Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, initial thoughts. I'm about half way through (or so I guess).

I remember adding this to my list back in February after an encouraged heads up on www.zigguratofdoom.com by James. I have had little adventure game experience outside of the Alone in the Dark series and that other one from so long ago I can't remember if it had a title. The premise of an adventure game, briefly for those that don't know, is to explore a rather linear plot and find/pick up/use items to solve puzzles. Dreamfall was true to form. I hadn't played its prequel, but I had heard its positive reviews. The game came out in April (heh), but I had forgotten about it by then so it wasn't until August until I purchased it.

Main plot synopsis without spoilers: The main characters' (Zoe, April (who I gather was the protagonist from the first game), and Kian) lives are woven across the two worlds (Stark (science) and Arcadia (magic)) in a not terribly contrived plot of unknown origins and consequences, but basically evil and world-domination-y involving at least one evangelical religion and one megacorporation. Naturally, the three yous must foil said evil plot. The feeling is half cheap fantasy novel and half Snow Crash (a superb the definitive post-cyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson) except with vivid colors. Very vivid.

First impressions: they did well on presentation. Graphics were on a level I'd demand from a game released in 2006. I try not to judge by this harshly because graphics do not make a game, only make it better. Actually, I take that back. This is an art game and I need to consider it as such. From something like Oblivion or Crysis, I expect to be stunned; I expect realism. For a game like this, the goals are a little different. The character models were well textured and rather life-like but their polygon counts were lower than other games that came out in the same time frame. But that's OK since it wasn't their goal to stun the audience with graphics (more companies need to realize this, CryTech excluded as their sole purpose is to forward the industry to indistinguishable computer generated images). The rest of the world, the scene art, in general did much better. I'll admit that some of it was unimaginative but other scenes would stun me for a little while.

The music is above average but by no means astounding. Music is hard: fitting the mood and the pace of the game is an art few have mastered.

All the dialogue is voice acted and lip-synced (pre-HL2 lip-syncing). Or that's what they want you to think. Upon closer examination, I noticed that lip-syncing is rather random. Though it is easy enough to have any character model flap its virtual lips whilst a sound is playing, the team decided against this for some reason. The main characters all lip-flap well, and some of the extras do too, but some of those extras just stand there. It's minor, I know, but it can ruin the feeling of immersion.

The puzzles: All the logic and physical/environment puzzles (so far) are um... easy. Me as a 6 year old would have no more difficulty than I do now, well unless I really have conidtioned myself well to expect these kinds of puzzles in adventure games. Which is itself logical because the real world probably won't throw something inane at you. No, rather its going to ask you to push something around or something. Also, since the world is continuous (unlike other similar games, rooms do not reset), the development team had to make sure you couldn't estrange yourself anywhere. That in itself makes the game easy.

The object-based puzzles: These basically involve two steps, which may happen in reverse order. 1) finding an object, 2) finding what to do with it. All of these (again so far) are far more straight forward than any other logic puzzle. This is no Escape from Monkey Island (which may or may not involve finding a pin to puncture an innertube which you then attach to a fishing pole in order to... I'm making this up at this point. Suffice it to say EfMI required reading the developers' minds). There are few items you don't use. I've never had more than three items in my inventory.

Gameplay: The game is linear. Very linear. Also, it's a movie wrapped in a game package. See also: Xenosaga. Yes, I realize they had a story to tell, but stopping a movie clip to tell me to walk to another room only to start another movie clip when I get there does not count as gameplay (no puzzles in between, no other passages to take). The dialogue options are also a joke. Click randomly, it won't hurt. Well, one conversation required careful (read: save and traverse the entire tree) navigation. Only one path worked out where you didn't lose a battle.

Combat System: Oooh, I almost forgot to mention this... because it plays like no role in the game... there's a combat system! This is neither a bonus nor a distraction. Consider it another puzzle, one that just happens to recur infrequently. The combat system is there to kill you off when you're doing the wrong thing. I think that's all.

Lastly, for some reason I have yet to discover, the game is rated M. I was graciously informed by the cashier of this to which I replied “??”. Well, I guess there is *ghasp* swearing... Who am I kidding, knowing the ESRB, “darn” instantly puts you in the T category.

If I feel like it, I'll put up some additional thoughts once I finish the game.

MORE: A note on the actual game engine. Well, two. First, it needs to learn to allocate memory better. The "levels" (that is, how much of the map is stored between loading screens) is no bigger than my apartment. This can be fixed. Second, multithreading. Seriously. The load screen is indeed only there for a few seconds, but it doesn't need to be there at all. Alas, my awesome computer is going to waste.