Monday 30 October 2017

The Longest Journey Series Retrospective - Part One: The Longest Journey (1999)

This is part one of a multi-part series retrospective on Ragnar Tørnquist's Longest Journey Series, made up of The Longest Journey, Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters.

                                                                                                                 





Some games are a cut above. They're not necessarily the best games ever made and they're not always my favorites, but there's something that sets these games apart from the rest of the gaming mainstream. They elevate themselves beyond their genre trappings to tell stories that get to the heart of the human condition. They have things to say.

Some of these games are shooters, like Spec Ops: The Line, RPG's like Fallout: New Vegas or small Indy throwbacks like Undertale. Most of these games are deliberately written as subversion, taking a familiar genre or setting and twisting it to examine a universal truth. Only a few of these games are created from whole cloth, rather than as reaction, and even fewer maintain their themes across several installments.

I never expected The Longest Journey to join the ranks of these games, and even morose I never expected the entire series, with Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters, to join these ranks either. In fact, the most interesting thing about The Longest Journey series is how each individual installment dosen't stand out on it's own, but experienced together they becomes a powerful story of life and the inevitability of change.

But we'll get there in due time. For now, I'm going to dig in to the first installment, 1999's The Longest Journey.

TLJ is the most traditional of the three games. It was released on the tail end of the golden age of point-and-click, where pixel graphics were beginning to be discarded and 3D was leading to games with more dynamic game-play. TLJ reaped the progress of this era, with graphics that were, for the time, more realistic than the cartoony visuals used in genre classics like the Monkey Island series, and using a refined version of point-and-click mechanics that replaced the big list of 'use on' and 'pick up' with a simple eye, hand and mouth.

The opening hours of the game are notable for two things. First, setting up a baseline normality to better present the more fantastical parts of the plot later. We begin the game as April Ryan, a disillusioned art student who just needs to work on her painting and get paid for her part time job. These little tasks really set the scene, and allow us to get into April's head so that when the plot proper gets going, we understand the stakes and the emotional turmoil she is experiencing.

Second, the game has a good run of avoiding a lot of point-and-click adventure bullshit. A lot of the tasks make sense in a logical way and I found I didn't have to resort to a walkthrough early on like I do with a lot of these kinds of games. That being said, as the plot progresses, the puzzles too begin to get more obtuse. This is heralded with the notorious 'rubber duck puzzle' which is asinine for the sake of being asinine.

In the end, I, and I imagine most people, gave in to a walkthrough at points. Many may not agree, but I feel this is acceptable when the game is so story focused. I'd rather just bypass figuring out some harder puzzles if it means I can get on with the plot.

It's for the best really, as the plot here is TLJ's greatest strength. As the story progresses, and April begins to investigate some shady corporate goings on with the mysterious Vanguard, she discovers she is a 'shifter' who can travel between the worlds of science and magic (described in the game as Stark and Arcadia) that were long ago separated to prevent catastrophe. Legend has it that a guardian must come to watch over The Balance, and April seems to be that prophesied guardian.

The visuals are well designed for this tale. Stark and Arcadia both have a distinct style that sets them apart, and while the blocky character models really do look dated now, the painterly backgrounds still maintain some stunning visuals, especially in places like downtown Venice and the Alchemist's fortress.

Likewise with the strength of the writing. Just like the day-in-the-life opening, once we finally get to city of Marcuria we get to experience the boots-on-the-ground nitty gritty of the place first. We learn about map distribution, dock work and the running of the Journeyman Inn, which would go on to be a well trodden location over the course of the series. While the stakes may involve world ending prophesies, April spends much of the game talking to working class people and dealing with working class problems. This in turn ties in to her character's development.

One of the most notable aspects of the game, I've found, is it's use of what I like to call 'anti-worldbuilding'. Off world colonies, badger people, mutant cybogs, talking trees. TLJ and the series as a whole will often be free to pull out whatever it likes without fear of contradiction because it gives us very little to contradict.

Indeed, world building isn't really necessary, for the only world that matters is April Ryan's world. As the game progresses, and through her dealings with crisis both big and small, April agonizes about her place in the world, the people she loves, and the life she has lived. Should she accept the offer to become the guardian or return home to an art career she found no love in?

Tørnquist makes heavy use of contrasting characters to mirror April's plight, from fellow man-out-of-time Brian Westhouse, to newly liberated talking crow... uh Crow. The game gives no easy answers, presenting both destiny and the decision to screw it as a false binary, and indeed, the game saves it's greatest twist right until the end, emphasizing this point.

As it turns out, April Ryan is not the chosen one. The Balance rejects her, and indeed the true chosen one is revealed to be little more than a secondary character that was being manipulated by other parties. In a bittersweet end, April is left to find her place elsewhere. While she hasn't had to sacrifice her old life, she hasn't been shown a better path either. It's a journey she'll have to take on her own. In life, there is no hand holding.

The game ends with an epilogue of (seemingly) an aged April and Crow telling the tale to a young audience, and hints that there were greater things in her life yet to come. It's a neat and tidy ending, and while it leaves the door open for future installments, there are no hanging plot threads or unanswered questions. If no further installments had followed then it would still have been a great tale.

The Longest Journey isn't a perfect game by any means. The maguffin hunt really drags on into the later chapters and doesn't add a whole lot to the story, and, as mentioned, a lot of the puzzles can be brain explodingly obtuse, but it's a story that is well executed with a wonderful cast of characters and real heart to it.

One of the things that stands out to me is that were The Longest Journey released today it would be denigrated by some portions of the internet as an 'SJW' game. The story is about a strong independent woman and her life, loves and aspirations, with a surprisingly diverse cast. Heck, one of the first characters you speak to is your lesbian landlady.

There's a false narrative that's been created in recent years that games that celebrate diversity, that have female or non-white characters, LGBT, race and gender themes, are only a recent occurrence that has been 'inserted' into the genre artificially. TLJ clearly shows that such a sentiment is complete bunk, but it does to some degree reveal why such a misconception is easy to believe.

When I used to read PC Zone magazine back in the day, The Longest Journey sat on the top ten list of adventure games, side by side with the other top tens. While not what one would call a AAA title, it was viewed as an equal side by side with games like Baldur's Gate, Quake 2 and Age of Empires. This was because, all in all, PC gaming, and gaming in general, was more niche back then, and genres generally had a more equal niche within that niche.

Over time, the mainstreaming of consoles and the popularity of more 'dynamic' titles resulted in games like TLJ being left behind, and the thoughtful, deep writing, in many ways, got left behind with it. It isn't that the fans went anywhere, so much as that the fans of other genres grew exponentially larger. By today's standards TLJ is much more what people would consider 'indy'. Small team, simple game-play, and a focus on pushing boundaries when it comes to writing.

The Longest Journey wouldn't see it's sequel arrive until seven years later, and by then the video game industry's landscape had evolved much since 1999. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey would be a very different game than it's predecessor, but as I'll explain in part two, this would only go on to make the series all the stronger.

                                                 


Jack Harvey 2017. The Longest Journey is (c) Funcom.

Saturday 7 October 2017

Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds!



The day has finally come. (Or days, if you count Monday, Wednesday and Friday) It gives me great pleasure to present to you all my three appearances on the wonderful BatMinute '89 podcast.

For those of you who don't know, the purpose of BatMinute '89 is to take a look at Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman, and spend each episode of the podcast talking about a single minute of the film. I had the honour of being invited to talk about minutes 40 to 42 (That's going from Vikki Vale leaving Wayne Manor to the Joker's coup against Grissom's mob, if you're familiar with the film.)

Niall and Jon do a great job on the podcast, and while it took me a bit to get in to the swing of things, I really enjoyed it, and it was good to get the chance to chat a bit about the fundamentals of Batman as a character in podcast 41.


The three shows are linked below, but the whole series is worth a listen. I look forward to the guy's work in the future and should they decide to cover Batman Returns and beyond, I'd jump at the chance to come back on the show.

Minute 40: ​A Bungling Butler and a Laughing Lounge Lizard

You can also find them on iTunes if that's your jam.

That's all for now Batfans. Stay tuned for more short stories, columns and comics, same Jack Blog, different Jack Post.