T w e n t y S i d e d

I finished Dreamfall, and I’m obliged to retract some of the high praise I heaped on the game. The ending was quite unsatisfying. Alan De Smet warned of this in the comments of my original Dreamfall post. Even so, the ending was a real shocker. Not “shocker” as in “I can’t believe that happened” but as in “I can’t believe they ended the game there.”

One review I read likened the game to The Empire Strikes back: A dark second installment in a trillogy. I disagree, because I’m sure I would remember if in ESB the beloved Luke had become self-destructive and nihilistic, eventually alienated his friends, and finally allowed himself to be killed by a stormtrooper. I don’t recall the scene where the rebellion was crushed and it hinted that even their families were killed. Princess Leia didn’t fall into a coma and eventually die, and Han Solo wasn’t rounded up and sent to the imperial prison where he was left to rot. The Empire didn’t introduce their new & improved Death Star at the end, and people left the theater talking about wether or not Darth Vader was Luke’s father, not if they thought Chewbacca could maybe have somehow survived that final raid on the rebel base.

In Empire, the Rebels lost a battle. In Dreamfall, they lose the war, the good guys snuff it, and the bad guys get the last laugh.

I’m sure fans of the game will be quick to point out that this is the second act in a three-act play. Great. The first installment came out in 1999. Adventure games and budgets being what they are, there is no guarantee that the next game will even be made. And even if it is, I don’t really care to wait for it. In another seven years I’ll be 42, my oldest daughter will be getting ready to turn 16, and I will only have a vague memory of what happened in this game. Unlike a book or a movie, I probably won’t be able to go back and play this installment, either. Will I need to surf around, hunting for some Windows XP emulator? I had some trouble getting the game to run right on today’s equipment. I can only imagine the challenge of getting it to run on some machine built in 2013, just so I can go back and familiarize myself with all of the various characters and plotlines.

I care about the story now because I’ve been playing it. I won’t care about it then. Seven years is a long time.

Even when the game comes out – even if it came out tomorrow – I’m not sure I’d want to play. A lot of heroes were dispatched. Everyone I liked died. There were many, many bad guys in this game. Lots of people hurt the good guys, hurt the main character, and were a general pain in the butt. In the end, they all went free. Only one bad guy died, and he was dispatched off-camera by one of his own people after all of the good guys were already defeated. Make a story harsh enough, and the reader will be eager to see it all get put right in the end. Make it too harsh, and the reader is going to put the book down and not come back. This is supposed to be entertainment, after all.

The last several minutes of the game were an extended cutscene where the writer drove home his message of hopelessness and utter defeat. Note to Ragnar Tà¸rnquist: Geeze man, mercy already! I liked your characters. Could you maybe leave like one or two alive*?

Of course, the fact that I reacted this way shows that the game was very successful on a lot of other levels. There are wonderful characters in this thing, and even after that brutal ending I have this urge to run around and re-visit earlier parts of the game. Despite the miserable ending, I still think this is one of the best non-comedy adventure games I’ve ever played. It’s generous with the visuals, dialog, and characters. There is a lot to love here, which is why the ending was so upsetting.

* Okay, I actually doubt all of the good guys are dead. It looks that way, but there were enough loopholes that they could show up again. Still.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

After all of the praise I’ve heaped onto Dreamfall recently, I think it’s only fair to mention some of the flaws.

The most tedious and stupid is that whenever you put the disc in it launches the installer, even if the game is already installed. Couple this with the fact that the game won’t run unless the disc is in the drive and you have a nice recipe for annoying the user every time they play the game.

QUICK! Find the shape with the curvy top and the line with the pointy… oops! Time ran out! Now you have to start all over!

There are these annoying pattern-matching puzzles, where you must hunt around a grid for random shapes. The shapes on the grid change positions as you play. The shapes are all fairly simillar. They are all the same color. The puzzle is timed. You must find several shapes in a row, but the timer is working against you. Every few seconds, once of the shapes you’ve already found will vanish or move and you’ll have to match it again.

Perhaps I just hate this game because I’m terrible at it, but this is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about when I refer to DIAS gameplay.

The game was designed with a console controller in mind. This is a third-person game, and just as mouse & keyboard is ideal for first-person, the Playstation-style “Dual Shock” controller is just perfect for the third-person experience. The game supports the use of mouse & keyboard, but it feels clumsy to me. Once I plugged in my USB controller (which is a near identical copy of the Dual Shock) my enjoyment of the game went way up.

The controller issue wouldn’t be as much of a problem if not for the combat, which is another problem I have with the game. Yes, an adventure game with combat. I’m not a purist, and I enjoy this blending of genres. I like when first-person shooters offer a little adventure game style puzzling. I like when action games spice things up with a little RPG-style stats building. (You know, do X for a while and your attributes will go up, allowing you to do more and better X.) So, combat in an adventure game is not anathema to me. My issue with it is that the combat in this game feels… it feels exactly like a combat system designed by an adventure game designer.

You can tell my trainer is a martial arts master because when she attacks she takes a step back, cocks her arm, then marches two steps forward and takes a heavy swing at my shoulder.

The problem here is that once you hit a button to take a swing, your character is going to wind up and take that swing and you can’t stop them. The move might take a second or two, and during that time you may want to change what you’re doing. Perhaps your foe is doing the same thing, except you realize his blow is going to land first. You’re going to want to get out of the way instead of following through. You’re going to mash on your keypad (and maybe shout) but your avatar is going to keep going no matter what. This is really frustrating for the player, and leads people to use words like “unresponsive” and “stiff” when describing the controls, even though that isn’t really the problem. To fix this, you would need to do one of two things:

1. Speed up the fighting system so that it works like classic fighting games (Mortal Kombat) where movements happen so fast that the user will never get a chance to second-guess themselves. This would be very bad, because it will alienate a lot of adventure gamers. They often like adventure games because of the slow pace and the fact that you don’t need the reflexes of the thirteen year old boy to play them. Your fighting system will either bore the kids or be so fast that your core audience will be unable or unwilling to play it.
2. Allow the user to alter their chosen action mid-move. So, if I’m about to deliver a strike I can suddenly change to a block. This will mitigate the problem, but is very, very difficult to implement. It would be a pain to animate, not to mention code. I wouldn’t want to try this.

My dueling system might be an interesting alternative to use in a game like this, although it would probably be too expensive in terms of development time.

At first the combat in Dreamfall semmed impossible and arbitrary. Then I locked on to a few tricks that made the whole thing easy enough that I was able to bully my way through the game. The big trick is:

1. Get in close
2. Wait until the foe begins to attack
3. Step back and let them miss
4. Hit them ONCE (don’t get greedy!)
5. Repeat

The only time I get hit is whenever the #$@& camera swings around on me and I end up stepping into my foe when I’m trying to step back. In any case, this isn’t exactly a chessmatch.

I have other nitpicks with the plot and such, but I’ll leave that for when I get to the end of the game.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.