Like a breath of bracing
Arctic air, THE
LONGEST JOURNEY breezed in from Norway five years
ago and took the adventure game community by storm. Already used to
diminished budgets and expectations, we were blown away by the incredible
production values the game had, as well as its overall richness and
quality. The visuals in the game were ravishing, the story as good
as a long fantasy/science fiction novel, and the puzzles were fun
and diverse keeping us busy for a long time. Practically from the
moment the game’s final credits began to roll, ravenous gamers
had but one thought: Sequel! SEQUEL!!!

Well . . . we won’t
have much longer to wait, sports fans.

Dreamfall:
The Longest Journey is set to be released by FunCom
by the end of 2005. Despite its subtitle, it’s not being billed
as a direct sequel to THE LONGEST JOURNEY
but rather an ambitious expansion of the series.

The Longest
Journey ended without the largest issue of the story
resolved: Will the two worlds of Stark and Arcadia be, at last, reunited?

This week I had the chance
to spend some time with Jörgen Tharaldsen, the game’s Product
Director. I can’t tell you about everything he told me, because,
basically, he threatened me with death. And remember, these Norwegians
are basically Vikings with iPods, so I take the threat very seriously.

BUT. I can tell you about
most of what he showed me.

A Persistent
Vegetative State

After
a mysterious prologue featuring a character I can’t mention
(see above), the new games opens up in the life of a new protagonist,
Zöe Castillo. Like April Ryan, Zöe is young, attractive,
plucky and resourceful. She only has one major problem: She’s
in a coma.

This starts a grand flashback,
narrated by Zöe, at which point the game truly begins.

What follows is not a pure
adventure game, or even a standard action/adventure game. FunCom is
billing Dreamfall as a thriller.

So What
the Hell IS it?

Huh?
A “thriller”? Well, what the heck does “thriller”
mean? In this case it means what looks to be an exciting hybrid (see
sidebar). While there will be combat in the game, it won’t be
the game’s main emphasis. In fact, FunCom claims the game won’t
be about “twitch” or adrenaline at all. It’ll be
a thinking person’s game, a game that emphasizes story, character,
and suspense. They do not anticipate pitching the game to children.

One of the designers’
goals is to get the player to truly empathize and connect with the
game’s several protagonists. One of the ways they hope to achieve
this is that the characters themselves will be fairly introspective,
letting the player know how they feel about what they are doing. Ultimately,
FunCom wants Dreamfall to take the player
on a spiritual and physical journey of exploration and adventure.

Anti-Dystopia

The
FunCom team considers the Blade Runner-esque nightmarish
future urban scenarios to be very tired and overdone. The world of
Dreamfall, even though it’s set a
couple of hundred years in the future, is not an ugly place that looks
like a sunless stretch of oil refineries. Zöe lives in Casablanca,
and it’s a beautiful, modern city that doesn’t feel overly
alien.

I can’t tell you
much about the plot, but I can tell you that the flashback sets up
Zöe’s story by introducing her life in Casablanca, her
family, friends, and her job as a waitress. The game begins at a deliberately
relaxed pace, giving the player a chance to settle in to the world
and the story. There will be no formal in-game control tutorial, because
the controls should be completely intuitive and easy to pick up. The
beginning environment of Casablanca is beautiful and expansive, and
you’ll get to know it well as Zöe begins to notice that
something is not quite right . . . why does she keep seeing strange
things on television that no one else is seeing? Why, indeed!

Technically, there were
a few more load screens than I would have preferred to see, but at
least they were short.

Them’s
Fightin’ Words

A
couple of words on the game’s combat. Yeah, I said “combat.”
Don’t panic, however! At least with the character of Zöe,
combat will always be one option, not a necessity. (You get
to play several other characters during the course of the game, including
– yea! – April Ryan, and it’s not yet clear whether
this “optional” combat situation is true for anyone but
Zöe).

I saw a demonstration of
the combat with Zöe, and it’s a pretty simple affair. It’s
not about twitch reflexes or complex moves (though you can learn a
few new moves if you have Zöe get trained). Each playable character
will have different moves and combat capabilities. Evidently, April
Ryan will be have better combat skills than Zöe.

Control
Yourself

The demonstration I had
used the XBox controller, which used the analog stick and a basically
traditional control setup. I am happy to report that the PC version
will use mouse controls, but alas, I was not able to test those, so
I can’t report on what they’re like or how well they work.
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to try out the mouse setup at E3
soon.

Gameplay
Innovations

Remember
how Manny Calavera would let you know an object was interactive in
Grim
Fandango – by turning and looking at it as
you moved him past the object? Dreamfall
will use an advanced version of a similar idea. The feature is called
the Focus Field. At any point, you can activate the Focus Field, which
is basically a cone of light that extends from the player characters
eyes into the environment. As the field hits certain objects, certain
interactive options can appear. One of the nice touches of this approach
is that, using the Focus Field, even far-off objects can sometimes
have interactive options, like “eavesdrop” or “look.”

In the XBox control setup,
the player uses the right analog stick to control this cone of light.

The Focus Field appears
to be a very useful and easy-to-use feature that will fit well into
a game that encourages exploration.

Tharaldsen said the game
designers never want to punish the player for exploring and trying
new things. As another way of reinforcing this “friendly”
environment, both versions of the game are slated to have the ability
to save anywhere, not merely at pre-determined save “nodes.”
In addition, there will be automatic save points, so if a player gets
into trouble, even if he or she has forgotten to make a save point,
there should be an automatic one that prevents too much backtracking.

Another interesting gameplay
mechanic is that the character’s cell phone will be used as
a sort of quest log.

With its hybrid gameplay
elements, lengthy and complex storyline, multiple playable characters,
not to mention the job of fulfilling high expectations of The
Longest Journey fans, Dreamfall
is one of the most ambitious games to come down the pike in a long
while. I have high hopes for it, and we’ll continue to keep
a close look on it as its release approaches later this year.