Tendo City

aka The Longest Journey 2. But unlike that game, a straight adventure (in the Lucasarts style, kinda, with a serious story but with some humor, and no death), it's an action-adventure... done for market realities I guess, but it's definitely unfortunate. Now, having a few battles would be fine -- there are some combats in TLJ but it's just another puzzle and you can't lose or anything, and replacing that with battles would be okay -- but a full action-adventure? Too bad, really. I hope the adventure aspect isn't diluted... and that I can once I play it call it an adventure game with action in the good sense, like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Full Throttle, and not a action game with "adventure" like too many games out there. Oh, I am sure it'll have a great story, but how about the puzzles... and it's sad to see the adventure genre lose another game. I hope that doesn't happen.

Though, the list of games he mentions as influences is a nice list of many of the better recent action-adventures... though this will be their own, obviously. And given TLJ, it'll have a huge amount of story... that was a truly epic game.

On that note, this is one of the few times I don't mind to hear that the next game will be shorter... I mean 'epic' in every sense of the word. Oh, 30-40 hours isn't super long, maybe, but it is for an adventure game...especially since I've always found that they take me a good long time to finish. But TLJ has one of the better (and lengthier, even for the genre) stories I've seen in a game, so it's worth it...

Honestly, now that I think about it, the way they dealt with fights in TLJ was kind of stupid. And since this game is going deeper into these dangerous worlds, adding more combat is natural... and the interview lessens some of my fears. As does how great the first game was... this should be quite good...

Anyway, nice 5-page interview/preview.

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/512/512726p1.html

Also, the website has more info and screenshots/artwork and stuff.

http://www.dreamfall.com

http://pc.ign.com/articles/515/515389p1.html

A bit more info, but not much... still, sounds great. Sure, it has some combat elements, but as they say with their track record, I have confidence they'll incorporate it into the game in a good way. And releasing it on consoles, as well as doing this, should help expand the audience for this great series...

Going 3d (for the environments) is a step they would obviously take, but I'm happy it looks this good. It almost matches the artistic quality of the 2d art in the last game... quite an achievement.

New adventure game: Good thing.
Turning it into an action-adventure: Bad thing.
Oh well, even Zork had action. I remember when just starting out I got into the Great Underground Empire and was almost immediatly killed by a troll. Or was it an ogre?

And as I said, Indy Fate had action, and it's one of my favorite adventure games (and made PCG's top 50 list a few times), and Full Throttle was great and had action, and even Curse of Monkey Island had some action parts, and that was the best game in that series... it's not a game-killer. What matters is how it's implemented. And I think they can do it. TLJ was more than good enough to give me confidence in them.

The graphics are certainly impressive.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/lon...lashtop_bg

This game looks better and better with every preview... not quite a traditional adventure game, but the genre needs some new life so that's fine. The main problem I can think of is if the game makes repeated references to the first game so that people who didn't play it will be confused... something easy to do with a sequel to a game with a story as complex as TLJ had (of course, everyone should play TLJ too and not have that problem... :D). They should be able to do it right, though. It will be interesting, however, to see how different from TLJ this game is... that was a very traditionally presented adventure game with a deep and complex story. The story here promises to be just as complex, but they've said the game will be shorter so it might not quite match up (especially given how well TLJ is presented and how well the story is told)... we'll see what exactly 'more cinematic' means in actual gameplay terms (that is, if it's done in a way that has a just as good and just as well presented story, just done a bit differently, or if it's been dumbed down for the consoles, as often happens... same goes for the puzzles.) Oh, and I sure hope that the main character(s) still speak and have character... the unique personality (voiced) of the main character in TLJ is definitely one of the game's good points.

Quote:SAN FRANCISCO--Norwegian studio Funcom created what many adventure game fans consider to be a classic in The Longest Journey back in 2000. But the successor to that acclaimed game won't be the traditional point-and-click adventure game its forebear was. The developer is purposely attempting to make a game that's different than most others on the market. Designer Ragnar Tornquist explained that he finds it difficult to classify Dreamfall: The Longest Journey within any standard game genre, and that frankly, this doesn't bother him one bit. In fact, the designer likens the game, which will combine elements of adventure games, stealth games, and third-person combat, less to a traditional adventure game and more to a page-turning "thriller" novel, especially since the game will emphasize its multilayered story and characters.

While we were shown only a few brief sequences from an early part of the game, we were able to get some idea of what the developer is trying to create. An early part of the game begins with Zoe Castillo, the game's primary protagonist, lying in bed on a sunny day in a futuristic version of the Moroccan city of Casablanca. Sunlight streams through the windows past her watchful father, who, after the death of Zoe's mother, has only his daughter left. There's only one problem: Zoe has, for whatever reason, ended up in a coma--this opening sequence is narrated by Zoe herself, who suggests that the only way she could be communicating with you, the player, might be because she's having an out-of-body experience--and that the world is in terrible danger, especially since everyone else who could have helped prevent the impending danger is already dead.

After this cryptic introduction, the game flashes back about two weeks to a time when Zoe was more conscious, but about as confused. Zoe, much like April Ryan from The Longest Journey, begins her adventures as a young adult who isn't really sure what to do with herself. A former student at Casablanca's thriving Capetown University bioengineering program, Zoe recently dropped out of school, broke up with her boyfriend, and now lives with her father in the wealthy and relatively safe town, whose local economy is build on advanced biotechnology and a rather loose interpretation of the law. And even more strangely, she's started to see things--most specifically, a black-and-white picture of a small girl who whispers only, "find her, save her," and seems to appear in every TV and computer monitor she looks in. At the beginning of the game, Zoe is convinced that the apparition is the result of either a viral marketing campaign, or a dropping signal generated by "static," the effects of solar winds on the worldwide wireless network. As Zoe wakes up, she finds that her mobile phone is ringing--the object will act in the game as a sort of quest log that keeps track of where she needs to go next.

The game will also have a traditional (but minimalist) inventory for items you pick up...and very little else in terms of an interface. Tornquist explained that the game is attempting to both be highly cinematic and more accessible to a wider audience, so as a result, it won't have any huge opaque windows cluttering up the screen. Much of the game's interaction will take place using the "focus field," a narrow beam of light that emits from your character and lets you interact with whatever it falls on, whether that be using an item or talking to a character. This interface seems to work quite well with an Xbox controller, and may very well be the answer to how to create a good point-and-click interface equivalent on consoles.

Once you've targeted an object, you may then have a choice of different ways to interact with your target. These will be shown onscreen not as big long lines of dialogue to read through and choose from, but as brief text cues in a radial menu, which have a text explanation at the bottom of the screen. In a dialogue, it's assumed that your character has said something to the effect of whichever option you've chosen to move the conversation along.

We watched as Zoe descended the stairs to speak to her father, who makes it clear that he's concerned about his daughter's recent decision to abandon her degree. While this kind of buildup of Zoe's character might seem out of place for a game, Tornquist explained that the game will attempt to flesh out its characters before they're thrown into the action. The designer pointed out that by the end of the early part of the game, players will not only have met Zoe, but they will also have met her father, her best friend, and her ex-boyfriend, and will hopefully understand her motivations better before tossing her into action.

An Even Longer Journey?

"Action" for Zoe includes wandering the sunny streets of Casablanca, where her friend Olivia runs an underground hacker shop (complete with boxed copies of The Longest Journey on the shelves). Apparently, Zoe's good friend loves challenging herself with trying to bypass The Wire, which is, according the game, what the Internet evolves into in a few centuries--an all-seeing, all-encompassing wireless network to which everything is attached. Olivia has hacked together a cloaking device that shields Zoe's cell phone from The Wire--an ability that will apparently come in very handy later on.

While, in the early level, Zoe is running late for her self-defense class at the gym (about the only thing she does these days besides hanging out at cafes), she gets a call from her ex-boyfriend, an investigative journalist who has a dangerous hobby of looking for behind-the-scenes stories that blow the lid off of big-money corporate scandals. Our heroine gets a job to pick up a package at a company building downtown and meets a secretary who claims that the contact Zoe was scheduled to meet is unavailable--but at that moment, the monitor behind the secretary shows a person who could be the contact, apparently trapped someplace and trying to get out. You can leave the scene, attempt to distract the secretary, or point the secretary to the scene on the monitor. Doing the latter causes the secretary, who has apparently been instructed to keep everything a secret, to leap over her desk and engage Zoe in hand-to-hand combat.

When in combat, the game screen updates to show small bars that indicate each character's remaining health, similar to a traditional fighting game. Zoe knows how to throw some punches, having studied self-defense, but she's no prize fighter, and she can apparently complete all her adventures without throwing a single punch if she instead relies on reasoning with key characters and sneaking past those that won't listen to reason. Tornquist explains that the game's combat is intended to be very physical and very visceral--and in Zoe's case, it may be something you'll want to avoid altogether (though some of the other characters will be much more proficient in battle).

After vanquishing the receptionist, our heroine finds her way to a back room where a mysterious man has just blown the lock on a glass chamber containing the trapped woman. He runs past her and escapes, and it's up to Zoe to save her contact, who is in danger of dying from the noxious gas leaking into her chamber. Unable to open the jammed door, Zoe notices that her contact keeps pointing at the ceiling of her soundproof cell--this is the clue Zoe needs to clamber atop a nearby booth and release a hidden valve that manually opens the cell. As her contact staggers out of what could have been her tomb, Zoe learns that she might be mixed up in something much larger than delivery jobs. This becomes even more apparent when she visits the apartment of her ex-boyfriend. The front door is ajar, and as Zoe enters, she finds that the place has been torn apart with no sign of her former beau, until she finds a corpse lying behind the couch. Suddenly, the TV screen comes to life and again shows the mysterious little girl--then cuts to a live feed of the riot commandos who are clambering up the stairs to the apartment.

In what Tornquist refers to as a "set piece," Zoe is faced with a scene in which the outcome is more or less fixed. That is, there's no real way for her to escape the highly efficient soldiers and their sonic stunguns, but if she chooses to try to confront them or to openly surrender, she'll simply be apprehended. If she chooses to try to hide nearby, she'll actually be able to overhear bits of information that may come in handy later. Even though the game will have a mostly linear structure in the interests of telling a strong story, it will still have many hidden bits of information and secrets that you'll be able to find by looking carefully and examining your surroundings. Tornquist explained that the game is intended to have a "complex and multilayered story," and hopes that players will be encouraged to play through the game more than once, since there will be bits and pieces of story, and specific explanations, that players may miss their first time around.

Dreamfall already comes across as a very promising game with beautiful environments and dialogue that seems every bit as snappy as that of The Longest Journey. The new game's added emphasis on story, character development, and personality (through the use of character and facial animations, rather than relying on line after line of pure text dialogue) seem like they'll go a long way to contributing to the game's cinematic look and feel. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is scheduled for release later this year.

As for the screenshots, it looks alright. The character graphics are clearly an improvement over TLJ's much cruder 3D, but I'm far from convinced that 3d was the right choice for the environments... it just isn't the same... pretty close, but not quite the same.










Versus TLJ.











As I said, great backgrounds but just mediocre 3d characters. While playing you get used to the dichotomy though... clearly Dreamfall has a similar srt style (if you also look at that first batch of pictures I posted), and at times has just about as good artwork, but overall I'd say that the 3d, like usual, reduces the overall quality of the image and means you have less little details... more "realistic" perhaps (though really only if it's actually interactive, which it usually isn't), but just not as artistically beautiful. But they do come close sometimes.