Dreamfall: The Longest Journey () is an adventure video game developed by Funcom for Microsoft Windows and Xbox platforms in April 2006. In 2007, a sequel entitled Dreamfall Chapters was announced, and Funcom reportedly considered the idea of a massively multiplayer online game set in The Longest Journey universe.
The game is the sequel to Funcom's The Longest Journey, released in 1999, and takes place ten years after the events of the first game. The story focuses on three characters, Zoë Castillo, April Ryan, and Kian Alvane, who live in two parallel worlds: technologically advanced Stark and magical Arcadia. April was the protagonist of the first game, while the other two are new characters. The main storyline follows Zoë, a Stark resident whose investigation of her ex-boyfriend's disappearance and other mysterious occurrences lead her to April. Meanwhile in Arcadia, April battles the villainous Empire of Azadi while Kian, an elite Azadi soldier, is sent to assassinate her. The game features returning characters from its predecessor, such as Brian Westhouse and Gordon Halloway, but playing The Longest Journey is not a prerequisite to understanding its plot.
Gameplay
Throughout the game, the player alternately controls four player characters (in chronological order: Brian Westhouse (only for the intro), Zoë, April, and Kian) from a third-person perspective to explore various locations, gather and combine items, and solve puzzles. This advances the story, which is told through cutscenes rendered by the game engine and dialogue with non-player characters.
The interface system is simplistic with no HUD aside from buttons which trigger various interactions (below) when available. The player can either interact directly with characters or listen in via a remote system. It is possible to eavesdrop on certain conversations at a distance, although this is used rarely in the overall plot. Conversations have six options at the most, portrayed on the screen in a vaguely circular fashion. Inventory is a scrolling list on the bottom, with the option to either select, interact, examine, or return after selecting an item.
Plot Background The Longest Journey had established a game world consisting of two parallel "twin" worlds: technology-driven Stark and magic-driven Arcadia, separated and kept apart from each other for over twelve millennia by a succession of godlike Guardians of the Balance. The game was set in 2209 and focused on April Ryan, a Starkian with a rare ability to "Shift" between worlds, who learned that the villainous Vanguard cult had abducted the twelfth Guardian before the thirteenth could take his place, putting the Twin Worlds' existence in peril. In the course of her adventure, she had rescued the old Guardian and learned that she is a daughter of the ancient White Dragon and that the next Guardian is the Vanguard enforcer Gordon Halloway, who had been pursuing her throughout the game. After convincing Gordon to assume the Guardian's duties, April left for Arcadia.
In Dreamfall, many characters refer to the catastrophic "Collapse", which occurred in Stark immediately after the events of TLJ. The Collapse is never described in-game, but supplemental materials and the official website indicate that it saw a complete failure of many advanced technologies, devastating the world's infrastructure. The Collapse coincided with the rise of the theocratic and industrial Empire of Azadi (Persian for "freedom") in Arcadia, which occupied the Arcadian Northlands and the city of Marcuria and began oppressing their non-human residents. This spawned a resistance movement, which April had joined before the events of Dreamfall.
Synopsis The story of Dreamfall is presented as a narration of Zoë Castillo, a 20-year-old resident of Casablanca in 2219, who lies in coma and recounts the events that left her in that state. Her account concerns Project Alchera, an international conspiracy led by the Japan-based toy manufacturer WatiCorp, inventors of a lucid dream-inducing technology ("dreamer console") that can be covertly used for mass brainwashing and even murder. One byproduct of their research is a young girl named Faith, whom they used to test the hallucinogenic drug Morpheus as part of their DreamNet technology. After receiving a fatal overdose of Morpheus, Faith managed to transfer her consciousness to the DreamNet mainframe, from where she is able to briefly enter Stark's digital networks, disrupting the worldwide infrastructure with massive amounts of white noise, referred as "static" in the game.
Zoë's story begins when her journalist ex-boyfriend Reza Temiz disappears while investigating Project Alchera. At the same time, Faith starts to haunt her through television screens, urging her to find and to "save" April. Zoë tracks Reza down to Newport, a fictional megapolis on the West Coast where a large part of TLJ took place. After learning about April from her friends, she is captured by Wati agents and forcibly attached to a dreamer console, which has an unexpected effect: when her body falls asleep in Stark, she gains a physical presence in Arcadia and can interact with people and objects there. In Marcuria, she locates and meets April, who refuses to get involved in her search for answers due to the loss of her Shifting powers and to her own obligations as an anti-Azadi resistance leader. Waking up in Newport, Zoë travels to Japan to meet Reza's contact inside Wati who explains Project Alchera to her.
In Arcadia, April spies on Azadi officials' negotiations with a hooded figure known as "the Prophet", whom she pursues to the caves beneath Marcuria. There, she discovers a vortex of dreams stolen from Stark and leaves the city to seek advice from the White Dragon and Gordon Halloway, who assures her that the current events have nothing to do with her. She returns to discover that Zoë was captured by the Azadi and encounters Kian Alvane, who has just arrived in Marcuria on a mission to assassinate April. Unaware of each other's identities, the two engage in a heated argument over Azadi politics that leads him to reexamine the morality of his task. April then frees Zoë but again refuses to assist in her quest, so Zoë instead teams up with Brian Westhouse, another Starkian trapped in Arcadia, and Crow, a talking bird and April's ex-sidekick. Together, they seek out the White Dragon, who teleports Zoë back to April, only for her to witness the Azadi troops sacking the main resistance camp, killing April, and detaining Kian for treason, after he tries to protect April from them.
Waking up in Stark, Zoë learns from her Wati contact that the static had originated from a testing facility near Saint Petersburg where she discovers a record of Faith's final months. Distressed by the video, Zoë returns to Casablanca and meets Faith's creator, the geneticist Helena Chang, who asks her to persuade Faith to die in order to stop the static, which is in the meantime threatening to cause another Collapse. Zoë uses a dreamer console to reach Faith, who reveals that Zoë is also one of Chang's creations before disappearing. Chang then injects Zoë with an overdose of Morpheus, leaving her body in a coma and her consciousness, trapped in the space between the Twin Worlds. In the final shots before the credits, a short television broadcast announces the release of the dreamer consoles three months after the events of the game.
Development The Norwegian game developer Funcom considered The Longest Journey an important intellectual property, so the plans to make a sequel were greenlit despite the difficulties of marketing an adventure game in the mid-2000s decline in the genre. To appeal better to the gaming market, Dreamfall was developed both for the PC and the Xbox home console, which led to a much more stressful production cycle than the original game. The game had a larger development team (about 30 people) and a larger budget (approximately $5 million) than The Longest Journey. The developers did not consider Dreamfall a direct sequel to The Longest Journey, but rather a "follow-up, set in the same universe, but telling a different story", hence the different title and a new protagonist (Zoë Castillo). The direct sequel would have starred April Ryan in the main role and continued the plot threads started in the first game. In 2013, this sequel was announced as The Longest Journey Home, which would have been produced after Dreamfall Chapters, the sequel to Dreamfall.
In February 2003, Funcom approved the concept for Dreamfall, and members of the original team of The Longest Journey started working on the project. Three months later, Funcom presented text descriptions and concept art drawings. In February 2004, Funcom reported that the game was financed. Three months later, game director Ragnar Tørnquist presented a first look at Dreamfall with a few first "rough" sections at the E3 2004, getting a very good press coverage. IGN was impressed by the "beautiful graphics engine" based on the Shark 3D technology as the "most salient feature", "a wonder to see" and full of "features defining the cutting edge". GameSpot awarded the game as best adventure game of the E3 2004 and reported that Funcom seems to be making use of the "impressive graphics engine" rendering "large and highly detailed environments" to "create the colorful, scenic vistas that the world of The Longest Journey is known for" and pointed out the "focus field" as an all-new interface option.
Originally planned to be released about a year after the E3 2004 presentation, the game was finally released in April 2006. Game director Ragnar Tørnquist attributes difficulties during development to technical issues with the Shark 3D engine (of which he speaks very unfavorably), unexpected programming work, the team's lack of experience and missing knowledge of developing for the Xbox.
Themes In their 2008 interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the writers of Dreamfall, Ragnar Tørnquist and Dag Scheve, have repeatedly stressed that faith was the central theme of the game's narrative and outlined a "journey of faith" model that guided the story arcs of every major character (Zoë, April, Kian, and Faith). In this model, every character starts in the state of having faith (which Tørnquist described as "optimism... Or at least acceptance. Accepting how things are and being able to live with that"), e.g. in oneself, in one's abilities or purpose, in love, in God, etc. Upon encountering a challenge, individuals can briefly lose faith, but usually quickly rediscover it. If they keep losing faith, however, they descend further into disillusionment, then hopelessness, and ultimately a spiritual death. At this point, the character must undergo a profound internal transformation or suffer the physical death. According to the writers, Dreamfall advocates for having faith and for improving oneself by continuously rediscovering it in the face of adversity.
Every major character in the game goes through some steps of the above model. Zoë Castillo "makes sacrifices" and suffers disillusionment, but not hopelessness, regaining faith "through the act of destroying Faith [the character]" to complete her journey. Faith is a non-playable character but, nevertheless, a central one, as she personifies and is named after the concept of faith itself. Her faith is in her continuing existence, despite having died and being trapped inside a machine, which prevents her from embracing the necessary transformation, i.e. letting go of life. "In order to save faith, you [as Zoë] have to kill Faith", and with Zoë's help, she can complete her own journey, too. Kian Alvane, meanwhile, "skipped hopelessness" and goes through disillusionment, "a sort of spiritual death", and ultimately a transformation (although according to Tørnquist, parts of his story arc were cut from the game due to time constraints).