I noticed that Dreamfall was released today. I also noticed that it has very high review scores, and plenty of reviews praising it.

I do not understand why this is. My experience with the game seems to have been entirely different from other peoples'. If you'll look through the reviews section, you'll probably find mine somewhere around page 4, explaining in detail what I thought and felt about the game. For those who cannot or do not wish to look for it, I felt the whole game was not well executed, not well-written, and not very much fun.

I'd discount the issue as a matter of taste, but I've seen this before, with the Atlantis games and with a few other Good Oldies on this site which I recall were really not very good. Dreamfall doesn't even really get the benefit of nostalgia value; it was released relatively recently in 2006, a year in which many other, more popular games came out, and has been far from inaccessible in the years since. In a charitable mood, I might give it 3 stars, but clearly there must be many people who are giving it top marks for it to be rated as it is. Why?

What makes Dreamfall (according to popular opinion) a good game?

You'll get no argument from me that it's a bad game. The gameplay is truly, truly not well designed on a number of fronts. Even the things that might have been good additions had they been better executed, like combat and stealth systems, ended up facepalmingly bad.

The writing, though, I will defend. It reminds me of some of the better seasons of Joss Whedon TV shows. (Ever watched any of them? I wonder if you feel they are also poor writing. Which, looked at from certain points of view, they are.)

If I could simply watch Dreamfall instead of play it, that would pretty much be the ideal. Maybe still give me the ultimately-meaningless-dialogue-choices, but that's about it.

This is going to be very preliminary but - take it for what it's worth.
Since wpegg's not around to bitch - I'll take the liberty of numbering my reasons.

1. The immersiveness
Call me an uncultured savage stuck in gaming Middle Ages (actually - don't), but when I stepped out into the snowy Marcurian streets, I couldn't help but marvel at the grandeur of it. People walking, the guards keeping a watchful eye over the occupied region... I took my time, panned the camera around, taking it all in.

2. The different paragidms
Three characters, operating within wildly different paragidms, troubled by completely different thoughts... all facing the same reality (to a degree), their paths intertwined... The "obviousness" switching in a blitz was something I found intoxication, irresistable. One moment you are trying to figure out WTF is going on, as Zoe, dazzled by the wonders around you... the next you're trying to overcome the harsh reality around you as April, plotting your next moves while people's lives rest upon your shoulders...


3. The thrills of discovery
Both exploring the places you encounter for the first time and revisiting the ones you remember from the prequel are incredibly exciting. Meeting the people, sneaking through dangerous passageways (both ancient and futuristic !), learning that there is an entirely new layer of depth beyond that which by now is "obvious" to April. I'm going to be controversial here and say that it's as intellectually satisfying an watching the second and third Matrix movies was to me as a future philosopher. Once shocking revelations become obvious hidden truths, it is all the more alarming to find out that what you knew was merely the tip of the iceberg.

4. The audio
Voice acting is something notoriously done poorly in games... yet (if memory serves right) it was brilliantly performed in Dreamfall. On top of that - the music or ambient sounds are always there to paint the atmosphere... The sound effects, of course, are fitting as well. The end result is so powerful that parts of the game gave my roommate nightmares... though she never was a particularly brave soul ;P.

5. The humor
The worlds are believable but not necessarily serious. The character interaction dynamic itself can be hilarious...

6. The plot
It's NOT predictable. As you desperately cling to learned truths, entirely new perspectives emerge, shoving facts, characters and agendas down your throat. Once you accept that even more mysteries lie onwards, the truth becomes your Holy Grail, so woefully out of reach yet beckoning and taunting you with the occasional minor discoveries.

7. The interface
I initially thought you cannot make a good adventure game in 3D. Boy, was I wrong... Being able to "scan" for hotspots means there's no more pixel hunt and interacting with objects becomes a breeze. All it takes is 5-15 minutes of getting used to it and it becomes... natural.

8. The emotional impact
I'll be honest - I'm an incredibly emotional guy and this is likely the best reason why I enjoyed Dreamfall thoroughly. The emotional roller-coaster it took me on was rivalled only by what I felt throughout the Max Payne series. Taking my few final steps within the game, I sobbed and I shivered. The surge of emotions and thoughts it gave me lasted several hours, as I paced through my room, slowly getting it out of my system. A masterpiece of a game. One of the best I have ever played.

I guess I might as well post this as a review ;P.

I don't worship Whedon as a god. I haven't made an extensive study of his work (haven't watched all of Buffy, for instance), but from what I can tell he's got his good seasons and bad seasons, like many other mortals. Something I have noticed is that he tends to play favorites; especially popular characters tend to linger on even after the plot doesn't particularly need them anymore, even if it would make more sense for them to die or leave the show. That annoys me to no end, especially when it applies to villains or former villains. Also, killing off well-liked characters (but never the really important ones) in order to get the audience's attention is something you can only get away with once: the impact is far less if the audience is expecting it.

But that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand. To be fair, I don't think the writing in Dreamfall is out-and-out bad. It's just less coherent than TLJ, and, more importantly, the narrative isn't woven into the gameplay in such a way as to make them mutually supportive. Feeling sentimental, are we? Out of curiousity, could you name five other games that have affected you in the same way? Could you name five games that didn't pull at you emotionally at all?

Hey - we're on GOG. IMO - people should do this more often ^^". It's never the "same" way ;). But I'll try to sift through my memories for something similar...
Here's what comes to mind (avoiding spoilers like the plague, of course):
1* Max Payne 2, especially the non-Max levels... and the endings.
2* Starcraft 1 - the "my God, what have I done D: !?" feeling is amazing... and I was, somehow, spared the "obvious" spoiler, which earned me the privilege of being shocked at the big reveal...
3* Fallout 1 - I've played the "raw" GOG version and missed one obvious safeguard near the very end. Now - such a thing could upset a perfectionist but the end result was that all my friends were dead as I strode onwards, into the heart of darkness, suffering unspeakable pain, hallucinating most gruesome and disturbing image and repeatedly piercing my veins with the sweet ambrosia of Stimpack to soothe my body and mind just a few more seconds...
As I watched the outro, it fit perfectly - the broken shell of a man returning to the vault...
4* Toonstruck - some time ago there was an article on RPS about it and beneath that article were, obviously, people saying how it's the first time they've heard of this game. One of the commenters mentioned how the box depicted a demented-looking clown shoving a pin into a bunny's eye and how that explains why his grade-school self wasn't particularly inclined to investigate further. Which shunted ME all the way back to the memory of MY grade-school self seeing the box and deciding I HAVE TO own whatever it contains. Make of this what you will :D.
The game is an amazing mish-mash of imagery, from the most innocent to somewhat disturbing and adult. (Un)fortunately - partially because I got stuck and partially because my linguistic skills were not up to par at the tender age of 9 (keep in mind: I'm from Poland) - I experienced it to the fullest (a few) years later. Devious and delicious.
5* I think I've already ran out of titles that made the impression of roughly the same magnitude as Dreamfall and the four titles above but I'd like to mention "Warhammer 40k: Space Marine" and "Blur". The former for allowing me to be a complete zealot and the latter for being one of VERY few racing games I actually enjoyed. 1* Syberia - let me copy-paste the review for your convenience:
Retired Miss Southern Carolina at a trivia contest

Theodicy, attempting to explain why God created a world not devoid of evil, usually states that the world is only perfect as a whole.
Leibniz elaborated on this perfection, by stating that it is the biggest possible variety in the smallest space possible. Because of this - I highly doubt he would have enjoyed Syberia.
I approached the game with high expectations, but also a lot of enthusiasm (which, as we know, helps leniency). Being the inquisitive and thorough gamer that I am, I scoured every location for exits and items and double-checked every dialogue option on every character. To my amazement - I discovered that the game features LOTS of VERY distinct items I can't use, pick up of look at, characters with one (or LESS) line vocabulary and locations that serve NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER, being merely eye-candy. We all know the sad consequences of such a focus - the game is from 2002, so my titular analogy (self-explanatory, I hope) just gets more and more true as the time goes by.
The story really doesn't help, because most of the "why" questions you might ask can only be answered with either "Why not ?" and "Because he/they can". The characters are bland, shallow and can easily be viewed as mere tools in overcoming obstacles. You don't care about their lives, because they are pitiful, insipid and most of all - unresourceful. They're either hopelessly stuck or in a downward spiral. Oh - and they're lifeless and unimaginative (both as people and as characters). The best proof is that the most lively, driven and witty person you meet is an elderly ex-singer. I kid you not.
Also - don't hope for any optional content you can miss. Other than the things required to advance the storyline, the game has basically nothing to offer.
Along the way, our heroine is also bound to receive a few phone calls from work as well as from friends and family. This gives us an exciting opportunity to learn about her personal and proffesional life, right ? Character development and all that good jazz ? As scary as this might sound - those are the most painful in-game moments I have experienced. Our call list boils down to four people.
* The boss is more and more pissed off at our inability to get the job done. Our quirky vacation/adventure isn't exactly his preferred modus operandi and he doesn't hesitate to point it out.
* The mother has the voice of a stereotypical mother-in-law and, believe it or not, she's even more annoying. You're flooded with her monologue dealing with unremarkable nonsense and, to top it all, details of her elderly erotical life. This just screams TMI...
* The boyfriend is a self-centered, boring jerk with a huge sense of entitlement, cartoon-like jealousy and extremely weak idea of loyalty. He has the personality of a grown-up jock in a suit.
* The "friend" is an airheaded ditz our character knows from work. Her hobbies include shopping, clothes and men. No, I'm not making this up, nor am I embellishing the truth.
This leaves us with one person to describe - the main character. What we learn about her, we do from her interactions with the outside world and the people she knows (there's little to no mental monologue we all know and love).
The latter certainly doesn't impress - take a look at the list above and imagine her life before the events in the game begin. What's even worse is that her reactions to the phone calls are, albeit in a very courteous way, variations on "I don't give a ***" and "F*** off", making you wonder whether it was the last straw or has she been dealing with this stuff that way for a while now.
The former (seeing her interact with the world) can be irritating at times - at one point, for example, she refuses to pick an object up because it has been lying in a crystal-clear river for some time, making it "dirty and wet". If you think the solution would be to make it clean and dry - think again. We simply pick it up with SOMEONE ELSE'S HANDS. A few moments later remarking that we feel a lot like an adventurer. Back in the day, adventure game heroes asked for help when there was NO WAY to overcome the obstacles they were facing...
That leaves us with the gameplay itself, the deep core of adventure games - the puzzles you come across. Unfortunately, they're clockwork-like predictable. You see a thing missing, you find it, place it back - done. What's worse is that you usually don't get much indication as to WHAT exactly you are supposed to do, and more importantly - a partial success will give you the same response as a total failure. Call it nitpicking, but I think you should rather get an encouriging response, telling you that while you're not there YET, you're pretty darn close, so you should keep trying.
If either the characters, the plot or the gameplay were interesting enough to keep entertained, I would've rated Syberia a 4 and said it was good, but not the greatest. The hellish mixture where everything is surprisingly average yields a score of 3, for an average adventure game.



2* - 5* Can't think of them right now (4:13 AM @_@). If it comes to me later on, I won't hesitate to post again ;P.

As I suspected might happen, I didn't feel particularly gripped by any of the games you mentioned (never even played Starcraft or Toonstruck). They were fun an entertaining, but I don't think I'll remember them decades from now as powerfully emotional experiences. There's only a few short moments in a few games that had that kind of effect on me.

* Andrew Ryan's last speech in Bioshock. Would have been great if the game ended right there, on that high note.
* That bit in Bastion where you choose between a fallen character who was ostensibly your enemy and a powerful weapon. No matter how many times I played through that section, I could never make myself choose the weapon.
* Dragon Age actually had a much larger-than-average number of pulling bits, but I was especially touched by how people reacted to my heroic martyrdom. Actually, now I think about it, I had strong reactions to the characters in most of Bioware's RPGs...
* Geneforge, a game I played just recently, was very powerfully written, and moreso because all the little written bits were things you had to look for and would miss entirely if you weren't diligent about exploring or skimmed over text without reading. Basically, it was a great example of world-building. The story itself wasn't so interesting, and neither were the characters, but the setting that enabled it all was fascinating.
* Grim Fandango. All of it. Now that was a game with PERSONALITY. Yeah, it kind of does. It's one of those stories that's most fun if you just sort of ride along with it and don't question any of the strange things that you see or do. Amerzone (by the same crew) expresses this even more strongly.

I have to agree with Prator. The controls do need a bit to get used to. They are primarily designed for gamepads and if you use one of them, they work fine.

Dreamfall is a truly wonderful game with a superb plot, superb acting and great writing.

I really liked Dreamfall, because it has great story and great characters, but it's a flawed gem. It's prequel The Longest Journey however is one of the best adventure games I have ever played.

Flaws of Dreamfall:

- Too little April Ryan. While Zoë was interesting character she isn't April, who is my favourite protagonist and who I really learned to like during the first game of the series. That Kian fellow didn't make any impression to me, not good or bad.

- Puzzles or rather lack of them. There are several areas where you just have to walk around and talk to someone, no puzzles at all. And in general puzzles are too easy, except that completely unfair music puzzle which didn't give any hints to one way or another and which I solved after long period of random fiddling.

-Story ends without reaching it's conclusion and there's no sequel. Naturally I really wish that one day they will finish the story.

- Bad controls. I really hate keyboard controls in adventure games, although I can live with those, but point'n'click is my preferred control method.

Besides those complains it's a great game with good story, characters and interesting world, but sometimes it just feels more like an interactive movie than game.

I hear a lot of people saying this(or something similar), but the way I see it Dreamfall is the story of the little girl and even though it doesn't start that way, you get the beginning, middle and end of that story...

... of course that doesn't really help everybody that wanted to see the end of April's story(especially with those cliffhangers), or even a closure for Zoey's story(although the way the game ends might be the end of that story).

I liked Dreamfall for a lot of reasons, I liked the setting(technically the same as TLJ, but Stark just came alive to me in a "this could happen" sort of way), i liked the characters and how they are not heroes(or zealots) and strugle with what they find the world(like in TLJ), which in turn gave the world greater verisimilitude, and also how the story connects them without being to linear(the game itself is very linear though) or obvious and how it was able to have an emotional impact. Ultimately I think Dreamfall suffers from being a 2nd Act (especially one still without It's 3rd Act) and of course from some of It's gameplay aspects:

- I actually liked the use of 3d.
- The puzzles were okay(they weren't very hard but the puzzles are not my favorite things on TLJ --- the rubber duck anyone?).
- The voice acting.
- The fighting could've been an interesting addition but it feels out of place and doesn't really work.
- And then there is: I completely agree although I really liked the 3rd person camera and I don't see how that would work with point'n'click. I'm thinking of replaying the game with a 360 controller and see how that works.

It does indeed tell the story of that little girl, but it also starts a bigger story and leaves open the destiny of all major characters. I have read from somewhere that it was supposed to be start of a duology and middle part of trilogy and that they were planning episodic sequel. But AFAIK the project is on hold.

And while I agree with you that the story was great as it is, naturally I would love to learn what happens next and what is the fate of Stark and Arcadia.

Last night I watched TotalBiscuit stream the beta of a new MMORPG "The Secret World" which is directed by Ragnar Tørnquist, the creator of TLJ and Dreamfall.

While beta is beta, it seemed to me that those games actually same strengths and weaknesses.

All three games are weak purely game-mechanics-wise. TLJ is a point-and-click, and in the form it is in it misses opportunities and stands in the way of storytelling and action flow. Hell, even most of the puzzles are kind of weak when compared to pn'c games of that era! (and it pains me to admit it, because I love TLJ very much). Dreamfall has clunky controls and unneccessary action/stealth sequences that could have been done much better. The combat in TSW seems very MMO-generic ian frankly not so great.

All three games have uneven voice acting and scripts. While TLJ suffers least from this there are some awkward moments, and from what I've seen of TSW sometimes genius is mixed with average and below.

All three games have some gimmicks that really help and improve the games reception. In TLJ it's the concept of two worlds, and an epic scope with a surprising ending. In Dreamfall the multiple heroes and interesting directions known heroes are taken stand out. The Raven in both games is excellent. The puzzle missions in TSW are like nothing I've seen an MMO do, and the level-less, class-less (or with optional classes if you prefer) advancement system is intrigueing.

All three games are brilliant when it comes to aesthetics. The locations are spacious, expressive and convey the desired mood brilliantly.

All three games seem to have very vivid, lively, and believalble characters one cares about! Maybe TSW not so much, but we haven't seen much of it yet. The NPCs I did see do seem interesting enough though!

And finally - all three capture the atmosphere, they have a sense of magick around them that makes you find out more about the world and leaves ou feeling like there's so much more you haven't seen. Ragnar is a brilliant setting-teller as much as story-teller in that his creations are so compelling you find familliar along with the bizzare and original in such proportions, that nothing seems generic, even when it's a clear homage! And for those who get that feeling about the world the game mechanics will not matter that much - you still want to see what more there is to see of the story, world and people.

So if you asked me what makes Dreamfall likeable, see above :-) Brilliant location, continuation of a story I care about (taken in a direction that doesn't kill the setting) and interesting characters, including the main protagonist, who is a strong female, but with completely different attitudes, issues and general ideas than the one from the previosu part. So while the situation they are in is similar - they are both exposed to an alternate reality with smething they learn to care about and try to save - they go about it in a different way, learning different lessons. I guess the fact I've found Zoe much more irritating than April at first was partly because of me getting used to April. But they have different stories to tell, they've embarked on different journeys.

The reason for the good AND the bad is that Ragnor is a screenwriter - not a games publisher.

If he was a games publisher, TLJ would never have been released, and it certainly would not have used one whole CD for character exposition!

On the negative side a lot of people were turned of by long conversations, being taught they HAVE to go through them. The game did not point out clearly enough when you did and when you didn't need to go through them.

If Ragnor had been a publisher, he would have seen the worth of the April Ryan property. 4 million sales, 11 languages? April WAS The Longest Journey and was such a strong character on so many levels. A company like Valve or Bioware would have recognised the strength of this character and released a follow-up, with April still the lead, by 2003-4. Assuming the game was the same quality as TLJ, we would now have April Ryan as a major gaming character, up there with Gordon Freeman, Lara Croft or Major Shepherd!

By 2007 we would be on TLJ 3 with April as a world known character (assuming Funcom had marketed it right!). I see no reason why a movie, novels and children's books would not have been in the offing.by now!

By 2012 we could maybe have had an RPG off-shoot to the game world, we would be on The Longest Journey 6 or 7, and April Ryan would have taken over from all the female game characters you can think of.

Instead, we waited nearly 7 years, and when it arrived it had combat and stealth and April wasn't the lead character! This was commercial suicide for the series.

TLJ and it's follow-up's could have been new supernova's in the sky, changing gaming as we know it. But Ragnor is a screenwriter, so all we have is TLJ as one of the brightest stars in the firmament, and Dreamfall a commercial black-hole....

This is a mystery to me, too, so I can only provide some comfort, if finding a like-minded person can give you that. I am going to assume that anyone posting here already knows about the game, so no spoilers needed. The list isn't in chronological order, just a series of things that really bugged me.

Alvin Peats: First prize for most useless antagonist in human history. He serves no purpose other than being weird, and in fact gets killed at the end of the game, again for no reason (within a narrative context). His assistant/secretary/whatever that orders his dead at the end should have been also the head of WATI from the beginning so that A) You don't need an odd, incredibly old and crazy antagonist that looks like a green blob and B) you don't have an evil plan hijacked by another evil plan we know nothing about.

Faith (AKA creepy girl): This turns out to be the only plot that gets resolved, and while it is introduced at the very beginning, it is done so in really confusing way, so much that you might think there isn't an entire plot around her, since you get the development and resolution in one go near the end, basically. The fact that she is causing interference in the Dreamnet after she died is so stupid I can't even comment on it. She is the emotional bait, trying to squeeze some tears from us, in the worst way. She also manages to give us more confusing information before we convince her to die... Because reasons. Oh, and she is your sister and stuff. (fun fact: the author said that her presence in the Dreamnet was actually having bad consequneces, but failed to show it in the game... So this character is even worse by omission)

Jaded April Ryan: I might be fine with this move, but you turned her into a soulless monster, who abandoned her closest friend (Crow) for no good reason. She is not just jaded, but downright depressing. You would expect her to be sarcastic at least, given her sense of humour, but no, she has just become annoying, for plot reasons (the author needed someone to convey this hopelessness, because it wasn't enough that everyone and everything already do that in the game, and opted for April, basically. The time gap simply allows him this cheap trick of swapping personalities without any need to develop or explore those changes...). Also the fake dead is really funny, the oldest trope of "she disappeared in the waters... And will reappear somewhere else alive". Of course, she might be really dead, which would turn this scene in yet another manipulative situation, trying to let you hope for something and then crashing your hopes (seriously, it's done so poorly, that those are the only two options I can think of).

Kian: Worst playable character ever. Not only you control him for what, 2-3 short scenes? But he is said to be a zealot, a killer (a cold blooded murderer, to be specific) for the religious and political leaders of his country, known for his loyalty... Yet he speaks ONCE to April on his way to do other business, she says some of the most painfully obvious things... And he instantly starts doubting himself. Clearly, none of his victims ever tried to talk him out of killing them, else, he would have never had blood stained hands, otherwise.

Zoe: Oh boy, where do I begin? She is a self-proclaimed apathetic person (all of sudden, it seems, no reasons provided, she wasn't always a slug, apparently), yet she decides to embark on a quest to find her ex-boyfriend who disappeared, and takes around the world(s). She seems to get mad at April for being unsimpathetic (I was too, but she is apathetic, right? What the fuck does she want from others? So she does care, I guess). Her storyline is a mess. The reason she started this whole travel gets pushed away, and we don't get to know exactly what happened to the ex-boyfriend (he appears near the end, like some sort of evil-twin/clone, whatever that is supposed to mean). The new reasons are... Kind of sketchy, really. Creepy girl pushes her toward this or that (to help April, to be precise) and she ends up doing what she is told to do, but of course she doesn't understand why or how she should do that (April dies, but apparently she helped her... Except that April's character doesn't seem to change one iota since she met Zoe up to the point she is killed, so it can't be that... I guess that she had to die, and her presence helper her? No idea, really). She is in a coma, and tells the story, too, which is actually how the game ends for her, ain't that just peachy? I could speak more about her, but it gets on my nerves, I tend to get unpleasant (honorable mention for the "romantic subplot" that comes from nowhere doesn't go anywhere).

The whole setting feels diminishing in comparison to TLJ, but that is so subjective I won't talk about it.

The graphics are good, in my opinion, and I believe they aren't unpleasant to see even by today's standards.

The gameplay is really subpar, and I don't feel like talking about it... It's that bad, but is barely non-existant, anyway. So I have a hard time dealing with the fact that people like the story to begin with...

In this game, the characters feel all awfully static, they don't change if not abruptly, and character development gets thrown out of the way so easily it hurts. Compare it to TLJ, where April grows as the story goes forward, it's completely on another level.

People like different things, personally I enjoyed Dreamfall, despite the fact that I agree with some of your points. The difference is that I don't passionately hate it, because it's not as good as TLJ was, but I can enjoy it's good qualities. The biggest problem with the story is that it's only the first half of the story and the second half was supposed to be published in Dreamfall: Chapters, which never happened.

I think that Zoë had some character development, but unfortunately game ended just when things started to happen. I kind of liked new darker April, but I agree with you that Kian was rather bland character and I assume that his character was meant to be fully explored in a sequel. What we saw was just an introduction. I think that Alvin Peats was killed in the end to show that there is someone more evil who got rid of his boss, because the first "big bad" was too weak.

And like I said my biggest issue is that most interesting parts of the plot: Who is the Prophet and what is the purpose of the tower which Azadi were building? What was the fate of the White Dragon and what is Brian Westhouse's role in all this? were left unanswered.

I probably wouldn't have disliked it as much, if I didn't like TLJ so much, but I still find it poorly put together. The idea isn't that bad, but the execution really fell on its face. And the fact that after a whole game, you still know basically nothing about what's going on, is yet another fault of the narrative: even with a sequel in mind, they should have at least explained you what is it that the various factions are after, so that we can imagine what the next move will be, or what could be done to stop them... And then see this unfold in the second chapter. But the way it is now, can you even tell me who is going to be the protagonist of the next game? Zoe is in a coma, April is MIA and Kian is... Well, Kian. The narrative isn't cohesive enough throughout Dreamfall, how can the next game (if it will ever see the light of the day) possibly put everything back together, if not by using tons of plot devices? Heck, Dreamfall itself had to rely heavily on them, and this just to create more plotlines, instead of resolving them.

If I had to name my biggest problem with the game, though, I would say that I can't get behind a story, if I don't feel that the conflict is born naturally from the characters and the plot within it, and this is how I feel about Dreamfall, it all seems too artificial to me.

From the love story to Kian's change of heart, passing through April conveniently becoming unable to go back to her world, the weird dialogues with the White Dragon and that guy from the Dark people, the odd scenes where you don't get what's going on at all, the magical portals, Zoe that can pass through worlds but isn't a shifter (God forbids anything gets explained for real in this game), Zoe's artificial coma, and pretty much anything that happens in the game, I feel the story is doing its best to remind me that it is just that, a story.

Of course, this is just my opinion, but I feel that a lot of issues I have with the narrative aren't just something I thought up in my sleep, but are real problems that really impact the game as a whole.