This system is a natural progression from Dreamfall's selection cone, making both controller and keyboard-and-mouse setups viable options. A selection cursor automatically hones in on interactive objects in your field of vision, flipping between choices as you move and look about, and indicating the type of interaction available with an appropriate icon. The subsequent level provides both an intriguing setting and an effective tutorial, putting you in control of Zoe from a third-person perspective, and having you assist lost dreamers in finding their way home. Here, she helps those stranded in the Dreamtime, people in the waking world that are connected to WATIcorp's dream machines, which provide on-demand dreams as entertainment to the masses. Zoe's spirit has been left to wander the Dreamtime, that otherworldly dimension first introduced in Dreamfall, even as her body rests in hospital. The nature of the Tower being built in Marcuria, the relationship of the Undreaming to the dream machines, the identity of the white dragon: these lingering wonders are left to occupy your thoughts while you navigate Book One's more pressing themes. Zoe has a knack for getting in over her head.ĭreamfall Chapters may begin with an answer, but it is more concerned with questions-questions that you can add to the growing list of Longest Journey mysteries. The episodic format doesn't seem a good fit for the series' long-term storytelling, and I felt stranded by the abrupt ending, as if I had been invited to an opulent dinner only to arrive and find no one was home. As part of a long-term arc, Book One: Reborn may prove highly effective on its own, it plays at a measured adagio that rarely quickens. Those eight years between Dreamfall and its sequel were long-but I suspect that the wait between the Dreamfall Chapters' first and second episodes will feel just as lengthy, even if it's a matter of months and not years. The first episode of Dreamfall Chapters provides the former, laying the groundwork for a potentially rousing adventure, but too little rises from that foundation. Those earlier games provided another kind of balance: that between a slow-paced opening and meaningful narrative tension that rose as the stakes grew higher. Returning Dreamfall heroine Zoe Castillo has remained comatose, but she has not allowed her body to serve as a prison. Its sequel, 2006's Dreamfall, found new worlds to balance-those of waking life and dreams-and Dreamfall Chapters returns to this same theme soon after its emotional opening. It was a game about balance: the balance between the mundane and the magical, the head and the heart. This is the universe that has occupied my thoughts and fantasies since 1999, when The Longest Journey was released and earned rightful praise as one of the best adventure games ever made. Eight years is a long time to wait for answers, and the opening scenes of Dreamfall Chapters understand as much, providing a tearful gut-punch that is as much of a conclusion as it is an introduction.
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