{"id":681,"date":"2006-10-06T16:29:54","date_gmt":"2006-10-06T21:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=681"},"modified":"2007-11-04T10:59:27","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T15:59:27","slug":"dreamfall-first-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=681","title":{"rendered":"Dreamfall: First Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently playing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dreamfall.com\/\">Dreamfall<\/a>, which is a decendant of the old-school adventure games like King&#8217;s Quest and Gabriel Knight.  Talk to characters, find items, then use the knowledge and inventory to overcome challenges. This used to be a mainstay of PC gaming, but the genre fizzled out and died (or, if you prefer, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldmanmurray.com\/features\/77.html\">self destructed<\/a>) years ago, and adventure games are now few and very far between.  I always had the feeling that adventure games weren&#8217;t living up to their potential.  For the most part they were dull, tedious, and the puzzles employed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldmanmurray.com\/features\/78.html\">demented logic<\/a> designed to sell hint guides instead of tickle your brain.  I always loved adventure games for what they <em>could<\/em> be.<\/p>\n<p>The people behind Dreamfall evidently heard about how dissatisfied I was, because they managed to pull together a game that is everything I&#8217;ve always wanted. <strong>This<\/strong> is what an adventure game is <em>supposed<\/em> to be like.  It&#8217;s epic.  It&#8217;s witty.  It has a rich palette of interesting characters.  It has a complicated protagonist.  It has technology, magic, fantasy worlds, and lots of mystery.  The puzzles <em>make sense<\/em> and fit within the context of the game world.  <\/p>\n<p>There are so many wonderful images from the game it was hard to trim this selection of screencaps down to something reasonable.  Just be aware that the following images barely scratch the surface of what the game has to show you.<\/p>\n<p><table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc1.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc1t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc12.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc12t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc3.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc3t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc4.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc4t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc5.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc5t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc10.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc10t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc7.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc7t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc8.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc8t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc13.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc13t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc14.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc14t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\n<table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='left'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc15.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc15t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><table width='300'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='right'><tr><td><a href='images\/dreamfall_sc16.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/dreamfall_sc16t.jpg' class='insetimage' width='300' alt='Dreamfall' title='Dreamfall'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\"\/><br \/>\nOne final note is that designer Ragnar Tornquist <a href=\"http:\/\/ragnartornquist.com\/?p=213\">has his own blog<\/a>, which keeps a very personal and down-to-earth tone.  It makes for good reading. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently playing Dreamfall, which is a decendant of the old-school adventure games like King&#8217;s Quest and Gabriel Knight. Talk to characters, find items, then use the knowledge and inventory to overcome challenges. This used to be a mainstay of PC gaming, but the genre fizzled out and died (or, if you prefer, self destructed) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-dreamfall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}