Dreamfall Chapters
- Thread starter oddsbodikins
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After playing TLJ and Dreamfall over the last month, I just started Chapters. I have to say, I am glad I waited for all of it to be out because the cliffhangers (abysshangers) at the end of Dreamfall, with no sequel coming for 7 years, would have pizzed me off and possibly soured me on it.
But hey, now I am playing Chapters and so far it is great, three hours in. I wish they could get original voice actors, the save system did not suck, and I could skip descriptive dialogue lines, but other than these flaws it has been fantastic so far. Great dialogue (love Sully), much bigger locations with tons and tons of text, impressive atmosphere and best soundtrack. Really liking it.
But hey, now I am playing Chapters and so far it is great, three hours in. I wish they could get original voice actors, the save system did not suck, and I could skip descriptive dialogue lines, but other than these flaws it has been fantastic so far. Great dialogue (love Sully), much bigger locations with tons and tons of text, impressive atmosphere and best soundtrack. Really liking it.
I just finished Chapters and feel like it has been completely overlooked this year. Not present in any GOTY lists, many outlets didn't even bother reviewing it. It only has ten reviews on metacritic!
Here are my impressions. I spent last month playing through (first time) TLJ, Dreamfall and Chapters.
I have no idea how Red Thread managed to create such extensive (28 hours), almost triple A production on such low budget and small team (although yes, they took some time). I am glad they went to Kickstarter though, because I found this Dreamfall most enjoyable of the three games. But it was a good idea to finish the first two beforehand, the story impact is much stronger thanks to it. And of course, waiting for the full game to be released before starting it - also a good idea. But first, let's get the nitpicks out of the way.
- What annoyed me the most was one interface related issue. The world is full of interactive objects and people that Zoe and Kian can comment on with their internal monologue. The problem is, many of them have multiple lines, but the game does not inform when the lines are exhausted. So I often had to hear repeated lines..which breaks immersion a bit. And all that would be needed to fix this is change the color of cursor prompts to grey or something.
- Voice acting is, on the whole, fantastic. But there is a bit of issue with voice actor reusage. One in particular stood out for being used for too many incidental NPCs. The fact that it is the same one who voiced Vernon Roche in Witcher series didn't help matters. But he is awesome, at least. And I went through a bit of a shellshock when hearing Zoe for the first time. She is voiced by someone else, but I got used to it after a while, and in the end I liked her even more than in Dreamfall.
- Facial animations could use more work. But I understand this was an indie game made on shoestring budget, and it already looks and sounds mostly incredible, so I can't complain too much here. It didn't hurt my enjoyment.
- Puzzles were, once again, a bit too vague and obscure. Not all, just from time to time. But I had to resort to guide a couple times, because I felt like the puzzle just wasted my time. The locations are so big that sometimes searching for solution was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
- Last issue, framerate. In certain scenes my framerate dropped to fourties. I have GTX1070 so that wasn't pleasant. But given the genre of the game and its beautiful graphics, I wasn't too bothered.
Ok, now that those are out of the way. Why would I give Dreamfall Chapters 9/10. The writing, characters, dialogues, story.
Chapters start out..strangely. The first two, three books almost feel like they are not even sequels to Dreamfall. Nothing much from the unresolved plotlines is being dealt with, instead it is all about Prague-European-Arcadian politics and corruption. But even there, I already hugely enjoyed Chapters, thanks to its atmosphere and enjoyable characters and dialogue (Sully, Mirra, Queenie..). And then in book four the stakes get raised, Chapters switch into high gear and it is one big revelation after another, right into the beautiful melancholic ending. Few unanswered questions still remain, but I don't mind that. I don't need to know everything. I assume the slower start was done on purpose to ease newcomers into the universe, which is understandable.
The location design and their contrast, beautiful. Europolis and Marcuria, both more beautiful and bigger than ever. I enjoyed exploring them, seeing how they change with time and passing chapters. Europolis is a futuristic cyberpunkish Prague, Marcuria fairy tale-like medieval town. And so many great characters, of course Crow, but also Enu, Likho, Shephard, Nela and many others. Zoe rules of course, but Kian and Likho with their buddy cop movie chemistry, growing into regular bromance, were great fun to hang out with. The humor was always a part of TLJ games, but Chapters take the cake I think. All the Rooster and Kitten jokes, the interactions between straight man (wink) Kian and embarrased Enu.. What surprised me though was the swearing. Characters don't mind using some Fks and Cts if they feel like it. But hey, people in real life swear. But it ain't quite as kid friendly as the previous two games. One one last thing I have to mention, the soundtrack. Simon Poole did a phenomenal job with the music, each scene enhanced by the score.
Anyway, I am glad I embarked on this Longest Journey. All three games were enjoyable. I am curious what will Ragnar do next. I wouldn't mind more adventures from this world, some day.
Here are my impressions. I spent last month playing through (first time) TLJ, Dreamfall and Chapters.
I have no idea how Red Thread managed to create such extensive (28 hours), almost triple A production on such low budget and small team (although yes, they took some time). I am glad they went to Kickstarter though, because I found this Dreamfall most enjoyable of the three games. But it was a good idea to finish the first two beforehand, the story impact is much stronger thanks to it. And of course, waiting for the full game to be released before starting it - also a good idea. But first, let's get the nitpicks out of the way.
- What annoyed me the most was one interface related issue. The world is full of interactive objects and people that Zoe and Kian can comment on with their internal monologue. The problem is, many of them have multiple lines, but the game does not inform when the lines are exhausted. So I often had to hear repeated lines..which breaks immersion a bit. And all that would be needed to fix this is change the color of cursor prompts to grey or something.
- Voice acting is, on the whole, fantastic. But there is a bit of issue with voice actor reusage. One in particular stood out for being used for too many incidental NPCs. The fact that it is the same one who voiced Vernon Roche in Witcher series didn't help matters. But he is awesome, at least. And I went through a bit of a shellshock when hearing Zoe for the first time. She is voiced by someone else, but I got used to it after a while, and in the end I liked her even more than in Dreamfall.
- Facial animations could use more work. But I understand this was an indie game made on shoestring budget, and it already looks and sounds mostly incredible, so I can't complain too much here. It didn't hurt my enjoyment.
- Puzzles were, once again, a bit too vague and obscure. Not all, just from time to time. But I had to resort to guide a couple times, because I felt like the puzzle just wasted my time. The locations are so big that sometimes searching for solution was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
- Last issue, framerate. In certain scenes my framerate dropped to fourties. I have GTX1070 so that wasn't pleasant. But given the genre of the game and its beautiful graphics, I wasn't too bothered.
Ok, now that those are out of the way. Why would I give Dreamfall Chapters 9/10. The writing, characters, dialogues, story.
Chapters start out..strangely. The first two, three books almost feel like they are not even sequels to Dreamfall. Nothing much from the unresolved plotlines is being dealt with, instead it is all about Prague-European-Arcadian politics and corruption. But even there, I already hugely enjoyed Chapters, thanks to its atmosphere and enjoyable characters and dialogue (Sully, Mirra, Queenie..). And then in book four the stakes get raised, Chapters switch into high gear and it is one big revelation after another, right into the beautiful melancholic ending. Few unanswered questions still remain, but I don't mind that. I don't need to know everything. I assume the slower start was done on purpose to ease newcomers into the universe, which is understandable.
The location design and their contrast, beautiful. Europolis and Marcuria, both more beautiful and bigger than ever. I enjoyed exploring them, seeing how they change with time and passing chapters. Europolis is a futuristic cyberpunkish Prague, Marcuria fairy tale-like medieval town. And so many great characters, of course Crow, but also Enu, Likho, Shephard, Nela and many others. Zoe rules of course, but Kian and Likho with their buddy cop movie chemistry, growing into regular bromance, were great fun to hang out with. The humor was always a part of TLJ games, but Chapters take the cake I think. All the Rooster and Kitten jokes, the interactions between straight man (wink) Kian and embarrased Enu.. What surprised me though was the swearing. Characters don't mind using some Fks and Cts if they feel like it. But hey, people in real life swear. But it ain't quite as kid friendly as the previous two games. One one last thing I have to mention, the soundtrack. Simon Poole did a phenomenal job with the music, each scene enhanced by the score.
Anyway, I am glad I embarked on this Longest Journey. All three games were enjoyable. I am curious what will Ragnar do next. I wouldn't mind more adventures from this world, some day.
Hey,
I know it's pretty damn subjective but I don't suppose you guys could please tell me roughly how many hours of gameplay you got out of the games, TLJ, Dreamfall TLJ and Dreamfall Chapters?
I like story driven adventure games of a decent length that I can immerse myself in and after games like Firewatch and The Park I'm a bit weary of official gameplay time figures.
Cheers
I know it's pretty damn subjective but I don't suppose you guys could please tell me roughly how many hours of gameplay you got out of the games, TLJ, Dreamfall TLJ and Dreamfall Chapters?
I like story driven adventure games of a decent length that I can immerse myself in and after games like Firewatch and The Park I'm a bit weary of official gameplay time figures.
Cheers
A bit of a hard one, as the last one has different story lines you can take, so it is down to you on replayability. I love all 3 though and a bit biased to the series but I am guessing I have sunk well over 150 hours on all 3. Well worth it for me and the story is one that keeps you interested.
Should be soon. I also bought it on sale when it was 50% off. But it was worth it full price, easily.
These games are not called Longest Journey for fun of it.
Longest Journey, the first game is about 20 hours long.
Dreamfall is shorter, about 14 hours.
Dreamfall Chapters, the last game, took me 28 hours to finish. Really extensive game. But I did everything, talked with everyone, inspected every object. The game is lovingly well written and I wanted to see all of it.
The devs said that the enhancements that the consoles got will come to the pc version, so it should be a little nicer looking. Not that it really needs any as looks great as is imo.
Theres a fps issue with the dfc game due to the engine. I found a workaround by setting the power option in nvidia drivers to maximum performance which fixed it, otherwise after loading ur gfx core and mem speeds are at idle setting i dound like 300mhz core 100mhz mem lol.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/237850/discussions/0/385429254939986233/
Theres a fps issue with the dfc game due to the engine. I found a workaround by setting the power option in nvidia drivers to maximum performance which fixed it, otherwise after loading ur gfx core and mem speeds are at idle setting i dound like 300mhz core 100mhz mem lol.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/237850/discussions/0/385429254939986233/
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