The Longest Journey Series Retrospective – Part Three: Dreamfall Chapters (2016)

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

                                                                         

It took seven years for The Longest Journey to see a sequel, and when Dreamfall arrived the gaming landscape had come a long way. It would take another ten years for Dreamfall's follow up to arrive, and when it did the gaming landscape had moved even further.

Where TLJ was a standard point-and-click affair, and Dreamfall a third-person action-adventure, Chapters would instead present itself as a full blown episodic drama, a format popularized by Telltale's The Walking Dead and Dontnod's Life is Strange. The adventure game, long thought dead, had now been resurrected in a new form, and it seems fitting that The Longest Journey would see a revival along with it.

Chapters is in many ways the biggest departure from the series so far. Like the contemporaries that influenced it, game-play is paired down to a bare minimum, with character interaction and dialogue taking on a a greater focus. It would also be the first in the series to give the player binary choices that would impact the plot of the game. One of the neat tricks it does is trigger a message stating 'The Balance Has Shifted' upon an important decision being made. In any other game this would be a simple reminder to the player, but in a series that has constantly framed 'The Balance' as a critical, world shaping power, this gives your decisions real weight.

Dreamfall had finished on a cliffhanger, leaving many plot threads unfinished. I can't imagine what it must have been like, waiting ten years, not knowing if Zoë would even come out of that coma. Indeed, the series was in a precarious position, and it was only the changing landscape of crowdfunding that gave it new life. Tørnquist and new developer Red Thread seem to have been very aware of this, and go to great pains to truly bring together a satisfying conclusion.

Like Dreamfall, Chapters is less of a self contained story and more an installment of a larger series. Going from Dreamfall to Chapters feels natural, and the two clearly compliment each other as part one and part two of the same plot.

The story picks up almost immediately where we left off with Zoë in a coma, Kian imprisoned and April dead. It doesn't take long to get the plot moving however, with Zoë finally awaking and moving to a new city, Europolis, and Kian escaping to an uneasy alliance with the Marcurian rebellion. It also introduces a new character, Saga, who's life we play through gradually, and who's importance does not appear to be immediately apparent.

If you thought the politics would stop with Dreamfall then you'd be very much mistaken. In many ways Chapters itself becomes more overtly political in telling an allegory for the current climate. In Europolis, we see a crisis unfold around the coming election, as the two main parties are represented by a right-wing fascistic bully and a morally compromised centrist, while the far left struggles to make a diffidence due to constant infighting. Kudos to Tørnquist for so succinctly framing the problems that continue to plague western politics.

In Marcuria, the Iraq War allegory mostly gives way to a focus on nationalism and xenophobia. Onor Hilloriss, a minor villain, is clearly a stand in for many right-wing European politicians, and definitely influenced by one from the UK in particular. Through Kian we see more of the Azadi's compromised occupation and how it was intended as a mostly benevolent campaign that was, instead, prolonged and manipulated by the powerful few for their own ends. A clear representation of how many feel about the never-ending War on Terror.

Chapters weaves these stories intrinsically into each other, showing that both Zoë and Kian's struggle to find a place in the world is absolutely tied to mankind's self destructive impulses. The political chaos in Europolis and Marcuria is caused by the exact same longing that the characters suffer from, and sticking with the themes of the earlier games, the only cure is to move forward. The past can never be regained.

And it's these themes that are so wonderfully brought to a head in Chapters in bizarre and wonderful ways. Not only does the game draw back to characters and storylines from the first entry in the series, but it expands the scope even furthers, from The Balance, to The Dreaming, to Storytime itself.

It's fitting, in a way, that each entry in the series has evolved in tandem with the adventure genre. The Longest Journey couldn't have stayed a point-and-click adventure game, it had to evolve with updated technology and changing audience tastes. Just like the characters, you can't stay in the same place forever, you just can't, you have to keep moving. It's how you stay alive.

Thus, over the course of three games, we see old lives put to bed and new ones embraced. Zoë finally finds her place in the world, Kian brings an end to the Azadi occupation and April finally realizes her destiny through reincarnation as Saga, becoming the old lady in the comfy chair that was recalling the tale all the way back in The Longest Journey.

On it's own, Dreamfall Chapters is a fine and inventive episodic drama. As the final entry in the series, it ties everything together to make them all greater than the sum of their parts. The stories and lives we witness are universal, but what's even more wonderful is just how broad the scope is.

This isn't a story about mighty warriors or powerful space marines. It's a story about artists, farmers, mechanics, bar owners and computer programmers. It's a story about the dispossessed, the persecuted and the downtrodden. It's not a power fantasy, it doesn't offer any easy answers, but it's comforting too. It lets the player into the lives of it's characters and shows that we aren't the only ones who struggle to find our place in the world.

This is only reinforced by the diversity of it's characters. Back when I was talking about The Longest Journey I already mentioned that the cast was pretty diverse to begin with, but the decision to put LGBT and POC characters front and center brings it's themes of belonging right to the forefront. A less diverse game would have been unquestionably a weaker one.

Gripes? I have a couple. The change in Kian's voice actor between games is pretty jarring, particularly how he goes from soft spoken in Dreamfall to deep and gravelly in Chapters. His redesign also looks lighter skinned, so take that as you will. The game also struggles to shake it's predecessors obtuse puzzles every now and again, in contrast to it's contemporaries more straightforward solutions. Still, these are all minor, and the freedom to choose the path of the story, and explore Marcuira in full for the very first time, more than makes up for it.

The Longest Journey series was intend to have one more entry, The Longest Journey Home, a sort of interquel set between TLJ and Dreamfall that would have followed April and gone back to the series roots as a classic point-and-click. It was set as a stretch goal for Chapters' funding, but the goal was never met, forcing Tørnquist to put the project on ice. In a way, I'm glad that this happened. I don't think it would be in the series best interest to see a sequel so immediate or nostalgic. I'd much rather see Tørnquist come back to it in another ten years time, when the gaming industry, and the world in general, has once again moved on.

All things considered, Chapters is a worthy conclusion, and elevates the series to that lofty status of high art. The worlds of Arcadia and Stark closely mirror our own, and gently warn of the pitfalls of historic reverence, and encourages us to take hold of our own destiny. I can't recommend the series enough. If you've never played them before, you have to check them out, and if you're a long time fan, they are absolutely worth a revisit.

Jack Harvey 2017. Dreamfall Chapters is (c) Red Thread Games

The Longest Journey Series Retrospective – Part Two: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (2006)

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

                                                                          

The Longest Journey itself was tight and self-contained enough that a sequel wasn't immediately expected. Even so, it's not hard to imagine what an immediate follow up to the game might have looked like. The continuing adventures of April Ryan, exploring more of Arcadia and Stark and foiling the further machinations of the Vanguard. There have been worse proposed point-and-click sequels.

But TLJ didn't get an immediate sequel, instead it's follow up Dreamfall arrived seven years later, and was a departure in both game-play and storytelling. The action in Dreamfall is more immediate, more dynamic, and the writing is both deeper and further reaching. Where TLJ was a mostly well written quest made of familiar fairy tale tropes, Dreamfall seeks to explore bigger ideas.

Once again, it's the writing that's the strength. There's not a lot to really say about the game-play. Dreamfall leaves behind it's predecessor's classic point-and-click presentation to give us a more action-oriented third-person focus. Though there are Tomb Raider inspired climbing sections and the occasional stealth sequence, the game is mostly business as usual in talking to characters and using inventory items to solve puzzles, albeit in a very paired down, more focused way.

Beyond that the most maligned part of Dreamfall was it's combat sequences. These are finicky and just plain bad, but the worst part about them is how unnecessary they are. There are only a handful over the course of the game, and most could have easily unfolded as cut-scenes instead. It's likely that the move to a console market demanded action, action, action, but it's a real shame that this does nothing but blot an otherwise wonderful game.

Indeed, it's not just the combat that is affected by the move to a console release. While the game's graphics hold up quite well, and still look crisp and atmospheric today, the game is cut into tiny pieces and riddled with loading screens due to the limitations of the console generation at the time. This is a problem that also plagued Thief: Deadly Shadows, and both game words feel tight and claustrophobic in the wrong sort of way.

Still, that's not to say Dreamfall doesn't do interesting things with it's new graphical engine. In fact, Dreamfall plays with cinematic convention in a way only video games can. There are two specific occasions where this really shines. First is when the player returns to Newport, no longer rendered as a painterly background but instead as a full 3D map, except due to the engine limitations Newport actually looks worse than in TLJ. It's smaller, tighter and less flashy than when we last visited it, but this actually works in the game's favor since it mirrors Newport's own fall from grace.

As we return to April Ryan's old place of work it's a grim and gray affair, just as how the once bustling Venice is also on it's last legs. Dreamfall uses what it has with it's limited 3D maps to evoke a specific reaction from the player.

It does a similar thing when the player first returns to Marcuria. As we leave the Journeyman Inn, the camera focuses on the the Inn's sign, before pulling back to the same angle that it was framed at during TLJ. While the character is amazed at the new world they have entered, the player mimics their amazement at seeing a familiar place now rendered in more detail.

And indeed, the entire experience of Dreamfall is all about playing with the familiar and the unfamiliar. The game starts with a flashback to to Brian Westhouse, a minor character from the first game, traveling from Tibet through a hole in reality, but before we get a handle on things we are pulled away from Brian's story, and what unfolds in the prologue wouldn't become relevant until the next entry in the series, Dreamfall Chapters.

We are instead introduced to Zoë Castillo, who appears to be somewhat of a replacement for April. She's also a disillusioned student who's struggling to find her place in the world, and just like TLJ, the game starts us with her morning routine to give us a baseline normal before her world is turned on it's head. Like April, Zoë starts to uncover a strange corporate conspiracy that is somehow connected to the magical world of Arcadia. The player is lulled into thinking that this is mostly a remake of TLJ and Zoë is going to be revealed to be another shifter with a role to play in an ancient prophecy.

Instead the game pulls the rug from under us, revealing that Zoë is actually a dreamer, and has a much different role to play. Zoë gets caught up in an international conspiracy that involves the use of dream machines intended for mass surveillance. In a weirdly pertinent twist, Zoë teams up with a corporate whisleblower who wants to leak these surveillance plans to the press. Despite coming out in 2006 the game has strong parallels to the NSA and Wikileaks scandals of the New 10's.

It's not just the Stark portion of the game that gets political either. The Acadia plot seems separate from Zoë's main arc, and instead follows two further characters, April, now a revolutionary leader, and Kian, an assassin sanctioned to kill her.

After the events of TLJ, the Vanguard's forces occupying Marcuria are deposed by a technologically and socially superior nation that decides to leave a military presence to impose it's own values of society and religion on the reluctant Marcuirans. This in turn leads to a rebellion that isn't above the use of terror tactics.

In case you haven't noticed, this mirrors the unfolding of post-invasion Iraq, with Kian and the Azadi standing in for the Western coalition and April and the resistance standing in for the insurgents. I'm astounded that Funcom and Tørnquist had the balls to frame the west as the bad guys and the insurgents the sympathetic characters, but it does seem that the subtext was lost on most people.

While the game does frame the Azadi occupation as immoral, through Kian's eyes we see that it was done with the best of intentions, and most Azadi leadership just wonder why the Marcurians can't get with the program and civilize themselves. The Acradian plot would be explored in more depth as Dreamfall Chapters rolled around, but it's seeds are planted in the most wonderful ways here.

The game ends with Zoë's plot mostly wrapped up with the discovery that a sister, Faith, unknown to her, was a critical part of the dream machine's development, and her vengeful soul haunts the data-sphere, threatening to end everything. Zoë sacrifices herself to lay Faith's soul to rest, and ends up trapped in a coma. On the Marcuria side, Kian, doubting his loyalties, unintentionally triggers a sting operation against April, which results in her death and his imprisonment. All things considered, the story ends on a grim note, and a final cliffhanger hinting more to come.

Unlike The Longest Journey, Dreamfall is undoubtedly part one of a multi-part story, with clear intentions of a continuation further down the line. This makes it difficult to judge on it's own merits, and had Dreamfall never seen a sequel it would be safe to judge the game poorly on it's decision to stretch out the plot over multiple games. That being said, Tørnquist and his team have to be commended for their decision to expand the story and take it to strange new places like The Dreaming.

Indeed, Dreamfall is a wonderful example of playing with audience expectations, forcing players to second guess where they think the story is going. Zoë is not April 2.0, but the step-by-step realization of this is part of what makes the plot so joyful. The Azadi are not the expected evil occupiers we originally assume them to be, and setting right what once went wrong is not shown to be as easy as fighting an end boss or defeating a horde of enemies like most games suggest it would be.

Though Dreamfall's story ends with many threads still hanging, it's an ambitious and lofty project, with aspirations that go far beyond the standard affair of action-adventure games. It wants to explore big ideas, both political and metaphysical, and it wants to build on the foundations of the adventure genre while both taking it in new directions that the advancing technology and graphics would allow.

For a sequel to a fine 1999 point-and-click adventure game, it far exceed what anyone would expect, and as we'll find out next time, it's follow up would be great launching point to take the genre even further.

                                                              

Jack Harvey 2017. Dreamfall is (c) Funcom