Dreamfall - a Review

[Kugyou]

(or, Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Firebomb Funcom)

Okay, so I just finished both the existing "The Longest Journey" games. The first was definitely a wonderfully-solid point-and-click adventure, even if at times it did seem like a pixel hunt with some unnecessarily obtuse puzzles. But that's just me. Wonderfully engaging story, well-developed characters, and a couple plot twists I actually didn't see coming.

All of these elements were present in Dreamfall. However, The first TLJ at least had something that the second does not...

An ending. I finish the last task of Dreamfall and am blissfully watching the epilogue when all sorts of horrible things start happening...The End. Wait, what? (My WTFM8 moments below) The next TLJ had better be coming soon, and it had better explain one of those moments pretty well or I'm leading a raid against Funcom HQ (and I've already got a bone to pick with them over the 2002 apartment bug in Anarchy Online).

Also, there were a couple bugs that kinda irked me.

The first is the fact that I have an nVidia GeForce 6600, which means I cannot play the game fullscreen with the latest drivers. I can, however, play it windowed with the highest video settings, with only the occasional small glitch and slowly-loading texture.

The second is a glitch in Marcuria's dock district. There's a critter called (I believe) a Samare - looks like a sentient riding beast with built-in saddle. Get up behind it, then walk to its left. You are now stuck without any possibility of moving. Thank God the nearest autosave isn't too far back.

The third is in the section below due to a TLJ spoiler.

All in all, I loved the game, even if it was a little short and a little heavy-handed on the FMVs. One non-spoileriffic quirk: Why do some FMVs allow you to skip dialogue ahead one line at a time, but some require that you sit through or skip the whole FMV? I play with subtitles on, and sometimes the voice acting is so...slowly...paced that I just want to get on with it.

The next TLJ had better be in stores, like...next week.

WTFM8 moments, most from the ending (Spoilers ahead!):

• Kian...ALVANE? As in, the same Alvane that April goes by when she's all old and wrinkly in her House of All Worlds in TLJ?
  
• Well, at least we know April's not dead (can't be, or else there'd be a continuity problem with the ending of TLJ), but why end the game without even a teaser from Arcadia?
  
• Fake Reza. Fake. Reza.
  
• What happened to Damien Cavanaugh (with a "C", and an "A-U-G-H", and an "A-V-A-N" in the middle)? He was supposedly heading to the same factory you went to, but there's no sign - neither hide nor hair, not even a lighter or a bloodspot!
  
• IMHO, the ending was way too Stark-centric. It's like Hospital, Long Rant, Fake Reza, Dreamer release, fade to black, ZOMG TOWER.
  
• Would somebody like to spend more than two seconds discussing the Undreaming? Both of those seconds were used up saying the thing's name, once in the opening, once in the ending.
  
• Who is Faith's "White Lady"? One would hope it's the White Dragon, but who knows?
  
• All this abandonment can't be good for Crow.
  
• Speaking of Crow, when did he lose the ability to talk to birds?
  
• What race was Na'ane?
  
• Why did Gilmore turn on Peats? Is it more than just being a greedy b****?
  
• Did Brynn survive? Did Chawan?
  
• Why did they tell us you could play as three characters, when Kian's playtime was approximately ten minutes, almost all of which were swordfights? No, I don't count his hour-long FMVs as "playing" the character.
  
• Did anyone else want to be able to do more with spiders or hacking?
  
• Anyone else think there wasn't enough useful combat (consider that April can get into multiple combat situations, but most of them are not possible to survive)?
  
• Any clues on what those things living/working underground are?
  
• Are they ever going to explain exactly what April's relation to the White Dragon is? In TLJ, she calls April "My Own Daughter", but then the new White Dragon says that it's not a real family tie.
  
• Westhouse = Undreaming? Anyone else get that feeling?
  
• Strange little QA bug: Roper Klacks, the evil alchemist from the first TLJ, talks about his autobiography, "Farewell to my Wizardin' Days". When he gives you the book, it's called "My Wizardin' Days are Over". But when April gives the book to the Shadowguide, she calls it "Farewell to my Wizardin' Days". I know you can't always expect the subtitles to match every word that's spoken, but how about the object names?
  
• While I'm on the subject of objects: Really cool inventory system. Really great method of using items - all very workable with just a gamepad. Then why is so much of the game "Run here, look at this, interact with that, dodge that laser", and so little "get this item, use it with this item to make that item and then use it on that thing?"
  
• Why is the "Climb" icon indistinguishable from the "Hide here" icon? In the WATIcorp building, I thought I was about to climb up on a vending machine!