Dreamfall Chapters: Book One - Reborn PREVIEW
As a sequel to a 2006 game that ended with major cliffhangers, Dreamfall Chaptershas been a long time coming. For much of the time in between, it seemed we’d never know the fates of Dreamfall’s three protagonists: Zoë Castillo, a listless college dropout whose quest to find her missing ex-boyfriend entangled her in a corporate conspiracy; Kian Alvane, an Azadi assassin questioning his faith on a mission to take down Mercurian rebels; and of course April Ryan, the world-hopping, balance-restoring, art-student-turned-freedom-fighter who first appeared in 1999’s The Longest Journey.
Dreamfall Chapters was announced in 2007 as an episodic game, then shelved without ever going into production. In 2012, series creator Ragnar Tørnquist licensed the IP from his former employer and Kickstarted Chapters for just over $1.5 million. This time it was planned as a single, non-episodic game, but with production taking longer than anticipated, the developers reversed course again, announcing that they would split the game into five “books.” So here we are, finally able to see the end of Zoë, Kian, and April’s stories… or, at least, the beginning of the end.
Spoiler alert for Dreamfall
Book One – Reborn is a gradual opening to what promises to be another beefy Tørnquist tale, but at least those cliffhangers—Zoë hovering between life and death in a coma, Kian arrested for treason, and April felled by a spear to the gut—are addressed early. The episode focuses mostly on Zoë, with Kian briefly playable and April’s situation only teased in the opening cutscene and an intriguing “interlude” near the end. Still, it’s a start, one that should have fans ofThe Longest Journey particularly excited as loose threads finally start to make sense.
End spoiler
In general, playing The Longest Journey isn’t necessary to enjoy this first episode ofDreamfall Chapters. Dreamfall itself is more important because, as one character even points out, it was only the first half of the story. (If you need to refresh your memory, developer Red Thread Games has posted a recap video.) Book Oneopens in The Storytime, a snowy dreamscape where Zoë has been trapped for nine months while she lies unconscious in a Casablanca hospital. In the highly technological world of Stark, dream machine use has proliferated, giving rise to an increasing number of junkies addicted to lucid dreams. Zoë’s investigation inDreamfall established that these machines are Very Bad and Dreamfall Chapters’ opening reiterates this with three puzzle sequences where she uses special mental powers to free people trapped in nightmares. This section also serves as a tutorial for the game’s interface, although the powers themselves (the ability to slow time, read minds, and create light) don’t appear again for the rest of the episode.
Dreamfall Chapters offers keyboard controls as well as support for Xbox 360 and PS4 gamepads. You walk with the WASD keys or left stick and pan the camera with the mouse or right stick. As you get closer to hotspots, an initially inactive circle cursor turns into an eye, hand, or talk bubble, or a gear icon that leads to a submenu if there are multiple possible interactions. This follows a certain real-world logic: you can only interact with something within reach. But during the early Storytime puzzles I didn’t understand that the cursor changed and mistook the inactive circle to mean I couldn’t do anything at all—not exactly the desired reaction in a tutorial meant to ease players into the interface.
This tutorial section also introduces the inventory, which is accessed with the Tab key or by pressing up on the d-pad. With the inventory tray visible at the bottom of the screen, you can examine items you’re carrying, combine them with other items, or try to use them on whatever hotspot is currently highlighted. Certain items, like a flashlight, are visible in the character’s hand during use and must then be pointed in the right direction—an additional layer of inventory use that I didn’t quite get the hang of, but was able to brute force my way through in the rare puzzle that required it.
As the Storytime sequence closes, Zoë must make a decision about returning to her life in Stark. Here’s where you’ll experience the first of several chances to shape the story by choosing between two discrete options, each with the potential to “shift the balance.” (If you’re unfamiliar with the previous games, this refers to the symbiotic relationship between Stark and its twin world, the fantastical Arcadia.) Though it’s obviously influenced by Telltale’s The Walking Dead, even down to the “so-and-so will remember this” messages that occasionally flash on-screen, Dreamfall Chapters positions itself not only as a game about choice but also about consequence (a point its characters keep making, in case you missed it). One such consequence emerges in this very episode, when Zoë’s first balance-shifting decision impacts several of the scenes, characters, and puzzles she’ll encounter later.
With Zoë’s path established, the game shifts to Arcadia, where Kian is imprisoned in Friar’s Keep prison awaiting execution when one of the Mercurian rebels appears to help him escape. Like Zoë’s appearance in Storytime, this serves as a prologue to Kian’s story: we get a recap on the current political situation, solve a few dialogue and inventory puzzles on the way to freedom, and make at least two more crucial decisions that may impact Kian’s story later on.
Before making these story-altering decisions, you have the option to see what other players have done. At the first major decision point, I actually changed my mind when I saw that more than 80% of players so far had chosen the path I was leaning toward, and decided instead to take the road less traveled. But confronted with moral dilemmas while playing as Kian, I couldn’t bring myself to go against the grain even though the percentage skewed even higher. In theory, branching paths add replay value, but I don’t want to muddle my choices and understanding of the story before the rest of the game is even finished. (The save game system doesn’t allow for separate profiles, either. It saves automatically at certain checkpoints and continues from these when you load, with no straightforward way to create a second, alternate playthrough that won’t overwrite your first.) Knowing that these choices will potentially unlock entirely different scenes and puzzles, and that episodic games are sometimes adapted to fit how the audience is playing them, I’m curious how this will shake out overChapters’ five-episode run. Will the fact that most players leaned a certain way change Red Thread’s plans for content only a handful will see? Time will tell.
The last major section takes place in Europolis, the sprawling technopunk location where you’ll spend the most time in Reborn. Three months have passed since Zoë awoke from her coma. She and Reza are back together, and she’s in therapy trying to deal with her reintegration into society and recover repressed memories—what happened in Storytime is totally lost to her. This sets up a dilemma where the player knows more than Zoë about her own situation, and coupled with the emphasis on choice and consequence, it puts you in the unusual position of deciding whether to focus on Zoë’s future, or try to tip her off to what happened in the past. Chances are the story will be roughly the same regardless of what Zoë reveals to her psychiatrist or says to Reza during a disagreement, but there’s nuance to even these non-balance-shifting choices that makes them more than a gimmick.
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