Dreamfall Chapters

Well, I've had two play sessions with this game so far but found it really boring

Nothing about it grabbed me At ALL
So does it perk up somewhat as it goes on or should I just abandon it

Well that sounds disappointing. I'm replaying The Longest Journey right now to someday get to Dreamfall Chapters. I hope it will pick up for you.

Yes it perks up.
If you don't want to play, check Dilandau3000's playthrough and see if it starts to get interesting for you.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjNZRzFam-qWpmjESYEUr9-YQUhBjjaP

oldbroad ....

You seem to be much more patient than I am when it comes to games so please don't be put off by just MY comments.
I very much liked The Longest Journey but very much disliked Dreamfall .... So for me, Dreamfall Chapters was an "iffy" purchase from the start

Jenny100 ....
I've viewed some of that Utube content now, thank you, however I'm thinking maybe I will quit the game for now and save it for a very rainy day !!

The later chapters are more interesting, after Zoe gets back to Arkadia for an extended time. For example where she visits the Yaga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPBtK4LJutE

It's interesting how she starts to look like Princess Leia once she gets to Arkadia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QCcXKwEuTg

If you don't have patience to endure the early parts of the game, it's probably best to put it aside for later. But you may not want to uninstall considering how nasty and complicated the "save" system is.

Players should NOT have to go into the registry to back up a saved game.
That is just asking for trouble.

Hi Jenny100.
Having now got my saves safely tucked away, I have no qualms about uninstalling the game

I probably will give it another go sometime but for the time being it's staying on the back burner

And even though I did attempt to find the registry "saves" there's no way I would have touched them if I HAD found them.
I'm way too much of a coward !!

Thanks again.

Cheers.

Mad

The "registry saves" probably tell the game where the saves are, and what constitutes a save -- something like the cat file in old Sierra games like GK1. Without the "registry saves" Dreamfall Chapters wouldn't recognize it had any saves in its subfolder of the LocalLow folder (or wherever it put them).

If the game gave you an option to keep your saves when you uninstalled, there shouldn't be a problem unless you try to use the saves on a different computer.

Mad, I'm not put off by your comments about the game. I just meant it was disappointing for you.

Oh, I have plenty of other games to have a go at, oldbroad, and I probably will give this one another try sometime.

But I'm glad to hear you haven't been put off by my opinion !!
Enjoy yourself

Hey Mad. I've been playing this for way too long already and am stuck in book 2 right now. I am finding it fairly boring also so far and very aggravating. It is like one big maze. Try to figure out where you are and try to figure out how to get where you need to go, over and over and over. I've already been playing for 17 hours and the actual gameplay has probably only been 1 hour. The rest of the time I have spent wandering!

And it saves automatically, fairly frequent though, however, after wandering I forget when it last saved and what I might have done since then but I had to exit out of the game anyway. I think you did the right thing putting it away for a very rainy day.

Just for the record, I was so happy when my replay of Dreamfall Longest Journey was over. I had remembered only a small amount of action and liked the game alright. Hah! This time it seemed to never stop and I did not really enjoy it much.

I did, however, enjoy my replay of The Longest Journey.

I thought The Longest Journey was a real treat of a game, oldbroad, and have played and enjoyed it a few times now

But, for me, none that have followed in the series are at ALL comparable

I initially played this and left it after only an hour or so but last month decided to pick it up and try and play it and was very glad I did. It was one of the 'biggest' games I have played in a long while as it made me feel a lot and the story was very good. I got used to the bits where you had to do something a little quick and confess there was one where I got a friend to do it, but probably would have managed it if I had been bothered. I was very sad when the game ended and almost cried which is really rare for me with a computer game. I felt as though I had been on a long journey and it had ended and I was sad to leave it. Since playing it I have bought and played a number of games and none have been as good, but it definitely has got me back into gaming!

I suggest watching Dilandau3000's YouTube playthrough.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjNZRzFam-qWpmjESYEUr9-YQUhBjjaP
You won't miss any real classic adventure game gameplay because there isn't any. Unless you enjoy wandering around looking at things, you won't get much out of trying to "play" the game.


As far as I'm concerned, The Longest Journey is a standalone game with no true sequels.

Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters are a retcon, with changes made to characters and places just for the sake of being different -- making it look like what you thought you knew from TLJ (and even from the first Dreamfall) was wrong. As far as I'm concerned, the Dreamfall games take place in a different universe.

I've heard that they had less money to work on Chapters than they did for TLJ, and it shows in the lack of real gameplay, problems with pacing, rushed endgame, and incomplete and/or conflicted explanations. I don't expect "everything" to be explained, but they crossed the line between "let the audience decide" and "I don't care anymore BS" too many times.

I don't think we'll ever get the "Longest Journey 2: Further Adventures of April and Crow" game that fans wanted after playing TLJ. Even if the "Longest Journey Home" game is made (which looks doubtful), it won't be in the spirit of the original "The Longest Journey." Ragnar Tornquist has shown he can't make that kind of game any more.

Thanks for posting your opinion on the game - and it's nice to see you here.

I'm going to stick it out Jenny. I did resort to a video walkthrough two times so far when I got tired of wandering. I'm in Book 3 now playing as Zoe, just put the dream machine on. I do like Book 3 better than 1 and 2.

I like Kian's story much better than Zoe's and I don't care for Saga at all yet.

I also do not feel these Dreamfall games had anything to do with The Longest Journey. I believe I commented on that years ago, that it seemed they just put April in the game so they could call it a sequel.

Marian, have you played this? If so, what are your thoughts on it?

I haven't played it yet. I did a replay of The Longest Journey a few months ago and planned to then move on to Dreamfall but haven't done so yet. The idea was that I would play the whole saga in order. I did play part of Dreamfall years ago but wasn't fond of the controls, so I moved on to a different game. I was willing to give it another shot, though.

So many games, so little time!

I'm glad you found such enjoyment with the game, vic. That's what we all hope for from our games

Due to the lack of actual adventure-game-type gameplay, you lose very little by watching a Let's Play instead of "playing" the game yourself. Whichever you choose, you get the same annoying "Bang! Balance has Shifted" interruptions (the biggest actual "change" is whether a secondary character lives or dies -- the story as a whole doesn't change, and none of the "choices" will fill in all the gaps in the plot). Watching a Let's Play by someone who enjoyed the game may make the game more enjoyable than trying to play it yourself. And if you have problems with "getting lost" you don't have to worry about getting lost with someone else playing.


There are parts of the game with interesting places. I don't have any complaints about the art design. Zoe's story picks up once it gets out of Stark, but the "amnesia" excuse has been overused and is really tiresome.


They did a lot more with Kian in Chapters than in the earlier Dreamfall game.
Saga was sort of interesting as a baby, but she was a snarky teen and a snarky young adult. She was tolerable as an old lady, but no replacement for April and I don't buy that "April reborn" business. You never learn enough about Saga to care much for her. She's just a deus ex machina whose purpose is to fix things at the last minute.


The April in Dreamfall 2006 wasn't the same person as in TLJ, and April's appearances as a ghost or disembodied voice in Chapters were useless and an insult to anyone who thought they'd be seeing April in Chapters.

As for the rest of the plot, I don't know how much had to be rewritten as they went along due to lack of budget, but there were details from the later chapters that contradicted what you learned in earlier chapters and some plotlines were simply dropped. Messy. Questions like "How does Saga know to do what she does" in the later parts of the game were never explained. "It was written" isn't a good in-game reason -- too meta and an overused excuse for the writer giving up and saying "I don't know how to write this into the game."

(Dreamfall 2006 spoiler)

I've played TLJ a total of 4 times and will undoubtedly play it again in the future. I don't consider either Dreamfall 2006 or Chapters to be worth a replay. Dreamfall 2006 was marred by unwanted stealth/action/timed "challenges" and an abortive ending. It wasn't what I wanted as a followup to TLJ, but at least the story hung together and the writing worked to keep you interested until the end.
Chapters was unfinished with clear signs that they ran out of development money and weren't capable of a convincing rewrite to compensate. It was short on puzzles with the low-budget "choose-your-own-story" budget replacement that made minor changes without affecting the overall plot. Suspension of disbelief doesn't work when so many details conflict or are glaring omissions. By the end of Chapters the plot was such a mess I didn't care anymore, which is arguably even worse than the vile cliffhanger ending of Dreamfall 2006.

I agree with SO much of what you say, Jenny100 !! But are we in the minority ??

I don't know if we're in the minority, but we're certainly not alone. There are YouTube rants about Chapters and comments from people who agree. There are too many "wait, what about..." and "but before you said..." moments in the game.

I guess they're still working on it, but at this point I consider the game unfinished -- and I don't think it can be finished in a satisfactory manner with their current resources given all the plot inconsistencies that would have to be fixed. And you need more than "she's April reborn" to make Saga an interesting character instead of an annoying deus ex machina.

Not that the game doesn't have some interesting characters, imaginative locations, mostly good voice acting and overall potential, but it's not enough to just have pieces of a good game.

And it's not a TLJ game. I think if there is ever to be a TLJ2 game it will have to come from devoted fans, like the remakes of old Sierra games. Either Ragnar Tornquist has no idea what made TLJ popular or just doesn't care.

I decided to replay TLJ & Dreamfall before getting into Chapters. I finished Chapters yesterday & don't have a lot to say about it because I'm still scratching my head over it. First of all & this is probably just me because I don't have a sense of direction but that game needed a jump map. I remember there was a thread about the ending of TLJ on whether the old lady was April or not, my opinion was that she was, oh well. I'm really confused about Zoe. Is she or is she not human? To me the whole ending was an utter disaster.

While I liked The Longest Journey, and Dreamfall (a bit less than TLJ, I cannot get into Dreamfall chapters. I've never played hand to hand combat and was put off by that aspect of Dreamfall A LOT. Don't mind using a gun (Doom, etc) But punching and kicking annoys me so much, not mention some parts of the first Dreamfall game.

So, I finally finished the game. The story didn't make one bit of sense to me or resolve anything. I really only liked the parts with Kian. And I still liked Crow.

There was a part where there was a lot of rats running around which caught the attention of one of my cats. She also was fascinated with Crow.

You have much more perseverence - to stick with a game that makes no sense to you - than I will ever have, oldbroad

Well I truly hate to say it, but I am totally disappointed with this game and am giving up halfway through! I LOVED TLJ and Dream fall was pretty good, but this is ridiculous! The graphics and voice acting are good, but the game play and plot are boring and tedious and make no sense! Such a disappointment as I was really looking forward to this! Mad is right, time flies and there are better games to play!!!

ooooh I am miffed!!!!

Same here. Managed to play it for a long time, but it was hard in the wrong way. I stopped playing when the bird sidekick was killed, for me the only charming character in the game. Enormous environments, hardly any gameplay (unless you consider running around fun). It almost seems if some tasks were created to insult the player. And so, so full of bull. Storytellers in love with themselves. Must say I stopped playing Obduction too, due to the poor graphics (and the annoying direction "light", distorting the illusion). I have just finished playing the Minims, and thoroughly enjoyed it (guess I am a bit dementing).