by:	June 21, 2006

Some may call Dreamfall: The Longest Journey a simplistic, interactive movie that doesn’t require much thought. This really only holds truth to a certain degree, especially in terms of just how in depth and interesting the story actually is. The action element of interaction is pretty weak and sometimes a little frustrating because it’s obvious not a lot of work was put into it, but in sense of the plot it ultimately makes sense.

Story
You end up spending most of Dreamfall playing as a young woman called Zoë Castillo. She’s a smart and beautiful girl who really does live quite the life for someone who doesn’t even have a job. Her dad is always there for her and understanding for basically everything (as in letting her have a party with a ‘couple’ friends while he’s on a business trip). I really don’t want to say anything about what the story really involves because that’s the entire key of this game and it gets right underway as soon as you start it up. Simply put, just get ready for A LOT of character dialogue and conversation throughout pretty much the whole game. But don’t let that turn you away; it’s by far the best part of the game and just maybe by far some of the best in all of gaming. It really is what truly makes this whole game because it’s so nice to see that games can have so rich of a story and such great characters and dialogue in this age of FPSs and 3rd person action games (now if only these could be combined…).

Gameplay
Like I already stated, the gameplay is quite simplistic and really doesn’t require any extensive thought to actually progress through the actual story. The extent of actually moving your character around and interacting with stuff is limited but still well done. You can interact with just about every single NPC in the game whether it is directly talking with them or Zoë thinking aloud about them to herself. Only when it has something to do with the story or solving a puzzle will you be able to interact with the environment in terms of carrying items, climbing ladders, pushing objects around and so forth. This is definitely where the interaction is quite limited but fortunately isn’t so limited as to where it begins to drag the rest of the game down. Again, don’t be expecting an action/adventure here; it’s all about the story and character interaction in this game.