Dreamfall Chapters: The Final Cut

I am a huge fan of the previous two games in the Longest Journey series, but Chapters just does not work on any level. The story is a muddled mess that jettisons everything interesting about Dreamfall. I'm at the start of Book Five, and not one of the many hanging threads whose resolution I've been eagerly anticipating over the last 8 years has been picked up. Well, that's not entirely true. You get to play as a baby who's probably the reincarnation of a beloved character from two games previous. As that baby, you play through lots of pointless minigames! That don't advance the story in any way, except to introduce her mysterious parents! A couple of randos who are totally normal and boring, if you can overlook the fact that the mom has green skin. Otherwise, you play as the main character of the previous game, who awakens from a coma as an amnesiac, and also as a reformed religious zealot who served as a conscionable but clueless antagonist in Dreamfall. The amnesia angle is super convenient for the game's writers, as they apparently had no idea how to tie up the loose ends left by Dreamfall. Also, it is the ultimate narrative copout, second only to 'it was all a dream', if you ask me. On a more technical note, I don't like the art style or animation. Everything seems very rigid and hemmed in. The characters occasionally don't mouth their dialogue, the facial expressions are very flat, and the game is riddled with bugs. I think I'll watch how the rest of Book 5 plays out on Youtube rather than play through it myself. So much of the gameplay consists of "Get this person to stop dithering around by MacGuyvering the hell out of something." No thanks.

I liked The Longest Journey. I loved Dreamfall. But I can't start liking this game. The story is OK, and it actually is one of th things that make me want to play. Some characters and their interations are also well-written and keep be coming back here. However, the game itself is poor. There's a lot of running involved, and although the maps aren't that big, you will find yourself running in circles looking for a specific person with very vague instructions how to find them. At times certain tasks just seem like padding out the playtime of the game. The same goes for the child intermissions - a set of frustrating tasks that seem totally pointless. Furthermore, thy rely on you having played the previous games recently, and, for example, remembering the plot outline. I played TLJ over 10 years ago - how the heck am I supposed to remember which of to characters did I meet first? All these side tasks are frustrating, repetitive and do not bring the story forward. I have nothing against interactive movies (I love Heavy Rain), but this one plays like a chore, to the point that even the story does not seem rewarding enough.

Dreamfall Chapters is a continuation of Dreamfall, a game that left its players hanging halfway through its unfinished story almost a decade ago. Chapters continues this story as a combination of telltale-style interactive movie and traditional point-and-click adventure gaming. To start with the interactive movie elements: The scenes in this game rely heavily on dialogue, and that dialogue tends to be longwinded, stilted and not always very interesting, with an over-reliance on quirky characterization and an exaggerated supposedly-humorous awkwardness between characters. When no-one is talking the pacing remains simply terrible, with even action scenes having all the urgency of a Miss Marple novel. The actual choices the player gets to make fare a little better; most of them seem of actual importance in the moment they are made and the options are reasonable with respect to the character making them, as voiced by his or her internal monologue. Even better, a fair number of choices actually do affect future events, leading to different outcomes and scenes. Between interactive cutscenes, Chapters is an adventure game where the protagonist gets to wander various locations looking for the right object or person to interact with or correct item to pick up in order to overcome some sort of obstacle. There are a number of low-key puzzle elements here too, but most of the time the main challenge is simply finding what you need followed by trial-and-error attempts to combine objects in the inventory and/or the environment. The environments themselves vary in visual quality, some featuring genuinely interesting design while many others are dull, dull, dull. The two largest areas also see very heavy re-use. All in all, the adventure part of the game takes up about three quarters of gameplay and a fair chunk of it feels a little uninspired, a chore done for the reward of more story development rather than because it is a fun activity on its own. Lastly, the overall story. The game switches frequently between three protagonists, which tends to interrupt the flow and sometimes makes their situations hard to keep track of. Also, for most of the game the player is left with next to no knowledge of what is actually going on, then towards the end gets bombarded with exposition as the game in detail and at length spells out all the secret important plotstuff that has been going on since the start of Dreamfall. Dreamfall Chapters would have benefitted from a more gradual discovery of these important facts; instead most of the protagonist's efforts focus on small problems that are largely irrelevant to the game's intricate cosmology and the objectives of the antagonists. The bottom line is that, while the game does have some charm and (partially unrealised) potential, I cannot recommend it.

The anticipation of the release of Dreamfall Chapters, after so many years, was enough to cause me to stay up the entire day of it's disappointing release. This game is unfortunately littered with a variety of minor technical issues, which are overshadowed by the lack of optimization. I expect that over time, Red Thread will release patches that do increase the performance across a wide spectrum of hardware. The good news is that the game is not unplayable in it's current state, and at medium and low settings, the game still looks good. The length of Book one is quite short, making the experience of re-entering the world I have come to love and enjoy, a bittersweet experience. You receive a small sample of a story that seems to be building up to something just as grand and interesting as both the Longest Journey and Dreamfall. The decision mechanic is a meaningful addition to the Longest Journey series, and is something I wish Dreamfall would have incorporated years ago. It certainly gives a nice variety to the story, and it gives you a reason to replay each book to see what impact your decision had on the world. Be warned that the game gives almost no context to any of the events that have happened within the game, and you only receive small snippets of previous events. While I suppose this fits with the story, with regards to the main character, it does leave a bit to be desired as a player. I certainly had no issue understanding any of the events within the game, having played the previous games, however others may have an issue with this. I certainly recommend playing the previous iterations. If you are an adventure fan, who primarily wants an involving and impactful narrative to immerse yourself in, Dreamfall chapters will give you that. However, with four books still left to be released, be prepared to have a gap every couple of months.