Dreamfall

what is the best way to play this game if anyone can remember......the mouse control for it it terrible....."the life of the lama...."

i thought i would give it another go....but now i remember why i quit playing it....

There are threads Here, and here.

Ana

There's also a suggested setup for the Dreamfall options menu at the bottom of the First Look here.

Hamer, the thing that made a huge difference for me was to have her Walk instead of running.

thanx everyone....so holding down the w key is the way to go it seems.........seems more like a pain.....

It's a good game, perservere with it. I skipped the "monsters" though.

Hamer, I thought that was odd too, and yes it was a pain. But it did the trick for me. I enjoyed the game and was glad to be able to have more control so I could enjoy the playing a bit more.

I used both a gamepad and a mouse -- the gamepad most of the time, and the mouse for things like the "cone" of light to select things.

well im giving up on this game again......movement etc stinks

I have to agree with you hamer about the movement but I thought it was a lovely game otherwise. I played it the same way as Jenny100 mentioned - using a gamepad (that helped a lot!) & the mouse sometimes. Have you tried it with a gamepad?

well i hooked up an xbox controller for this...i bet this is what the game was intended for......the mouse was definitely an after thought.......now after playing the game for a while ...just picking the lock to get into the hotel....the game seems very very simple.....the first game seemed much better....this seems almost like a beginner type of adventure game....unless it gets better

im guessing this game was one of the easiest walkthrus for mag to put together..

basically you just run around and talk....hardly any puzzles...not much for inventory type stuff....and more actual combat than anything else.....quite the let down

running around hiding from spider bots and guards now most of the time.....its getting very frustrating and tedious......wish i never hooked up the gamepad now........i think im done...im in the wati caves......is the rest of the game like this.......sigh....and im pretty sure u dont need to hear me complaining.....sorry

Hamer, I understand how you feel. That whole arcade section was the worst part for me as well, and I thought it would never end. Once you get past that section, however, it gets a lot better, and the story comes into focus again. Also, I'm not sure if you already know this, but you can avoid most of the combat. I believe there are only five fights you have to take part in, and two of those are practice.

Unfortunately, the game never becomes very challenging in the puzzle department. I felt the game was excellent mainly for its story. Not as good as TLJ of course, but still a worthy sequel.

Are you at least enjoying the story? I was really happy to see and play as April again, and I liked Zoë as well.

glad to see im not the only one frustrated with it.....the story is good yes....im playing as april now in the troll area....and i honestly have about had it.....first hiding from spiders...to guards...and now hiding from trolls....this is really spoiling it for me.....seems once the big troll sees you, you have no option but to fight it,...i cant seem to put my weapon down and run..........yikes.......hmmm maybe mag dearest has a save just past the trolls....

hamer,

Not really easy. It took time to do a lot of things. Also finding alternative solutions for some of the puzzles took time.

I like it because the story has a deep meaning like TLJ.

You can ask mag dearest at Hints forum for the saved game please. Gracias.

Hamer, I remember discovering that you can't win the fight with the troll, but you can avoid it completely.

After many deaths, I discovered a pattern (which I don't remember) but it seems to me that once he discovered you and ran off for help, that if I moved from that passage to another and hid, he didn't find me.

i have a few questions after finishing this game
This contains spoilers

The only one who knows the answers to those questions is TLJ's creator. And even he doesn't know whether there will be a new game. You can check his blog here
http://ragnartornquist.com/
There's an entry about Dreamfall Chapters for February 27, 2009, and there are earlier ones too.

Last I heard, they were thinking of making the rest of the series as episodic games -- a series of chapters you'd download. But I don't think they've actually started working on these yet.

can you imagine the uproar if they did that with harry potter ....and just left stories hanging with no plans etc to make a sequel....just left people hanging...

Yes, but I imagine that Harry Potter made a lot more money than Dreamfall. Funding a sequel was never a problem.

i guess you are right....i found this interview...you have probably already seen it

http://www.minstrum.net/itw7_vo.php

You know what - that's just not responsible, leaving a story hanging like that, without ensuring a sequel. I understand a company cannot tell whether the game will sell or not, but I don't think it's fair to finish a game like that without making sure there's a sequel.
Of course games can end with "open endings", but there's a major difference between several question marks remained, to this.
For example, TLJ 1, although ending in an "unsatisfactory" way to many, to me seemed to have a pretty solid ending, and did not demand a sequel (other than the fact, of course, that it is a marvelous game that I wanted to see continued).
But TLJ2 simply cannot end like this. It'll be a shame, and it will diminish the game to half it's worth.

Ragnar Tornquist has said before that he doesn't see Dreamfall as TLJ2. It takes place in the same universe, but it isn't really a sequel to TLJ. He'd like to make a real TLJ2, but he isn't willing to use a simple point-and-click game engine like TLJ had for any of his future games, and that means they have to sell a lot better than most adventure games do (which Dreamfall didn't).

TLJ was designed as a standalone game. Dreamfall was not, so it has all those loose ends dangling.

Jenny if that is the case Ragnar is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He cannot seriously claim Dreamfall was not a sequel to TLJ. By including April and her friends this was clearly marketed as a continuation of TLJ. By leaving April hanging eluding to the status of her demise along with all of the answered questions intentionally created expectations of a third entry. His screed about 2d point and click is simply an excuse. It is correct the higher level of graphics and demanding gameplay are more expensive requiring higher sales at higher prices and multi formats. But to decry Dreamfall was not a sequel when he made no effort to disguise the ripoff of the TLJ to create the sequel is insulting.

TLJ got rave reviews and was an outstanding Adventure game success. With that success he built Dreamfall as a hybrid which failed on many levels. Perhaps he should go back to 2d point and click, produce a resolution satisfying Adventure Gamers. In Dreamfall he attempted to cash in on TLJ's success by creating a game to please multiple genres succeeding with none. He insults gamer's intelligence trying to claim it was not a sequel.

Well, oldmariner, the sad truth is the market today isn't as welcoming to adventures than it was when TLJ was first released.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, I think it's unfair to have this whole issue hanging like this, but I can also understand the pressure. The guy is really talanted, and he is interested in selling his work to a large audience.
It requires a lot of bravery to create something you truly believe in. But - I believe that there is still hope that a grand adventure would attract many non-adventurers, only because of publication and great reviews.
In any case - Dreamfall should have been either wrapped up, or not out at all.
It reminds me of the mess with Uru live (a myst side kick), which was supposed to be a multiple-player, interenet based game, and then it got canceled, probably because not selling enough.
This is depressive... It's a shame we're such a small community.
I'm gonna raise my kids to love adventures!! (both real life and games!)

My Malware blocker reports that page as having malaware.

Mine shows the site is fine. Sometimes things come up as a false positive.

Ana

I hadn't seen the interview before. Just read it. Interesting to see their hopes before release. From what I can tell, their hopes in terms of the sales numbers weren't fulfilled.

http://ugdb.com/article/view/preview-interview/

Oh yes, finally hearing something from this game, just found this link from official TLJ forum and decided to post it here. As we can read from the interview, they have really been keeping a break from TLJ and yes, the game itself is still taking like 4 years or something which drives me insane!

"We definitely had not forgotten the series, but you should have a lot of patience because, for example, the story of Anarchy Online was ready in 1996, but the game was released in 2001."

But, this is a start

Good to read indeed, but they also say it is not even in pre-production

I figured the script could have been basically thought and penned for the sequel when the first one was written. The main thing is actually making the game.

Ana

I've been following this thread and my only reaction is: (sigh) here we go again. Dreamfall is, for me, far enough in the past that it doesn't matter any more when, or if, a new installment comes out. I got pretty worked up about it at the time, too, but there have been plenty of fine games since and, well, life goes on. Perhaps Ragnar should take it to heart that "he who begins too much accomplishes little."

Hmmm, more and more I am happy with my long ago decision to quit playing Dreamfall when April kept That wasn't fair in my book and I figured if that was the trend the game was taking it wasn't for me. So I'm not surprised at the way things turned out. I still think the first part of the game with Zoe was great and I'm glad I got a chance to play that much of the game anyway. That is the part that I consider was the *dream* and then came the *fall* of course! I now have the feeling they have painted themselves into a corner and can't go anywhere with it.

Ya think?

at the time...i can see your point....I only just got to playing it....
so i guess im feeling like you were back then

Ragnar Tornquist wrote on his blog,

"Yes, it’s going to be episodic and you’ll need to be online to get it and possibly to play it (sorry; piracy is an enormous problem for us and Dreamfall suffered massively because of it). As well as being available for Windows (and I would hope, at least in the long term, Mac) I’d love to see it distributed through Xbox Live, PSN – the Wii Store, if at all feasible."


well I wont beat it to death...if it comes out great...if not..ill write an ending for all the unanswered questions..and post it for u.. .....gray matter will soon be out anyway...and jane kicks butt with story lines......

Hamer, if you want to delve into many remarks about Dreamfall, look back in this forum to the summer of 2006. There was one thread that must have gone on for 15 pages, and a lot of the commentary was quite long, including my own.

Anyway, we've been able to live with no more Tex Murphy, no more Gabriel Knight, no more Journeyman Project, no more Myst, and so forth, and I think we'll do OK with no more TLJ, if it comes to that. Cheers.

I wonder how he 'knows' that? Did Dreamfall have some dial-home DRM that we didn't know about? Does he believe that a every illegal download is a lost sale? (Some convert into real purchases because they *like* the game!)

It seems to me that Ragnar always writes in the most hyperbolic of ways, I've given up believing almost everything he says.

not a larry laffer fan? guess i should have have searched it out.....i just played the game for the first time now....didnt mean to touch a sore spot with u and dredge up the past....apparently it has been an awfully long time tho...with no answers.....and it will probably be a long time from now when some new shy boomer plays the game for the first time and asks the same questions....by then tho I will have written the ending.. kidding



i just read the old thread you mentioned....yikes.....you had quite the errrr ummmm thing for april......and yes it has all been covered before.....my appologies

What do you mean "had"? The torch still burns!!

I even composed a way of "saving" April in a post sometime around December 2007 or January 2008.

My own interpretation of what happened with Dreamfall (based on practically no evidence) is that to gain sales in the US at the volume they were hoping for/expecting, you must heavily advertise the game for months before its release, and (for whatever reason) Dreamfall wasn't advertised enough.

The reason you have to advertise heavily is that most of the sales for high profile games occur as preorders or within the first couple of weeks after a game is released. If you don't advertise heavily, and wait for word-of-mouth to cause sales, you are out of luck because by the time word-of-mouth filters down, the game is on all the torrent sites and many people just pirate it instead of buying it.

Adventure games are something of an exception, because adventure gamers are much more likely to buy games even weeks and weeks (or months) after they've released. But hardcore adventure gamers are only a small percentage of gamers overall.

It would be very interesting to find out if sales of The Longest Journey (a traditional point-and-click adventure) actually exceeded those of Dreamfall by a substantial margin. If so, Funcom actually reached more gamers with a died-in-the-wool adventure than they did with a "modern" adventure, which they modernized in hopes of reaching more gamers.

TV executives are always changing a series to gain a new audience and in the process they lose the original audience and gain no one. It doesn't work for TV and I doubt it works for games.

Whoever was responsible for Dreamfall I found it a massive disappointment

It was so different to The Longest Journey and more of an "action adventure" in parts.

I never could be bothered to finish it

I agree Mad....

What a disappointment "Dream fall" was...

If its not Broke "Why" try to fix it.....I made a similar Quote about another game..

Dreamfall for me is probably the best game I've played the last 5 years.

Well, there you go !!

We are all different

If only the published sales figures would include online sales, we'd have a fighting chance of understanding the real situation.... or has that process changed yet?

Not as far as I know, though you can individually check online sales at places like Amazon and Steam.

I sometimes wonder if even the publishers have only a vague sense of how well each game is selling.

I would be really interested to know the major audience for adventures : age, sex, etc...
I'm curious as to how many parents, for example, are there, playing the game out there. I know there are a bunch here :-)

What is it we have that we adore this genre so much?!
Is it endless intelligence? Are we blessed with infinite wisdom?! :-)

Well, I think we adore the genre because it's fun! Walking around in an alternate world, exploring, discovering the story woven within it, figuring out how to solve a mystery or get past a door or interact with the characters -- it's kind of magical.

I'd love to claim endless intelligence or infinite wisdom, but unfortunately I know myself. So I won't.

I think the age range for adventure gaming is wide -- wider than for other genres. From about age 6 or so (if you're excluding children's adventures aimed at those even younger) right up through 80-year-olds and beyond. And as many women as men are playing them -- maybe even more women than men.

I personally find adventures appealing because I don't like the feeling of threat that action games evoke (and my reflexes aren't all that good), and I like stories and exploration -- a combination that other genres don't often have. I could enjoy strategy games or puzzle games if adventures didn't exist, but since they do, I like the real deal.

In terms of sales figures -- I thought this was interesting to give a bit of an idea of how one Indie non-adventure game (World of Goo) fared in terms of sales.

well I enjoyed dreamfall also, didn't go much on the fighting but most of the game was great. I actually preferred it to TLJ probably due to modern day graphics.

I purchased and played TLJ in 2001 and it became my favorite adventure game of all time. (beating out Sierra's quest games) But I had, as a lot of people did, a lot of questions at the end.

Then, in 2006, when Dreamfall came out I thought maybe those questions would get answered. Well now it's 2009 and the questions are still unanswered.

Dreamfall, to me was a disappointment. I think they tried too hard in Dreamfall to appeal to a wider audience and in so doing angered some of their die-hard fans. (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) If Dreamfall hadn't been touted as a sequel to TLJ I would have enjoyed it but it wouldn't have been, and isn't, very high on my list because of the so called improvements they made in game play and the addition of action elements. But, at least I wouldn't have been looking for the resolution of the unanswered questions in TLJ.

Those questions have been discussed on previous boards so much that to repeat them would be beating a dead horse. Suffice it to say I don't like unanswered questions and I don't like for a sequel to leave them unanswered. The author might have said he didn't intend for Dreamfall to be a sequel but it was advertised as such. Some publishers even advertised it as TLJ2 and the title from Funcom is Dreamfall, The Longest journey.

So the unanswered questions will remain unanswered and I will remain dissatified.