I just recently played DFC. I enjoyed it just fine, but realized afterward that my memory of the original games had deteriorated, so I started playing the series again starting from TLJ. On finishing Dreamfall, I ran into something that made me scratch my head. When talking to Faith, it's revealed that the White of the Kin said that Zoe had saved April. Knowing what I know about DFC, though, I'm a little confused as to how that can be the case. Zoe did nothing to help April become reborn as Saga, did nothing that led to April's death, and did nothing to ultimately change April's character before she died. As far as I can tell, the only thing that Zoe did was get teleported to the swamp and watch April die. Am I missing something, or is this just a plot thread that got dropped?

You're not missing anything, and still it wasn't a plot thread that got dropped.

We've been talking about that for years over in the respective TLJ forums (Longest Journey forums - Undreaming forum - RTG forum). And basically, before Book 5, the explanation they went with eventually always came up, but was always discarded because we thought of it as a really bad one.

April was saved because she was killed.

That's it, sadly. It's confirmed when Zoë talks to April's Storytime echo in Book 5. The most sensible interpretation may be: She had lost what made her April, it couldn't be restored, she had basically become a ruthless, depressed assassin in Dreamfall, so only through death and rebirth could she regain her innocence and the essence of her being.

It's still completely senseless that by getting her killed, Zoë saves her. :(

After all, only through Zoë's involvement and voyage to Arcadia did April even become involved at all, met Kian and was eventually killed.

Wow... that's... wow. I'm so disgusted with the devs that I am not sure I can keep playing now.

That's amazingly dumb. Sure, April Ryan had a death wish and didn't mind the fact that she stared death in the face almost constantly when fighting the Azadi, but her death wish never impaired her judgment in a way that was likely to make her endanger Marcuria or the Balance. Hell, the most I can recall her judgment ever being accused of sucking was when she wanted to try to rescue Benrime... but that's a perfectly natural desire, one that Kian acts on in DFC when he leaves to save Bip.

Also, why would the Kin want April dead? Even if April's depression and death wish did pose a danger, at most she would have affected a relatively small amount of people. Why would the Kin give a shit about that? The Kin make a point of staying out of the affairs of mortals unless some serious business is going down. Maybe if April's actions *somehow* endangered the balance, I could see the Kin getting involved... but if that's the case, why didn't the White of the Kin just kill April in the Dark People's city? Sure, the Dark People don't just let anyone into their city, but I don't see them telling one of the Kin "no".

tl;dr: Goddamn it, Red Thread.

Chapters/Dreamfall has turned out to be an amazingly complex story, and really, in such stories there's always a ball drop or two. They were giving their best shot to wrap up the infinity of dangling story threads, but of course the hamfist is the last resort.

The Save April, Kill April revelation was a very bitter pill to swallow, but I'd say it's the greatest hickup in a generally fantastic series. :|

Give it another chance! :)

a small question to vainamoinen cause u are more 'insider' than me and cause i dont know very much about the exact timing: was the dead of april the result of sarah hamilton wasnt able to speak april anymore? like... maybe it wasnt planned first to kill april, but they had to change the story?
if so, that could be maybe one reason for the 'hickup'.
im not an insider, so its just a question.

I don't think so. The April plot, as shocking as it was, always seemed planned to me with a beginning, middle and end. It also renders one of the few sensible explanations for the Lady Alvane conundrum (besides the bland one :) ). I think there was always meant to be a Saga character that's the reincarnation of April Ryan, but I can imagine that they had planned to give Saga Sarah Hamilton's voice (Hamilton voiced Saga's mother Etta already), and that's what just didn't pan out.

I don't want to speculate about Sarah's health too much, we're not hearing anything, but it does look like things are in a pretty bad place right now, and we can only hope that it may get better. :(

Despite the fact that April has always been my favourite character of the entire series, I was fine with the concept of salvation through death and rebirth. I think that it fits well into the mythology of the series. April was on a very dangerous path in Dreamfall, which could have led to the corruption of her soul and death purified her from all that pain. When we see her in Dreamfall Chapters, she is her old self again, not the gloomy and brooding person who she was in Dreamfall.

While my initial reaction to April's death was sadness, I learned to like her new incarnation and I would have liked to see more Saga chapters in the game. But because this was Zoë's story it is understandable that Saga's role was limited.

thanks for the reply, vainamoinen.

I've started playing through DFC again, and the plot holes keep on piling up. The game's intro starts with mentioning how Wati invented the Dreamer to try and reshape reality. However, having just played Dreamfall, I call bullshit. The dreamer wasn't meant to reshape reality, it was designed to brainwash the people who used it into doing whatever Wati wanted (presumably to get everyone to only buy from them).

Things got worse when the conversation with the Vagabond started. Zoe said something about how "they" had made sure that the dreamers weren't a danger to their users, which... no? Zoe did nothing in Dreamfall to affect how the dreamers worked, and they sure as shit weren't dangerous (well, beyond the brainwashing thing); I think that it was meant to be a reference to how Zoe helped Faith move on, but Faith never once killed anyone hooked up to a dreamer. Maybe they meant to refer to how the CEO of Wati got killed at the end of Dreamfall, but Zoe had nothing to do with that; it just kind of came out of nowhere.

Two glaring inconsistencies and I haven't even made it to Kian's first segment -_- It's like Red Thread either forgot the plot of the last game or counted on everyone else having forgotten it so many years after the fact.

Except they did nothing to stop the dreamers from being used to brainwash people. At least not in DF; the start of DFC seems to retcon in that the brainwashing was exposed, but that Wati managed to pin it on Damien.

Truthfully, I doubt this quite a bit. The more boring notion that TLJ was self contained with "loose ends" when Dreamfall got tacked on which resulted in the conclusions DFC required... well, it simply flows easier. Good writers know how to leave just enough gap to introduce an entirely new story that feeds off the old without having truly planned for that to be the outcome.

We don't see April's "corruption" happening as TLJ closes; we do see questioning and sorrow, but not really the whole "spat out by the balance and cast aside" that Dreamfall tried to paint for us. There is also the matter of Westhouse, while he did present as the troubled character with his own secrets in TLJ, he underwent major changes in Dreamfall and DFC.

Reading how Tolkien created the Hobbit first and then decided the ring Bilbo found was "evil" should cast light as to why such nicely fitting pieces shouldn't be seen as a plan so much as an indication of a writer who knows how to take advantage of loose threads.



Was "Saving April" always suppose to mean killing her? Possibly, but it also is one of those nice loose ends that allow for fun character development. Zoë went on a very dark path after failing to "save" April... but at the same time April was beginning to undergo redemption due to her interaction with Zoë. Zoë could easily have become the dark broody "April" by the end of Dreamfall, which was lightly talked about in the opening of DFC; it all depends on how you want to write the story.

Don't get me wrong: Of course Dreamfall was "tacked on" The Longest Journey to continue the story of April Ryan. Of course they treated what was a satisfying ending that had closure as an open ending, and of course they never should have. The punchline in TLJ is that April has no fate/destiny, and is muuuuch better off that way as spending 10,000 years locked up in a tower really isn't for everyone.

In Dreamfall, April is depressed and becomes a killer because she has no destiny. Which is bullshit!

However, what's obvious to me is that most of the story threads as first woven in Dreamfall find a satisfying resolution. It is the first time a person by the last name of "Alvane" pops up, leaving fans with the direct conclusion he'll marry April – after they meet for the very first time. Again, just like the "April becomes Guardian" theory in TLJ, the idea of destiny dangles in front of us. And sure as hell, I embraced that idea. But in retrospect? I consider it the same kind of planned misdirection that was more masterfully executed in TLJ.

I consider the Dreamer Cycle i.e. Dreamfall + Chapters to be tacked on The Longest Journey, but I consider the Dreamer cycle to have integrity in itself, to have been planned with a beginning, a middle and an end (well, mostly. It's fairly obvious to me that Zoë was originally meant to end up in the Storytime).