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.
