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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is an adventure video game with elements of action-adventure. It was released for the Windows and Xbox platforms on 17 April 2006 by 

Norwegian developer Funcom. On 1 March 2007, a sequel entitled Dreamfall Chapters was announced and Funcom reportedly considered the idea of a massively multiplayer online game set in the The Longest Journey universe.

Release [ ]

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was released for Microsoft Windows on 17 April 2006 in the United States and 18 April in Europe, available either on 6 CDs or a single DVD. A Limited Edition of Dreamfall was released, as well, containing the DVD version of the game, a soundtrack EP with four songs by Magnet, and a 92 page hardcover art book entitled The Art of Dreamfall . According to Ragnar Tørnquist, this edition is "an actual Limited Edition", since it has only been produced in small numbers. On 23 December 2006, a game demo was released. On 12 January 2007, Dreamfall was made available on Steam. On 30 April 2007, Aspyr announced that a Game of the Year edition would be released to North America on 24 May 2007 and will include The Longest Journey , Dreamfall , and the Dreamfall OST . This release includes three DVDs but no manual. The StarForce copy protection system prevents the use of the boxed version of the game on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 , although this can be circumvented with an unofficial patch which bypasses the software. The Xbox version of the game has been released on 8 April and 11 August 2006 in the US and Europe, respectively, and is backwards compatible with Xbox 360 since June 2006. It was made available as an "Xbox Originals" digital download on Xbox Live on 23 March 2008. The downloadable version is the original Xbox version of the game rather than the Game of the Year edition.

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 -  In The Longest Journey , it was established that the Earth consists of two parallel worlds: Technology-driven Stark and magic-driven Arcadia , and that transition between the worlds is only possible through an unusual ability called Shifting. For over twelve thousand years, the Balance between the Twin Worlds has been preserved by the Guardians and Sentinel Order. In year 2209, the Shifter April Ryan , was required to restore the 13th Guardian to his duties, and identified as a daughter of the ancient White Dragon       .

In Dreamfall, many characters refer to the "Collapse", a catastrophic event that took place in Stark immediately after the events of TLJ. The Collapse is never described in-game, but according to supplemental material and the official website of the game, it caused the loss of such technologies as faster-than-light interstellar travel, anti-gravity, and neutral interfaces and accompanied traumatic supernatural occurrences. In the immediate aftermath, authorities of Stark establish a global police agency called EYE to deal with the rising crime rate and introduce the Wire, an information network connecting all electronic devices on the planet. The Collapse coincided with the rise of the theocratic and industrial Empire of Azadi (Persian : "freedom"‎) in Arcadia, who conquered the Arcadian Northlands, exiled the Sentinels from the region, and propagated their religion. This spawned a resistance movement, of which April is part in Dreamfall.

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 led thereto. Her narration concerns Project Alchera, an international conspiracy by the Japan-based toy manufacturer WATIcorp , that aims to introduce a potentially-destructive lucid dream technology ("dreamer console") to the market. One byproduct of their research is Faith, a girl used for testing the hallucinogenic drug Morpheus, who upon dying thereof transferred her consciousness to the DreamNet mainframe computer Eingana and thereafter appears on the Wire, causing white noise disrupting the infrastructure of Stark. Of this, Tørnquist commented that the effects of Faith's presence are much graver than shown and that he was disappointed that he and other designers "didn't manage to really explain what's going on".

Zoë's story begins when her journalist ex-boyfriend Reza Temiz  disappears while investigating Project Alchera, and when Faith, through television-screens, begins urging her to "find" and "save" April Ryan . Zoë tracks Reza to Newport, a fictional megapolis on the West Coast, where she identifies April Ryan before herself forcibly attached to a dreamer console by WATI agents. This unexpectedly transports her first to Faith's imaginary world of 'Winter' and then to Arcadia. There, she locates April, who refuses to take part in Faith's case. Waking in Newport, Zoë travels to Japan to meet Reza's contact Damien Cavanaugh , who explains Project Alchera. With his help, Zoë plants a Trojan Horse program in Eingana and later meets Alvin Peats , the founder of WATI and the mastermind behind Alchera. Zoë thereafter reunites with Damien and later returns to Arcadia. Concurrently, April spies on Azadi officials' negotiations with a hooded "Prophet", whom she follows beneath the Northlands' capital Marcuria to a "Chamber of Dreams", which she enters at the same time that Zoë reaches Eingana, so that the latter's overload correlates with eruption of energy in the former. Confused, April consults the reborn White Dragon, who sends her to Gordon Halloway, who in turn assures her that current events do not endanger the Balance. April returns to Marcuria to discover Zoë captured by Azadi on suspicion of witchcraft; while in Marcuria, Kian Alvane goes in search of April, whom he later meets while both are unaware of each other's identities, with Kian's attempts at conversation leading him to question the morality of his mission. April proceeds to free Zoë but again refuses to assist her. At suggestion of Brian Westhouse , Zoë visits the White Dragon but is teleported by her to April. In the climax, the rebel camp is attacked by Azadi troops, Kian is betrayed by his allies, and April is stabbed and falls into the swamp. Kian is then imprisoned for treason.

Zoë wakes in Stark and receives a message from Damien that the static originated from a testing-site near Saint Petersburg, where she discovers a record of Faith's final months as a captive test subject. Distressed, Zoë returns to Casablanca, where she is discovered by Helena Chang , one of Reza's contacts who originally "created" Faith, and who asks Zoë to meet Faith and persuade her to die, so as to dissipate her influence. Zoë enters Winter and converses with Faith, who claims to be her sister, and who then falls asleep in Zoe's lap, disappearing entirely and thus causing a severe Eingana malfunction. Using the distraction, Peats' second-in-command kills him and takes over WATI and Alchera. At this, Chang places Zoë in coma. She is next shown in hospital, with her father and Reza watching her; whereupon an out-of-body version of Zoë identifies this Reza as an impostor. Unable to wake in Stark, Zoë arrives between the Twin Worlds and tells the resident (named " Vagabond " in the game's art book) her story. In the last shots before the credits, a short television broadcast is shown, announcing the release of Dreamer consoles three months after the events of the game.

Two events of the game are seen through the eyes of Brian Westhouse , an episodic character in both TLJ and Dreamfall . In the prologue, a ritual in a Tibetan monastery sends him to Arcadia but he is instead trapped in Vagabond's realm and attacked by the Undreaming . The exact nature of Undreaming and details of their encounter are never explained in-game; but in TLJ , Westhouse claims having been between the worlds for almost three centuries. In the epilogue, Westhouse struggles through a Tibetan blizzard in 1933 and rescued by Manny Chavez (one of the pseudonyms of the Red Dragon, who appears as Cortez in TLJ ).

• 1 Zoë Castillo
• 2 Brian Westhouse
• 3 Samantha Gilmore

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Dreamfall: Chapters Episode One review: A long-awaited journey

It’s been fifteen years since The Longest Journey came out, making it a pretty apt name for a series. A cult classic, The Longest Journey is regarded as one of the best point-and-click adventure games and best game stories of all time.In 2007 fans finally got a long-awaited sequel, known as Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , which wrapped up a few story threads from the original game while opening up even more questions.

And now, seven years and one successful Kickstarter campaign later, we finally get Dreamfall: Chapters , an episodic sequel that takes place immediately after the events of the 2007 game.

Was it worth the wait? Let’s dig in.

What dreams are made of

Dreamfall: Chapters , like its immediate predecessor, is a third-person adventure game taking place in the dual worlds of Stark and Arcadia. Stark is a near-future reflection of our own world, heavy on science and technology, while Arcadia is a fantastical realm of magic.

In case you’ve forgotten the ending of the 2007 game, spoilers ahead: After discovering a global conspiracy to co-opt people’s dreams, protagonist Zoe Castillo was put into a coma and left to die. April Ryan, star of the original Longest Journey , was killed. The third protagonist, Kian Alvade, was captured by his own men on charges of treason and left in a jail cell to await execution.

Yeah, The Longest Journey has never really been good at happy endings. That’s part of what makes it so special—this is unapologetically an adventure game for adults. I mean, the first game (again, spoilers) leads you to believe that you’re a long-awaited savior, that you’re the key figure in the world’s mythology, only to reveal in the last act that you were nothing but a side character the whole time. April Ryan is left with nothing, no purpose, as the game closes. It’s bleak.

Dreamfall: Chapters opens with this bleakness. Zoe is still in a coma, April is still dead, and Kian still awaits execution. And while two of those things change, it remains to be seen whether they’ve changed for the better.

This is but the first episode of five, so it’s a bit hard to get a feel for where everything’s headed. The Longest Journey has never been a series content with the micro level, which is a bit funny because that’s where it excels. The Longest Journey and Dreamfall are fantastic at telling enormous, world-shifting epics, and I have no doubt another is in store for us with Dreamfall: Chapters .

But what makes this such a special series is the way it handles the mundane. Like The Longest Journey , Dreamfall: Chapters opens with…normality. Well, not really—there’s an extended prologue/dream sequence at the beginning that aptly demonstrates how far the series has come graphically since 2007.

Once we’ve escaped that dream sequence, however, we’re left literally at square one. Zoe awakens from her coma with no memory of the events in Dreamfall , and while we (the audience) know what transpired she’s left to piece it back together. Or not.

As such, we’re confronted with a Zoe Castillo who has a day life—a Zoe Castillo who goes to therapy, who delivers lunch to her boyfriend, who works a day job. While there are seeds of a much larger conspiracy to unravel, and while we know that inevitably the other shoe must drop (and drop with what I assume is a world-threatening bang), it’s the way Red Thread and writer Ragnar Tornquist add life to liveliness to what should by all rights be boring that I find admirable.

I can’t wait to watch things escalate, but I wasn’t at all let down by this opening episode of Dreamfall: Chapters . It’s slow and ponderous and you’ll spend much of your time just wandering the city of Europolis, listening to random side-conversations (the magical realm of Arcadia barely makes an appearance), but it’s a way of easing you into a world—of making this feel like a real place rather than Video Game City X—that I really admire. It dangles just enough out there to get you excited and then pulls back. The Longest Journey has never been one to show its cards quickly. Don’t believe me? Go back and play the original point-and-click adventure.

What’s disappointing is that we have to wait for the next chapter—the downfall of all episodic games. There’s something to be said about the format in relation to a tale like Dreamfall , though. Already I’ve seen people going into forums and speculating about the end of this first chapter. It’s almost like watching Lost when it aired, when fans dissected every frame and throwaway line for meaning.

And props to Red Thread for giving us a series of choices that are apparently world-shifting. The game borrows rather heavily from Telltale’s school of adventure game design, to the extent that the screen flashes the same “BLANK will remember this” text after you make key decisions.

I was amazed by the breadth of those changes though, even in this first chapter. With one early choice you lock yourself out of an entire section of content, regardless of which path you take. That’s Witcher 2 levels of gutsy, and is a drastically different approach than Telltale’s “Illusion of Choice” style. For a series that’s always played with notions of free will, of faith and rejection of faith, it’s a bold extension of those themes into the actual layout of the narrative.

Bottom line

I completely understand if you wait until all five pieces of Dreamfall: Chapters are released. There are some bugs Red Thread needs to figure out (specifically in regards to performance and optimization) and I imagine it’s hard to sell you on an initial chapter where literally nothing seems to happen if you’re not already a fan.

But as hard as it is to explain, that’s the charm of it. I honestly don’t know if non-fans will ever want to play this game—Tornquist and Co. barely refresh your memory on the plot of the original Dreamfall , and I can imagine the dual-protagonist, dual-world structure makes very little sense if you haven’t followed this series since its first iteration.

I have, though. I have no qualms about saying this is one of the best-written, best-voiced, and best-structured adventure series in all of gaming, and from this initial chapter I expect the same quality from Dreamfall: Chapters . If you haven’t played The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey , maybe check them out.

And if you have? Well, there’s still four chapters to go, but as far as I can tell this is the sequel you’ve been awaiting for seven years.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey review

Clumsy combat and adventure games just don't mix.

GamesRadar+ Verdict

The engaging storyline

Jack Angel's voice acting as Wonkers

The plausible puzzles

The half-hearted combat

No plot resolution

Waiting for a sequel

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Imagine a majestic bald eagle soaring through the sky, not a care in the world except for where its next furry meat-snack is coming from. Now imagine that same eagle trying to flap its wings with a brick tied to its talons. That's pretty much how we'd sum up Dreamfall: The Longest Journey - a high-flying adventure that's been weighed down with several unnecessary and awkward fighting sequences.

Dreamfall is a sequel to The Longest Journey , a highly regarded PC adventure game from 2000 that was big with the "point-and-click" crowd of adventure purists. To make Dreamfall more accessible, the sequel travels the action/adventure route in this follow-up.

Well, kinda. Heroine Zoe Castillo can wander her fully 3D surroundings freely, but any interactions with the environment - climbing, chatting, picking up items, even walking up stairs - are triggered only when an on-screen icon says you can do so. It's an interesting departure from the traditional, "3D person walking around a 2D background" system that this genre grew up using.

Dreamfall 's adventure roots are also apparent in your character's Focus Field, a mode that puts your attention on a particular object or person in the form of a big blue beam of light. Its use is only required a few times during the entire game, though; you may forget the mode even exists until you get stuck.

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

• Xbox 360 Games Store

Funcom's long-awaited follow-up to the point-and-click adventure, The Longest Journey. Dreamfall depicts three unique characters who live apparently disparate lives, but whose stories are intertwined, along with the fate of two worlds.

Summary short summary describing this game..

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey last edited by SpongeBat1 on 05/11/22 08:47AM View full history

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is a 2006 adventure game developed by Funcom as a direct sequel to the 2000 game The Longest Journey . It was simultaneously released for the PC and Xbox , appears on the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list, and is currently available for download on the 360 through Microsoft's "Xbox Originals" program. It was also added to the GOG and Steam digital distribution storefronts. Dreamfall features many returning characters from the original game, as well as a full cast of new ones, who allow the player to experience the story through fresh eyes and different points of view.

Unlike its predecessor, which was a point-and-click adventure game in the vein of Sierra's classic King's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry games, Dreamfall is a fully 3D game which eschews dense puzzle solving in favor of exploration, combat and stealth sequences. The main character is controlled from a third-person perspective with access to automatic quest logs and a basic inventory system which allows the player to combine and use items from the environment to solve basic puzzles. Combat is simplistic, with buttons for quick or strong attacks and no combo system to speak of. The stealth mechanics are similarly rudimentary, but like the combat portions, are also infrequent, brief, and forgiving.

Most of Dreamfall's gameplay actually centers on simply moving from one point to another, examining elements of the environment along the way, and experiencing the dialogue-based storytelling.

Dreamfall is a traditional adventure game at heart, with the player controlling three different characters - Zoë , Kian , and April (and briefly a fourth, Brian Westhouse , during the game's intro) - and moving them around all sorts of fantasy-themed or otherworldly areas. The current player character talks to people, choosing topics and collecting information about what to do next. They'll also collect a fair amount of items throughout their journeys that they'll need to present to others or combine into new items in order to progress. Kian's chapters are the exception, as all his sequences are purely story-driven.

In addition to chatting and exploring the environment, a hacking minigame where the player will need to match up symbols on a board in a short amount of time also plays a role in several sequences in the game in which a character must break and enter into a location to get the required information to move forward in the plot.

There is a very simple combat system at play in the game, too, although fighting takes up maybe 20 minutes or so of the entire experience. Two attack buttons and a block button are available, with a character able to target one enemy at a time. Health bars are displayed for both parties, and if the player's character perishes, the player will start over from the beginning of the fight. Likewise, the stealth sequences, if failed, will simply drop the player off at one of the frequent checkpoints.

In The Longest Journey, protagonist April Ryan discovered that the Earth she grew up in, the world governed by the laws of science and physics, is only one half of a complete whole.

Another Earth exists, parallel to her own, in which humans and mythological creatures can use magic and alchemy to affect their reality. A delicate Balance maintains the separation between these alternate realities, and when April is discovered to have the latent ability to shift between the two dimensions, she is swept up in a quest to preserve that balance and save both Earths.

Her victory is a narrow one, and for a brief time, chaos enveloped both realms. Stark , the world of logic and technology, suffered a great Collapse where virtually all existing electronics simply ceased to function. Communication with all extraterrestrial colonies was suddenly and permanently severed, and societies crumbled as the infrastructure around them was rendered useless. In the world of magic and fantasy the chaos took on a more literal form: a great black cloud which triggered a great upheaval among the indigenous people. The great capital city of which April visited is nearly conquered by a great invading army of the Tyren , but they are finally beaten back when the Azadi arrive from the distant Southlands to liberate the Marcurian people.

Dreamfall picks up ten years later, in year 2219, when both worlds still bear the scars from those events. Believing itself to be the victim of a cataclysmic terrorist attack, Stark has been unified under a single global agency called simply the Syndicate which continuously regulates an omnipresent wireless signal linking every electronic device on the planet. This vast network is known as the Wire, and the relentless surveillance of the global population has inspired a burgeoning black market for phones and PDAs which can operate apart from the main grid.

Meanwhile, in the magical world of Arcadia, the Azadi who liberated Marcuria from the barbaric Tyren have become the new occupying force, dedicated to converting the human population with their own religious beliefs while segregating the non-human inhabitants into ghettos. This has provoked an active, but limited resistance to spring up in the surrounding areas, using guerrilla-style tactics to disrupt Azadi supply caravans while quietly trying to garner more support among the docile masses in the city.

The game includes three alternating protagonists: Zoë Castillo, a melancholy college drop-out in Stark who sets out to find a dear friend who disappeared in the middle of a journalistic investigation; April Ryan, the disillusioned heroine from the first game who has permanently settled in Arcadia as a leader of the Resistance; and Kian Alvane, an elite Azadi warrior newly assigned to Marcuria to stamp out the Resistance once and for all. Player control automatically switches between these characters as their disparate plot lines unfold, and before the end, they’ll discover that their interwoven quests have uncovered a new danger which threatens both worlds.

Unanswered Questions

Unlike The Longest Journey which told a single, complete tale from beginning to end, Dreamfall was designed and written as the first part of a two-part story. This leaves many major plot elements unresolved by the end of the game, which long-time fans are hoping will be answered in the presently-ongoing episodic Dreamfall: Chapters . It remains unclear when the story might be brought to a close.

The soundtrack to Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was composed primarily by Leon Willett and released in the United States on June 2nd, 2006.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Original Soundtrack Track Listing

Name: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Original Soundtrack

Total length: 1:08:34

• "Dreamfall Theme - Tibet Monastery" - 2:40
• "The Hospital Room" - 2:23
• "Casablanca" - 3:42
• "Jiva" - 2:25
• "Reza's Apartment" - 3:50
• "Northlands Forest" - 3:13
• "Newport" - 3:00
• "The Underground City"- 2:40
• "Marcuria" - 2:44
• "Meeting April Ryan / April's Theme" - 2:22
• "Necropolis"- 1:49
• "Sadir" - 3:18
• "WATI Corp" - 6:04
• "The Swamplands" - 3:15
• "Kain's Theme" - 2:54
• "Zoe's Theme" - 1:28
• "St. Petersberg" - 2:00
• "The Factory" - 1:12
• "Lana And Maud" - 2:09
• "Clay" - 2:37
• "Rush" - 3:16
• "Faith" - 9:32

Xbox Originals

On April 21, 2008, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey became available on the Xbox 360's Xbox Originals download service for 1200 Microsoft Points.

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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Preaching to the converted.

Videogames can be brash affairs, with their guns and cars and tits and stuff. Pop culture entertainment and big name brands bound together with startling technical wizardry and graphics-as-porn. Forty quid gets you 15 hours of in-your-face fun. Have some of that, you monkeys!

Some games - adventures games if I'm to get to a point - sit outside this world of in-your-face entertainment. Adventure games need to have a confident style, rich character and intelligent storytelling if they're going to make an impact in a world where bigger guns make a game better than the last. And while many fans look back at the good old days of point and click adventure games as a golden era, titles such as Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Bone and Fahrenheit have all delivered enough wit, kookiness and charisma to prove they're just as relevant to this generation as the past. There are not enough developers (or publishers, for that matter) willing to take the risk on this sort of game, but that's a different story.

To its credit, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey pulls off the style and narrative demands of the adventure genre with flair. The story is strong, and it unfolds, twists and develops at a welcome pace. Conversations with the inhabitants of the worlds are meaty but never overwhelming. Ten minutes of chat isn't laborious, but insightful and intriguing. This sequel to the much fawned over PC adventure, confusingly titled The Longest Journey, will be a welcome return for those that succumbed to the charms of the original game six long years ago. With three playable characters and contrasting worlds to explore, Dreamfall has a deep story to sink into.

The move to three dimensions prompts the player to explore, but it's still a shallow affair. You point your character in the right direction and when it's possible to interact with something or someone an icon appears. Adventure games always rely on puzzles, but in Dreamfall there's no real challenging solutions to your dilemmas. There's barely any complexity to a puzzle that asks you to find an item and take it to a specific location. There's an unwelcome amount of handholding throughout Dreamfall, whether from characters practically telling you what to do, or just very obvious game design, making the experience a meander through the game rather than a challenge. And there's scarcely anything more depressing in a modern adventure game than being confronted with yet another lock-picking mini-game. If I could sacrifice one of my little fingers in order to never have to play such a thing ever again, I would.

Elsewhere, the 'action' aspects of the game can only be described as really, really bad. Fighting doesn't happen a lot, but when it does it's a clumsy, unresponsive punch-drunk shuffle with no style, rudimentary animation and piss poor mechanics. "Hey, it's an adventure game, it's not about fighting," I hear you cry. Well then, why the blinkin' flip are these barely-baked sections even in the game? It makes Fahrenheit's feeble use of quicktime moments for brawling seem like Virtua Fighter.

Stealth makes an appearance too, and feels about as welcome as a jackboot at a testicle party. I'm no ninja, but even I know that to creep past unnoticed I should do my best to avoid broken glass. And that's your lot. No wall-hugging, no using the shadows to your advantage, no light meter or strategic use of scenery. Just crouch down and keep out of your enemy's field of vision and you'll be fine. And try to avoid going in to narrow corners as much as possible, because the camera seems to have been designed by someone with a lazy eye.

Some stealth and confrontational situations can be avoided by turning to conversation, and it's good to know you're given the option to try different approaches, but it's worth noting that there's only ever one outcome. Decisions your character makes will rarely change the course of the game.

The presentation of Dreamfall compliments the story well. It's not a great looking game (even the PC version on Ultra settings is a big disappointment), but it's distinctive with a visual style that helps create the convincing alternative worlds. The use of sound is excellent too, from ambient noise to instrumental soundtrack and strong voice work. Conversations are a little choppy, but that's probably due to the sheer amount of speech recorded for the game. Generally, it's this kind of care and attention to detail that enforces developer Funcom's adventure game credentials.

Dreamfall has clearly been designed for those that like to follow an unfolding story, for those that are happy to listen to other people's conversations and immerse themselves in character exposition and plot revelations. We can't berate something for wanting to be an 'interactive experience' when it does it so well. So many games try to be something different and end up flat on their arses that we can say Dreamfall is an adventure game success.

But in many ways it's only preaching to the converted. Characters from the first game return, so if you've not experienced part one you can be a little baffled, or simply oblivious to who they are and what they've done in the past. Even if you have played the first game you might not remember the finer details very well - it has been six years after all. And just like a long running TV series, there's no real conclusion to the story. Be aware that however many hours you put into the game (around the 15 hour mark, by the way), you won't come away feeling satisfied with the outcome. Do we have to wait another six years?

And that's a shame for newcomers, because they're missing out on a story that has been so lovingly crafted. If the stealth and fighting sections are there to tempt those that aren't usually aroused by this sort of game, or to breathe life back into a crusty genre, they've done the worst job possible. And with puzzles that don't tax the brain, it's not really a thinking experience either.

The addition of more traditional 'gamey' elements is a complete failure, and Dreamfall lacks the crossover appeal found in something like Fahrenheit, with its self-contained story. It doesn't do anything new and neither does it go very far in welcoming the curious. If you liked The Longest Journey then you'll be eager to delve back into the story, but even that's hampered by the fact that there's a clear set up for Part Three, so don't expect closure. The best that can be said for Dreamfall is that you can sit down with a copy knowing that there's little to do, but you'll enjoy investigating the story and experiencing an interesting sci-fi fable.

Read this next

• The Longest Journey lead actress needs money for medical expenses
• The Dreamfall Chapters Kickstarter drive has begun
• Dreamfall Chapters will be a single-player adventure game for PC and Mac

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey/Prologue: Tainted

Table of Contents

• Dialogue outcomes
• Prologue: Tainted
• Chapter 1: One
• Chapter 2: Lost
• Chapter 3: 201
• Chapter 4: Winter
• Chapter 5: Alchera
• Chapter 6: Morpheus
• Chapter 7: Destiny
• Chapter 8: Convergence
• Chapter 9: All That We See or Seem...
• Chapter 10: Crossroads
• Chapter 11: Faith
• Chapter 12: Reversal
• Chapter 13: The Longest Journey
• 1.1 Using the interface in the cell
• 2 Main chamber
• 3 The Storytime

Buddhist Monastary [ edit ]

There is little to do in this chapter other than getting used to the controls, and especially use of the Focus Field.

--> Continue Dismiss Report

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Long Day’s Journey Into Night review – Brian Cox upstaged by Patricia Clarkson’s morphine fiend

Wyndham’s theatre, London Cox is thrilling as an overbearing patriarch but it’s Clarkson who steals the show in Eugene O’Neill’s agonising family drama

T he overbearing patriarch in Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical drama is an actor who feels his career has been straitjacketed by typecasting. Could James Tyrone be speaking for Brian Cox too who, playing him, steps almost seamlessly from Succession’s paterfamilias to O’Neill’s flawed father marshalling obstreperous sons?

Even if so, Cox is, as always, thrilling to watch. Yet it is Patricia Clarkson as his “morphine fiend” of a wife, just returned from a sanatorium and tumbling back into addiction, who steals the show. Clarkson exudes vulnerability along with hard denial. For all the play’s period elements – it is set in 1912 – hers feels like a true, infuriating, compassionate portrait of an addict.

Tyrone is less textured, a disgruntled and judgmental father switching between anger, flecks of wry humour and expressions of love.

First staged posthumously in 1956 against O’Neill’s instruction that it not be dramatised for 25 years after his death, it might represent the gruelling apex of classic American dysfunction family dramas. We spend a day with the Tyrones, during the course of which the source of Mary’s addiction is revealed along with the family’s points of weakness and pain, from James’s tight-fistedness and tendencies towards drink to wrangles between his sons, Edmund (Laurie Kynaston), a failed poet with TB, and Jamie (Daryl McCormack), a failed actor and drunk.

Under Jeremy Herrin’s direction, the production does not seek to leaven the drama’s gloomy spirit: it is a long, talking play with little action delicately well-crafted which slides between domestic exchange and accusation, anger, emotional conflagration.

Here it is stripped to its elemental state as the family convene in their summer home and vacillate between love and hate. Anger is tempered by anxious love that ironically seem to fuel each other’s various addictions: parents wring their hands over Edmund’s illness, sons wring theirs over their mother’s soul-sapping addiction.

In one pique, Mary tells James the family house has never felt like a home and Lizzie Clachan’s set, spare and wooden, reflects her sentiment. It has the look of early American puritanism, Shaker-like in its simple lines, severe colour palette and sleek lighting (by Jack Knowles). There are doorways within doorways, it seems, which gesture towards Mary’s sense of being spied upon too, although the set-up, as empty as it is, does not quite carry a sense of over-heated crowdedness.

“There’s gloom in the air you could cut with a knife,” says James. He is right. This drama is so stark it seems almost Beckettian, despite its naturalism. Yet there is forgiveness and tenderness between the hard edges, especially between Mary and James – Cox and Clarkson have a lovely, natural chemistry. And although characters spiral into resentment and rage, they always return to love and togetherness, which makes this distinct from the emotional desolations of a Tennessee Williams drama.

Louisa Harland, for her part, is so effective as the family maid, Cathleen, that you want more of her. She lifts every scene she is in, turning a functional role into a comic highlight.

Some scenes glitter with dark energy, and are truly tragic. Others feel protracted, the play’s old-fashioned exposition exposed, and the over-used device of characters narrating memories feeling like lengthy confessions. The circularity of family argument and accusation, are grinding too, and do not always absorb us, emotionally.

At three and a half hours it feels withering. Then again, that is the point here. This is the ultimate family reckoning, with some light, but mostly shade.

• Eugene O'Neill
• Patricia Clarkson

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