Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
April 24,2006 - How meaningful can a video game be? Can a game touch parts of your soul normally reserved for art, for music, for literature, for love and beauty? It’s not often that a game tells a story worth hearing, and not since The Longest Journey has there been one that has touched us as deeply as Dreamfall. Like with any adventure title, Dreamfall uses the game as a medium for telling a story, with gameplay elements taking a backseat. The bulk of most adventures outside of narrative is the solving of puzzles, which are your obstacles to moving the story forward. Undoubtedly, it would be easy to criticize Dreamfall for watering down the puzzle-solving elements and replacing some of them with stealth and action sequences, but the criticism would be misplaced.

Misplaced, because gamers clamor for the mainstream acceptance of our entertainment as art, and here is the strongest argument since The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, and Syberia that a videogame is as powerful a narrative device as a novel or film. Make no mistake: Dreamfall is amongst the elite, the rare titles that distinguish themselves by drawing the player into powerful worlds that stay with you long after you return to reality. Like the first in the series, Dreamfall spends a lot of time introducing you to its heroine, and we’re better off for it. Zoe is a supremely likeable, personably character with an aimless existence and the nagging feeling that she’s lost herself. And like April Ryan before her, she’s experiencing weird, supernatural occurrences that she can’t quite explain.

You’ll eventually get your explanation, but it isn’t one you’d expect. Unlike most gaming stories, Dreamfall does not lead you down the path of least resistance. It expertly combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and everyday drama that reflect on our own world without ever feeling didactic or overtly political. You’ll hear Zoe say that she doesn’t want “the bad guys” to win, but as the three main story threads intertwine and eventually converge, it’s clear that the bad guys aren’t always so bad, and the good guys aren’t always so good. We watch as the most faithful zealot questions his faith; a sacrifice is made so that an innocent victim can be set free; and kindness turns to weakness when a friend collapses under pressure. These may sound like familiar themes, but they are expertly woven into multiple stories that explode upon uniting, and then separate and simmer.

The only problem with the story is that it is over after only a dozen hours and leaves you wanting far more. Dreamfall does not tie up its loose ends, but unlike other incomplete stories, such as Halo 2 or Half-Life 2, it does not feel unfinished. Clearly, there is more to come, and yes, we were profoundly disappointed; not in the game, but that we had to leave these people and worlds behind. And like a beautiful novel, it benefits from multiple viewings. We can imagine playing Dreamfall again and again, not because it’s going to be different every time, but because it’s like visiting old friends. Comfortable.

The gameplay itself is a valiant effort to do something with the genre rather than simply force the player to travel from one place to another, solving puzzles that make no sense in context. To break free of these conventions, Dreamfall take place in fully 3D environments in which you control your character from a third-person view. You don’t have full zoom capabilities, although you can rotate around your avatar to an extent. This isn’t often a liability, although the camera often gets touchy when you’re maneuvering in tight areas. Within the exploration elements, Dreamfall’s greatest triumph is undoubtedly the focus field, which brings pixel hunting to the realm of 3D, and could easily become a genre standard for the future. Rather than wiggling your mouse around the screen looking for objects with which to interact, you can turn on the focus field, which allows you to peruse your environment from where you stand, easily identifying objects of interest.

There are puzzles of course, but none of them are real brain-teasers, which is both a blessing and a liability. Adventure games are generally full of inventory manipulation and combinations that have little to do with the task at hand. Dreamfall’s puzzles generally involve using one object on another—and normally these objects can be found close by with little need to run around looking for a glimmer on the ground. Other puzzles, like the lock-picking and cell-phone hacking, are more like mini-games that require a little pattern recognition.

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