming ending. The protagonist April Ryan is not very interesting, but fortunately her excellent voice actor saves the day.

The Bad
The title The Longest Journey is well-chosen: even for 2000 standards, this is a very long adventure game. Unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. There are various endless long animations which have to be endured over and over again. For example, at one time the player needs to read multiple lore books in a library and the librarian takes almost a full minute to retrieve a book from the shelf. Many people speak very slowly and overemphasize every single sentence because they are supposed to be profound.
The game is full of useless screens which are only present to watch April walk through them frequently. Very slowly of course - and this refers to her running speed. This makes the game a chore to play, even when using the escape key to skip many animations (which has to be enabled in the game options and can skip important sequences if not used carefully).

I usually don't talk about graphics in my reviews, but boy is this game ugly. The backgrounds are pretty, but the characters look like they were directly taken from a grotesque horror movie. Especially the rendered cutscenes are bad, with questionable animations and horrible faces - April looks more like The Nameless One than a teenage girl.

The puzzle design is atrocious. I don't think I need to repeat the famous tale of the rubber duck which proudly even beats the cat mustache in infamy. However, this is only the most prominent example; the whole game is full of stupid puzzles. They make no sense, they don't fit the world and their only purpose is to slow down the game even more.

The Bottom Line
I loved The Longest Journey back in the day, I really did. I started my replay with the expectation to write a glowing review for one of my favorite adventures of all times. It is a shame it is held down by bad gameplay and its slowness, because the world, the lore and the characters are among the most interesting in adventure game history. Unfortunately I believe this is a game which is only digestible for people who enjoyed it close to its original release and those should probably not ruin their good memories by playing it again.

Windows · by Patrick Bregger (298879) · 2021

Let me be the party popper here and express my disappointment over "The Longest Journey"

The Good
The heroine is likable enough, if a bit simple, and the story tries to be epic and universal while also lingering on small human moments. Except for the characters, the graphics are great. There's also a lot of game here.

The Bad
The main things for a game of this sort are Story and Puzzles, and they both fail. The puzzles are mostly tedious affairs, almost without that magic moment of insight that a good puzzle's solution gives you. The story is clearly not written by a professional. If it followed other amateurly written adventures by adapting the form of a tongue in cheek game, it wouldn't suffer so much for it, but here the plot tries to achieve much more than the writers' skills allow for. It makes a caricature out of the depth and breadth of emotion that it tries to convey.

The Bottom Line
Most adventurers like this game, so go ahead and give it a whirl. It's large, beautiful and it tries hard. For me, the story was uninvolving and the puzzles just tired.

Windows · by ududy (57) · 2001

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
remake? hvrsd hvrsd (1) Jul 11, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

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

April Ryan

The publisher of The Longest Journey, Egmont Interactive, actually tried to turn April Ryan into a pop icon to match Lara Croft. To that end, they cast a real-life model for April -- 23 years old psychology student Katja Koopmann of Bremen, Germany -- and toured the major magazine and newspaper offices with her, dressed up like April and sputtering lines like “I find April sympathetic” with a somewhat forced smile. Once the PR machine runs, even mediocre game sales can’t stop it. On her way to media star, the virtual April next recorded a song -- a dance remix of the 80’s Depeche Mode tune The Balance -- and Katja lend her voice. Egmont spiced April’s image up with exceptionally stupid PR blurb like “I want everything! Above all, I want to show the people of your world something of the life here!” Generally ignored by the public, the song entered the stores on April 14th ‘00, and stayed there. The corresponding video clip was never played on the music channels, the song didn’t appear in the radio shows, and nobody bought the CD.

Dreamweb

The main character's name is April Ryan, just like Ryan in the game Dreamweb, also published by Empire Interactive Entertainment. And the plots of both games have some things in common (the hero who suffers from nightmares and must save a world he/she didn't even know existed in the first place).

References

  • A reference to the Monkey Island series: April's pet toy is called Constable Guybrush. And yes, it's a monkey.
  • There are lots of references to sci-fi movies and fantasy themes. Most prominent are the references to Brazil, for instance, which takes place on a red tape-clogged insensitive world much like stark. Take a look at the lobby of the Church of Voltec, it's an exact replica of the Information Retrieval building on Brazil. Also the whole repairmen puzzle where they refuse to work on the grounds that it would require a specific form for them to do so is a spoof of the "Central Services" sequence in the movie. They are even dressed in the same way! There are many more, some more subtle than others.
  • Want Star Wars references? check out that strange metal ball on the entrance to The Fringe Café. It says "Death Star" click on it and April will spout famous lines related to it, like "Let's blow this thing and go home!" and she even tries to imitate the voices!

Sales

The Longest Journey was originally made only to be released in Scandinavia, but it then grew with the sales to cover Europe and the U.S. By June of 2001, The Longest Journey had sold 250,000 copies worldwide, 90,000 of which were in America.

Version differences

In order to preserve his foreigner condition, Cortez had his nationality changed from Spanish to French and was renamed "Corthez" in the Spanish version.

Voice acting

  • The character Marcus, who only appears in the first chapter near the Fringe cafè, and only has two lines, was voiced by Ragnar Tørnquist, the director/lead designer of the game for the English release.
  • In the German pre-release demo version, April was voiced by German pop singer T-Seven known from the, at the time, successful Eurodance group Mr. President. In the final game, April was voiced by Stephanie Kindermann.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2000 (Issue #201) - Adventure Game of the Year
  • Gamespy
    • 2000 - Adventure Game of the Year
  • PC Gamer
    • 2000 - Adventure Game of the Year

Information also contributed by -Chris, Agent 5, jeremy strope, Karthik KANE, kelmer, Stargazer and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by andyhat.

iPad, iPhone added by MrMamen.

Additional contributors: n-n, Robin Lionheart, curacao, Jeanne, JRK, Dec Ryan, Kabushi, Stratege, Zeppin, Laverne, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, MrMamen, FatherJack.

Game added May 14, 2000. Last modified March 12, 2024.