I’ve left quite some time between finishing the game and writing a review, as I agreed with myself that I would do it after I’d read and written sufficient speculation on the official forum. I should probably also disclose at this point the baggage I bring to this game: I have been the moderator of a fan forum for this game since well before it came out, and am the regular contribtor to several other boards dedicated to the game, including a wiki. So, with my nerdentials out of the way…

When The Longest Journey was released in 1999 it was to much acclaim. A traditional 2D point-and-click Adventure, TLJ was something of a swansong for the much-talked-about death of what was one of the most popular genres in the early-to-mid 90′s. The story of one girl in the 23rd century and her discovery of a world of fantasy – Arcadia – parallel to our own world of technology – Stark, and subsequent quest to stop the implosion of these two worlds was popular with both critics and gamers. The announcement back in February 2003 that writer/directory Ragnar Tornquist would be revisiting Stark and Arcadia was greeted with universal hope – a hope that was shortly followed by apprehension. Would he sell-out and commercialise it? Would he fall into the much-hated “Action Adventure” trap that so many other games had?

Fans were able to keep track of development by Tornquist’s blog, where he tried to allay their fears of the announced action elements by coining the various genres “Modern Adventure” and “Thriller“, insisting that action was necessary to lend an air of urgency to the game. This is a valid point, and the same thing was recently experimented with in Fahrenheit and its timer on actions. The action in Dreamfall is pretty much just combat and stealth, and while the latter is integrated fairly seamlessly into the game the combat is via extremely intrusive cut-scenes and painfully clumsy. To some degree the attempted urgency brought on by these is successful, although many people were in fact overly frustrated by some of the more difficult sections of the game. This lead to a general anxiety that stuck with the player for the entire game, and also one of the main criticisms made: that the little observations made by protagonist April Ryan in TLJ were absent from Dreamfall. They were, in fact, there: it was just that one felt compelled to rush through the game by the urgency and subsequently missed them. A replay of the game, aware of the where the action sections are and when to be relaxed, can be much more leisurely and the observations are indeed there. This is one aspect of game development that could be either viewed as a failure or a success, depending on your point of view.

Tornquist was also at pains to avoid the word “sequel”, going instead with the apparently more neutral term “spiritual successor“. (He has since retracted any distinction.) The aim was to produce a game that newcomers to the series could pick up and not have to worry about missing anything. While this is generally true, one or two parts would be difficult (at best meaningless) without knowledge of TLJ: I think in particular of April’s disputed status as a “Wave”. We have since been told that Dreamfall is the second chapter in a much longer saga and, indeed, it is a story without an end in immediate sight. This is a point that has been argued on Tornquist’s blog and on the official forum, and neither camp looks set to concede defeat. For myself, the claim that the game was concluded “thematically” is at best partial. Analogies to films that end on a cliffhanger (i.e. the second of a trilogy) seem to me forced: at the time of release we were under no other impression than that what we were getting was a stand-alone game. To push the anaolgy further, comparisons with a television series are equally artificial. One knows an individual episode will be followed by another, so cliffhanger endings are warranted. They are also appropriate at the end of a series if the show is syndicated for another year following; but the best shows wrap up all their story threads at the end of the year. I feel I should at the very least give a warning: caveat ludor (‘player beware’ – sorry, sometimes I can’t help myself): this game ends on a “cliffhanger”.

Another fear was that the PC version of the game would be rushed out, and all care would be given to the Xbox version. While this may not have been true for graphics, it was certainly true of the controls for PC: the x-axis was inverted as default. This may sound trivial, and you can indeed remedy this problem with a simple change in Options; but for a good minute or so there at the beginning you are left feeling confused and frustrated at this lack of consideration. Suffice to say, it does not make for the best first impression.

The graphics are, indeed, lovely. The PC version can stretch up to quite a nice level of detail – much better than the Xbox’s settings, obviously. But while the locations are beautifully rendered, some of the character models are pretty dodgy. Main character Zoe Castillo has arms that make her look anorexic on account of an over-muscled shiny skin that wants to give her slender upper arm defined triceps; thankfully she covers up for most of the game because of chillier temperatures than her home in Casablanca. Also, most of the male character models seem to have had far less time spent on them than the females: Zoe’s ex Reza has bizarrely featureless features. That’s to say nothing of the white dragon’s teeth…

But these are the criticisms of an anticipatory fan: what about those who were new to the series, and had no expectations that required living up to? It may be one-sided (in that those who did not enjoy it are unlikely to post), but some of the most glowing reviews on the official forum come from those who have not played TLJ. This does not necessarily indicate that TLJ is better: just that TLJ fans (who might be considered synonymous with Adventure fans) had expectations they did not feel were lived up to. The best indicator would be in sales, but I can only speak for what I’ve seen Australia. The marketing of the game here was non-existant, and none of the staff at EB, Games Wizards or Harvey Norman had any idea when the game was due until it was actually on the shelves. You were lucky if there was one copy on display, and within a week or two the price had been dropped to $49.95 (RRP was variously $69.95 and $79.95). I guess we’ll know how well it did if they announce another game in the series.

But all this is not representative of how I feel about Dreamfall. The game is really quite terrific in all its flawed beauty. Is it better than TLJ? I don’t think I can answer that. TLJ may be better as a complete package, but Dreamfall has an immersive charm that keeps it in the stakes as a contender. I think the only balanced review of this game could be done by someone who hasn’t already visited Arcadia in TLJ. So I’ll just shut up now.

Interactive Cinema as a genre rose and fell in the early to mid 90′s, with (infamous) titles such as Dragon’s Lair and Cyberwar that gave you superior graphics at the expense of gameplay – requiring you simply to press Left or Right at the correct moment occasionally. Now wacky Frenchman David Cage of Quantic Dream has made his attempt to resurrect the genre with Fahrenheit.

In their previous outing Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999), Quantic Dream employed instead “Sandbox” (I hate that definition) style gameplay for their “immersive experience”: cutting the player loose in the city of an alternate dimension. Now they’ve changed their tack to Interactive Cinema (to read their gaming manifesto in handy point-form click here), although they still utilise their motion-capture studio to its fullest.

Being a big fan of Nomad Soul (as it was named out here in Aus), I’d been awaiting the sequel (which has just gone back into development) for some time; until it was put on hold indefinitely to complete their new project Fahrenheit. This game looked promising enough, especially with the interesting idea of playing it from multiple (often directly opposing) viewpoints; each bundled as a separate episodic module to be released (roughly) monthly – to give it the feel of a television series. Various things conspired against Quantic Dream, and the episodic structure was abandoned, as well as their original publisher. That it came out at all is miraculous to say the least; to be successful at all is the icing on the cake.

Nomad Soul was criticised for trying to be all things to all men: it attempted to integrate several genres into one (Adventure; FPS; Fighting), leaving adherents of each genre unsatisfied. While Cage would no doubt try to defy categorisation of Fahrenheit under anything but “Interactive Cinema”, the game has been all but offically adopted by the Adventure genre and community. It might best be viewed as one of several possible new directions for the ailing genre to take.

It starts out promisingly enough, beginning with a cinematic sweep over New York City with the main character providing voice-over that sounds slightly cheesy, but not unforgivably so. The first scene is suitably gritty, not to mention tense. The primary innovation on the branching dialogue trees typical of Adventure games is that there is a time limit to your choices, so everything you do is given an urgency, but unfortunately this urgency isn’t always appropriate. From ‘level’ to ‘level’ you are given the option of controlling any one of the 3 main characters (not 4, despite what the game promises – if you’re going to include Marcus’ tiny part then why not also The Oracle’s, making 5?), however this choice is seemingly illusory, as all must be completed to advance. (This might not be entirely true, I’ve only played it through once, and it’s possible that you might be able to skip less important sections depending on the choices you make.)

And this is another claim the game makes for innovation: that the branching storyline choices provide for alternate endings. The autosave feature (which is activated virtually every scene) means that you cannot really create multiple savegames on the one playthrough to make different choices; instead, you must play the whole game through to see the different story branches (although it seems it may be possible to circumvent this feature with the help of a little inventiveness).

Somewhere around the middle of the game, the complexity and pace of the story speed up dramatically and, unfortunately, bottom-out somewhat. One is left with the feeling that this is the result of abandoning the episodic structure in favour of a single ‘feature’. It seems that the story from this point was written, but not yet fleshed-out, and any subsequent ‘fleshing-out’ was cursory to say the least. The relationship between the two main characters is never really developed, and when it climaxes there are definite titters to be heard from the ‘audience’.

This may not be a result of rushed development, however, and may instead just be bad writing. The same accusation can be made of the bizarre love-twist finale to Nomad Soul; indeed many elements of that game are included in Fahrenheit. At times it feels like someting of a ‘Best-Of’ reel of things from Nomad Soul (in the same sense that some of the best gags in Shaun of the Dead were just rehashed from Spaced), and certain story elements (such as the aforementioned relationship) come across as rather farcical. Come to think of it, there are more farcical elements than just the storyline: for instance, Afro-American character Tyler Miles is always accompanied by a funky, porn-ish soundtrack, even during the darker moments of the story.

That said, the awesomeness of the soundtrack is truly revealed upon unlocking it as one of the easter eggs (which is what those coupons you pickup through out the game are for), besides which it makes for some damned funny gaming. The downtime scenes such as where where the same character has a basketball shoot-out with a colleague to avoid paying back the 100 bucks he owes him is equally cool, as well as when the two cops have a spar in the gym.

I bought it on PS2 rather than PC, as for several years Adventure games had been simultaneously released on PC and console, and I’d never tried the console versions. Given that the controls were usually geared towards those platforms, it was worth a try. The graphics were decent for PS2, but not suitably improved from Nomad Soul to impress me overmuch. Everything is muted by the grainy filter and subdued colour palette, and this serves to disguise the lower level of detail: I’d be interested to see what the X-Box and PC versions look like. The motion-capture, however, has not improved enough since 1999, and the models still tend to exaggerate all their movements. Thankfully, characters no longer only mime wielding objects (as in Nomad Soul), and are now provided with appropriate props.

The control system has been discussed at length elsewhere; suffice it for me to say that my biggest criticism of it is that it means you can only watch the action set-pieces of the game in your peripheral vision, and most of them aren’t unlockable as easter eggs. This can be slightly annoying, as they’re quite spectacular in a Matrix-y sort of way. Indeed, the game manages to fall on the right side of the very fine line between homage and plagiarism/derivativeness; a fall that always seems to be inexplicable. Oh, and the sex-scene that was cut from the US release ISN’T interactive, at least in the Australian version. Or maybe I just hadn’t made the right story-branch decisions earlier …

This is a game that every serious Adventure gamer (and they all take themselves a bit seriously, don’t they?) should play, if only to see one possible trajectory their beloved genre may take. It’s also part of the gaming vanguard where developers are trying to make games for people who don’t usually play them (see the above-linked manifesto). Interesting stuff; watch this space.

I was finally able to pick up Fahrenheit last week and, maybe because I have been expecting a game from David Cage/Quantic Dream of Omikron: The Nomad Soul fame, I just don’t feel that it’s quite the Second Coming we were all promised. That said, I’ve only played it for a very short time so far. We shall see.

Where’s Fahrenheit? It was due out last Friday, but there’s no word on it yet. I hate living in the arse-end of the world.