Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut

"Dreamfall Chapters: Book 1" has a very weak beginning, a strong middle, and a mixed bag of gameplay mechanics, one of which keeps giving you spoilers. If it wasn't for Europolis, a fantastic cyberpunk city that feels incredibly alive, "Book 1" would have sunk The Longest Journey series. Firstly, the game opens with a spoilers ridden text intro that I recommend you skip (press SPACE). TLJ saga then continues exactly where it ended in "Dreamfall," with a very touching 40 second cutscene. My heart was pumping until the actual game started and the dialog was plagued by weak, cliche writing. "You have light inside you. Focus on the light and ignore the darkness." Followed by a trip to Arcadia, where everyone uses this melodramatic, Hollywood version of "LOTR" fake Medieval fantasy speech. What's worse, the game kept telling me when a dialog choice I picked affected the plot. One bit that could have been a real surprise in Book 1 is spoiled at the very start of the game! I don't know why the game developers chose this spoilers ridden approach. I was ready to quit playing 2 hours in, when suddenly I reached Europolis and the storytelling quality made a 180 degree turn. Characters came to life. Dialog dropped all cheesy overtones - became believable and funny, like it was in "TLJ." Zoe, for the first time since her introduction to this series, recieved actual personality and depth. The cyberpunk city of Propast was immersive and buzzed with life. It got me hooked. Gameplay wise, object selection interface is the best it's ever been. Usable objects simply become "highlighted" and interactive when you're nearby. Hearing Zoe's thoughts for every "choice" prevents you from misunderstanding it. It's true that puzzles are nowhere near as challenging as they were in "TLJ," but then, let's be honest, "The Longest Journey" isn't hailed as a masterpiece because of its puzzles. In the end, it took me 10 hours to complete "Book 1." It is a worthy addition to the series.

From what I have played so far, the game ist a great interactive experience with fantastic (often slightly flawed or conflicted) characters. The voice acting is brilliant and the music perfectly fits the mood in almost any situation. Very early on you are making decisions that will have consequences throughout the game and the upcomming chapters, mostly in the form of the dialogue system. When you have to pick something to say, the dialogue options hover around your character in the form of one or two words that indicate the kind of things you are about to say. When moving the mouse over one of these options however you hear the characters thoughts that might lead to saying what he or she is about to say if you pick this option. This gives you a lot of insight into the characters, their motivations, feelings, etc. and on top of that a way to directly influence them. Observing the environment works in a similar fashion. When standing far away you can make your character look at things and listen to their thoughts on the person or object you clicked. If you get closer you get the different options to interact. All of these options have voiced text that goes along with them and often different lines when clicked multiple times. The love and care that went into making this game just oozes out of every detail, every note in the score, every spoken line and every part of the story. However, where there is light, there is also shadow and the shadows in this game are a lot of technical issues (which will most likely be fixed over the next few days/weeks) and the "Telltale syndrome". What is that you ask? Well as others have mentioned, telltale had a huge success with the walking dead, but the gameplay boiled down to a series of interactive events playing out in a very small area. It is not as bad in Dreamfall, but you will hardly find a puzzle that has you thinking for even a few seconds… Since this is the first chapter though, there is still room for improvement.

Got goosebumps many times during the game, parts of it's story made me outright sad, pretty powerful stuff. They did a great job immersing you in the city and making it feel like a place, puzzles were in my opinion a bit light, but still decent. I like the interface for item interaction, works really smoothly with a mouse, makes it easy to explore your enviroments I have mixed feeling on the art direction for characters, some seem to be made in the "normal" style of dreamfall, while others are more caricatured, with slightly exagerated features or lines, giving them a look somewhere between Telltale games' walkingdead/wolf among us and Borderlands. I like the normal style more, but i guess this comes down to preference. The game was a joy to play and explore, looking forward to the next chapter.

Dreamfall Chapters is the conclusion to the story that was started ten years ago by Deamfall. It takes place in the twin worlds of Arcadia and Stark. For those who don't know Arcadia is a world of magic, where Stark is the world we know today (well, 200 years from now). Consider them sort of parallel dimensions. You follow two characters, one is Zoe, who was put into a coma at the end of the previous game. She lives in Stark and is a dreamer, a person who can project her consciousness into Arcadia. The other character you follow is Khian, he lives in Arcadia and is an Azadi soldier who left his own people to become part ofa resistance movement. In the world of Stark, Waticorp is trying to sell their new dreamer and even use their influence to insitue marshal law and get every one off the streets into their dreamland. In arcadia, the Azadi have erected a huge tower which seems to be collecting dreams. Why are these two entities working together when they shouldn't even know about each other's existance? And to what end? Dreamfall Chapters is a 3D adventure gamet. The puzzles are relatively few and most of them are watered down and easy to solve. The focus of the game is obviously on the narrative, and even though you do make a few decisions in the game they are mostly for flavor since the main story is fixed. There are no clumsy combat/stealth mechanics like in Dreamfall this time around, and the interface as whole is a lot better. But there are a couple of timed moments in the game. Unfortunately being an Indie game on a ridiculously low budget the graphics and most importantly the animation is a bit off. In fact some the characters in the cut scenes appear . . . wooden. I cannot possilbly stress how good this game is, it certainly belongs in any Good Old Gamers library. In fact it is better than most AAA games out their and is so good in fact that, in my opinion, it should have gotten the budget of one.

I would have entitled the series 'Hallucinatory Dream'. The 3 adventure games undeniably offer some wonderful gaming experience, thanks to awesome design and an incredible soundtrack. BUT, be careful, the major problem with this series is its story. The plot is conveyed mainly through dialogues that make the game ridiculous. TLJ (no 1) has endless wordy dialogues that make the player sleepy, hence the title of the series, maybe? And the more you progress into the series, the more abstract and obscure it gets. This last opus reaches an absolute climax in terms of nonsensical and ridiculous writing. The story could have been kept simple, but narration makes it unintelligible. I enjoyed completing the whole series figuring out which actions I had to perform, without any consideration for what befell, the characters or the overall plot. Whether this character lives or dies, I don't give a fuck, I simply enjoyed the beautiful atmospheric game. Translation problem? Drug abuse? With another author, it could have been a major hit.