BBC - collective - games #155: dreamfall: the longest journey

features / game column

content by: editor

games: dreamfall

Slow but sure.

Although it'd be harsh to call the adventure game – heavy on text and narrative, light on dynamically controlled action – a backwater of gaming, it's certainly outside gaming's mainstream flow these days. The genre's not without its strong titles or innovation, however, as demonstrated by hybrid title Fahrenheit.

Like Fahrenheit, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey incorporates some elements that step outside the conventions of adventure gaming – combat and stealth – but for the most part this is very much a game based on story, and on text and dialogue. It's also based on a story that’s riddled with references to an earlier game, director Ragnar Tornquist's The Longest Journey.

After a mysterious prologue the game introduces its key protagonist, Zoe Castillo, who lies in a coma, with an “it all started when...” device that flashes us back to the start of her adventure. Bored and directionless, Zoe has moved back in with her dad in Casablanca. When her ex-boyfriend, an investigative reporter, disappears she begins a search that will not just have her globetrotting the game's earth-like futuristic world of Stark, but also entering Arcadia, the twin magical world where April Ryan, the heroine of the first game, had ended up. April serves as a secondary playable character here (there's also a third, a warrior called Zian) as well as a key component of the plot. Zoe had her first taste of other worlds when she started getting weird, Ring-influenced messages on screens, featuring a little black-haired girl telling her to “Save her, save April Ryan”.

Considering the adventure game's very different tone and feel to the sort of titles that dominate gaming these days, and considering Dreamfall's occasionally ponderous feel, this is a very special experience. It's not just gripping, it's majestic in its conception (the visuals may not be flawless but they're varied and rich in atmosphere) and more thought-provoking than many games. Thematically, there's a lot in here too: about the old terrorist/freedom fighter distinction, about imperialism and ignorance, and about how both faith and violence are frequently used as tools by those in power.

It's not perfect. Among other points of criticism, the combat is unsophisticated and the voice-casting for Arcadia is dubious (why are half the folks Irish? Is an Irish accent intrinsically more magical or mythical?), but Dreamfall is remarkable nonetheless. Epic, eloquent and gripping, it's a refreshing alternative to the more hectic, less intelligent fare that regularly populates many a console or PC.

Daniel Etherington 01 June 06

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, out now on PC and Xbox.

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