Dreamfall Chapters The Final Cut Edition

[Adam Makin]

TheLongest Journey series is set in two parallel universes: Stark, a cyberpunk future Earth, and Arcadia, its magical fantasy counterpart. Chapters takes place in 2220 CE and continues the story of Dreamfall, whose protagonist Zo Castillo had uncovered a criminal conspiracy that aimed to enslave both Stark and Arcadia by stealing their residents' dreams. Although Zo managed to disrupt the conspirators' plans, she was betrayed and left in a coma at the end of Dreamfall, and has to find her purpose in life again in Chapters. The writers described the narrative theme of the game as "chapters of life".

Dreamfall Chapters was developed by Red Thread Games, an independent studio founded by Ragnar Trnquist, who wrote and directed the previous two games. Funcom, the owners of The Longest Journey IP, had licensed the rights to develop the next installment out to Trnquist's studio. Its development was crowd-funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $1.5 million, with additional funding provided by the Norwegian Film Institute. The publisher Deep Silver released the game on consoles in 2017 to mixed reviews.

Dreamfall Chapters was originally developed on the Unity 4 game engine, but was retroactively upgraded to Unity 5 before the release of Book Four.[1] It features large 3D environments, as opposed to 2D backgrounds in The Longest Journey and smaller 3D locations in Dreamfall. While not a completely open world, the game contains several free-roaming exploration levels, such as Europolis and Marcuria,[2] and rewards players for exploring the levels and finding secrets.[3] The locations themselves change slightly as the story progresses to reflect the passage of time.[4]

The player steers playable characters from an over-the-shoulder third-person view, using either the WASD keys and mouselook or a gamepad. Interactive characters and objects are highlighted on the screen, allowing the player to interact with them using the mouse and context menus.[6] While the game supports game controllers, it was optimized for the PC. The gameplay focus is on the exploration of the environments and the story[7] and on solving puzzles.[8] Dialogue with NPCs and dialogue puzzles comprise about half of the gameplay time.[9] The on-screen interface is hidden by default to improve the immersion.[4] There is no combat or stealth gameplay in Dreamfall Chapters.[10]

Although the game features a linear plot with a set outcome,[11] the players have to make many choices throughout the game that have far-reaching impact on the later story events (but not the ending). An optional, online-only "social" feature allows players to discover (either before, or after making the choice) which options other players (and their Facebook friends in particular[12]) picked in these situations.[13] These statistics are stored in a shared global database for all platforms.[12] The game additionally displays a special "The balance has shifted" icon to warn players before plot-relevant choices, even when playing offline.[9] An in-game journal, akin to April Ryan's diary in TLJ, keeps track of the recent plot developments.[4]

In the mythology of the series, Earth is one of countless worlds in the multiverse, created from the primordial Storytime by the dreaming of a being known as Lux, the First Dreamer.[14] Earth, or "Stark" as it is known in the game, is a world of science existing in Balance with its "Twin World" of magic, Arcadia, split off and separated from it by the impassable Divide twelve millennia ago. The game takes place in 2220 CE by Stark's reckoning, and its chief antagonist is Brian Westhouse, a Starkian trapped in Arcadia, who plans to return home by forcibly reuniting the Twin Worlds with the power of the Undreaming, the destructive counterpart to Lux. To strengthen the Undreaming with dream energy, Westhouse, as "the Prophet", had conspired with the corrupt officials of the Azadi Empire in Arcadia and an ambitious Starkian scientist Helena Chang to build a giant dream-storing Engine in the recently conquered Arcadian city-state of Marcuria and to imbue it with the dream energy stolen from Stark by Chang's lucid dream-inducing invention, the "Dreamachines". Chang had also secretly planned to instead use the stolen dream energy to reshape reality itself with the help of her genetically engineered "Dreamers", i.e. humans with powers equal to Lux. She had deemed her first artificial Dreamer a failure, however, and the girl was instead raised by Chang's partner Gabriel Castillo as his own daughter, Zo.[15]

In Dreamfall, a 20-year-old Zo had learned that Chang's sponsors, the Japan-based megacorporation WatiCorp, planned to brainwash Dreamachine users in a bid for world domination, but after failing to stop them, she was put into a coma by Chang. At the same time in Arcadia, an elite Azadi operative Kian Alvane investigated the corruption in Marcuria but was charged with high treason and imprisoned. In Chapters, their stories finally converge in Book Five, where they also tie in with the arc of the third playable character, Saga, which, until then, is mainly told in the Interludes.[15]

After putting Zo in a coma, Chang brought her body to a secret lab in Mumbai,[15] while her consciousness became trapped in Storytime along with millions of Dreamachine addicts'.[16] As Zo attempts to wake herself up, she instead creates a secondary physical body for herself in Stark,[15] which has no memories of her adventures and travels to Europolis to start a new life. While both Wati and Chang's agents shadow her every move, Zo becomes an activist for the upcoming elections,[16] but soon discovers that Wati has bought off most parties, including her own. They then tarnish the only uncorrupted party by manipulating one of its activists and Zo's friend Nela into a suicide bombing.[17] The blast injures Zo but also brings back some of her memories. When Zo attempts to use a Dreamachine to recover the rest, her secondary body disappears from Stark and appears in Arcadia.[18] There, she reunites with her talking bird sidekick Crow and embarks on a journey to find the dreaming Lux.[14] After merging with and gaining Lux's powers, Zo's real body wakes up in Mumbai, where she reunites with her biological parents. However, Chang manages to sedate her, still intending to exploit her abilities.[15]

At the same time in Arcadia, one of the Azadi empresses arrives to Marcuria with General Hami and Mother Utana, Kian's mentor and stepmother, respectively. Afraid of Kian's confessions, the Prophet's accomplices attempt to execute him without a trial, but the anti-Azadi rebels break him out to recruit him to their cause.[16] On one of Kian's missions for the rebels, he bonds with a young Dolmari urchin named Bip, who helps him uncover an imminent raid on the magical ghetto.[17] The rebels are unable to prevent it, however, and Bip, along with many other magicals, is deported to a remote death camp. Kian mounts a rescue mission and witnesses his country's atrocities against the magical peoples,[14] using this evidence to convince Hami to bring down the Marcurian officials before they activate the Engine. Upon return, they rally the surviving rebels and a few of Hami's own men to attack it. Crow, back from his journey with Zo, shows Kian a secret passage to the Engine control room, but before he can sabotage it, Mother Utana reveals herself as another agent of the Prophet and fatally wounds him. The Prophet then murders Crow and activates the Engine.[15]

The third storyline begins in the prologue, where April Ryan, who had perished in Dreamfall, is reincarnated as Saga in the House of All Worlds, a mystical location between all worlds and timelines of the multiverse.[16] Saga's mother disappears soon after her birth,[18] and despite her father's best efforts to suppress her inherited world-traveling powers, Saga runs away from home at the age of 14 to wander the multiverse[14] and, like April, grows up to become a habitual fulfiller of various prophecies. Acting on one such prophecy, she travels to Arcadia just in time to heal Kian with an alchemical concoction after Utana and the Prophet leave him to bleed out. Zo, in the meantime, finds herself in Storytime again, where Crow's ghost helps her to piece together the Prophet's plan and leaves for the afterlife together with April's spirit. Now fully in control of her and Lux's powers, Zo awakens in the Mumbai lab just in time to see Saga open a portal to the Engine control room. Zo passes her discoveries on to Kian, then guides a repentant Azadi engineer through sabotaging the Engine, while Kian kills the Prophet's henchman Roper Klacks to unleash the Undreaming, which the Prophet had trapped within his body. As it possesses the Prophet and flings him to Stark, Zo reunites it with Lux and thus restores the Balance between creation and destruction, before passing out from exhaustion. In Marcuria, the corrupt Azadi officials are killed by the rebels, but Utana escapes with the empress. Saga finds Crow's body and carries it off to another world.[15]

A week later, Kian leaves Marcuria to pursue Utana, but is intercepted by Saga who, acting on another prophecy, demands to join him and also that he adopts her, foreshadowing the major role they both will play in the War of the Balance that is to precede the looming reunification of the Twin Worlds. Zo, meanwhile, awakens in a hospital and reconciles with Gabriel. Five years later, Kian and Saga look over the Azadi capital, ready to face their destiny, while Zo enjoys a peaceful life in Casablanca, pregnant with a baby. In the epilogue, many years after the Twin Worlds were reunited, an elderly Saga, now Lady Alvane, reminisces about her travels and chats with the reincarnated Crow, before settling down in her armchair in the House of All Worlds to greet April Ryan, mirroring the same scene that occurred in the original The Longest Journey.[15]

3a8082e126