Memories of The Longest Journey

A couple of days ago a kickstarter campaign was announced by Red Thread Games for a game called Dreamfall Chapters. If it is successful it will be the third in a series that started with a little adventure called "The Longest Journey" back in 1999. That game turned out to be not only one of the best of all time but also one of the greatest emotional experiences one could have with a video game.

I first heard of it back in early 1999 when a local PC game magazine had an article about the most anticipated games of the year. Now a bit of temporal context may be needed here. During the early and mid 90s, adventure games were a hugely popular genre. Some called them "The king of video games" much like shooters used to be until recently. However with the evolution of graphics and technology overall, adventure games that were mostly based on logical puzzles, great stories and humour gradually moved to the sidelines to make room for more action packed games. For many years they were considered a dead genre with only a few dedicated developers releasing little gems now and then. I'm happy to say that these last couple of years there has been a re-emergence of the genre, kickstarter helping bring back favorite franchises and new exciting ones and companies like Telltale games finally making it big, their dedication to the genre finally being rewarded.

Anyway, I digress. So it was the late 90s and adventure games were not at their pick but were still quite popular among certain crowds. It's no wonder then that such a game held a high spot in the most anticipated of the year list. Although young I really liked adventure games. However I was more excited about strategy games and RPGs at the time so I didn't think much of it initially. I was about to have my mind blown.

I played it for the first time back in 2000 and have never played it since. I tried to a couple of times but my old CDs didn't want to cooperate with the newer operating systems. Luckily it is available on GoG.com and other outlets. Those who want to play it shouldn't have a hard time doing so. Sadly I don't have the time to go through a second playthrough of it and it's sequel, Dreamfall, for this post so what follows is what is says on the title. Memories. Memories and the lasting impressions the game left for me. Feel free to regard my musings as tainted by the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia but I thought it worth it to write them nonetheless.

I should start with some background info about the story and characters but I'd rather begin with my first impression of the game. You controll a young woman, in her underwear and for some strange reason she wears her shoes. It's nothing erotic, just the clothes she was sleeping in. She stands at the edge of the cliff and looking ahead there is an alien fantasy land. Behind her on the cliff there is a nest with a huge white egg in it. An earthquake occures and the egg trickles down the cliff and almost falls over, only saved by a couple of branches. That's where you begin. You have to save the egg and end this dream. But when you do you get a visit from the mother, a white dragon and she speaks to you. Suddenly a dark shadowy form appears and you wake up sweating in your bed. I'm sure my words don't do it justice but I was hooked at just that. It was such an imaginative start with a fairy tale feeling that persists for the rest of the game.

The game itself takes place in not one but two worlds, the joined worlds of technology, called Stark, and magic, called Arcadia. April Ryan, the protagonist, is a young art student living in Stark with no knowledge of the other side. However she has the ability to cross over and a destiny to save the two worlds from the forces of chaos.

Now I said two worlds but it feels like three. If I remember interviews of the time correctly, this was intentional. The world of Stark as you originally see it feels much like our own world. It is a familiar place to us as it is for April. So when you cross over to Arcadia for the first time, the fantasy and wonder is similar for both the player and the character. And what a place Arcadia is! We have all seen plenty of fantasy settings, I'm sure, in games, books, movies and TV-series. However most have their own order and rules they follow and eventually you get to know them and they become mundane or at least lose some of their glitter. The world of Arcadia is like that of a fairy-tale in a child's mind.

There is a geography and what you'd expect of a city like a market, taverns, a port etc. However there are also all sorts of rare and magic findings like talking trees, a fellow that experiences time backwards, a race of guides that share thoughts and memories, flying and waterborn races. It's not that we haven't seen these things before. It's that feeling that anything can happen. A lot of adventure games have that freedom since for an adventure game you don't need a world (like for an RPG), you need a story. The Longest Journey manages to create both a world and a story like the best of them.

The third "world" you visit is Stark again but this time you delve into cyberpunk territories. Stark is sience fiction and it has a very distinct dark side and you have to navigate fututistic police stations, evil coorporations and meet with hackers.

What makes the game so great are a couple of elements combined together. First and foremost is story. It is one of the most complex and mature writen in the medium. It is sci-fi and fantasy and real life, it's got twists and turns and a great finalle. It is also amazingly written. The main writter, Ragnar Torniquist and his team did a stellar job. There is also a lot of it. People have complained about dialogues taking up to half an hour but it was so enjoyable I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

Then there are the characters. Cortez, a mysterious stranger that helps April in her journey and who is more than he seems, Crow, April's talking companion bird and comedy sidekick, April's friends, the Guardian and so many others. The greatest of them all being April Ryan. Now from time to time I've seen lists about the greatest female leads in computer games and I literally cringe whenever she isn't mentioned. She is smart, couragious, driven, imaginative. She also has her problems, her insecurities and fears. Till this day she is my favorite female character in video games. The Longest Journey, the title, refers to her journey between two worlds and beyond but also refers to the longest journey of her life, the one from puberty to adulthood.

Then there was gameplay. Classic point and click adventure fare. The puzzles were excelent, from interesting to the really inventive like beating a great evil wizard at math using a calculator. It wasn't very difficult but that is a plus for me. I'm sure there are hardcore adventure fans out there who like their games tough as nails. I sympathize, I usually like some challenge myself but when it comes to adventures specifically I hate for a puzzle to block me for days. I lose momentum and the pacing of the story. The Longest Journey is huge for an adventure games so all the more reason to keep the story going forward. Luckily there was no puzzle that took me hours to figure out. Well actually there was one. I wouldn't mention it but I've seen other people on the internet complain about it. The one with the rubber duck. Those who've played the game probably know what I'm talking about. I actually had to look at a walkthrough for that one.

After all this I'm afraid that I still can't communicate sufficiently just how good this game is. Just go play it and see for yourselves. I would have the concern that I raised the bar too high with praise and the experience might dissapoint in the end but for this particular one I don't think there's reason to worry.

The Longest Journey finally had a sequel in 2006, called Dreamfall. I was so excited back then, I had a Dreamfall wallpaper on my PC for months. This time the main protagonist was a girl named Zoe from Stark but you would also controll two more characters, Kian Alvane, a warrior from Arcadia and an adult and dissilusioned April who was now a rebel, stuck in Arcadia.

Dreamfall has some glaring faults. First of all it fails totaly as an adventure game. It's more like interactive storytelling. I remember there was just one puzzle. Everything else was just too obvious to qualify as such. Then there were stealth and fighting sequences that were so badly done, the game would benefit greatly from not having them at all. It was a time of consoles when adventure games weren't being made any more so I guess they tried to tap into a new audience. That experiment, I must say, didn't go that well. As a consequence gone was the point and click gameplay as well, replaced by arrow key movement and pressing a key to interact.

If all that wasn't bad enough, the story, the main selling point of the game, was dull and uninteresting. Until about chapter 4, that is. After that it was pure bliss. It was all the things that the story of the original was, imaginative, intelligent, funny. In fact it was so good that it carried the wreck that was the rest of the game, resulting in an overall very enjoyable experience. At first I was really dissapointed with this sequel but it eventually won me over. Except for Kian Alvane, I never liked him.

I have to make a small detour here to mention something that occurs in just one scene of the game but it was so exciting and inovative that I just have to write something about it. I'm a fan of good dialogue in games. Both RPGs and adventure games have the potential for some very interesting dialogue scenes and there are many games that have inovated and iterated and have some brilliant dialogue. However I can only think of two instances when my mind was blown not by the topics discussed but by the format. One was in the hall of Sensates in Planescape: Torment. The other in Dreamfall. In Dreamfall at some point two of your characters meet and they have a conversation. I already had controll of one of them and as the dialogue started I was given some choices. I made mine and waited, fully expecting the other character to act as an NPC and answer back. However to my great surprise the camera shifted from behind one character to behind the other and now I got to chose the responce myself. It went on like this till the end of the dialogue. Now it may sound like talking with yourself but it was more like instead of one responce to your choice there were several and it was up to you to decide which one would be uttered.

Now back to topic, there was yet another problem with the story in Dreamfall. It ended in a cliffhanger. It wasn't cut in half or anything. No, a chapter definitely ended, one tale was told. The problem was that the story was more than one chapter long and we were left craving for more, with no continuation in sight. Ragnar Torniquist went on to lead the development of the MMO The Secret World and there was very little talk about the Dreamfall sequel it so desperately needed.

That is until now, or rather a few months ago. Torniqust announced that he was leaving Funcom, the company the made the first two games, to start his own company, their first game being the sequel to Dreamfall. Thankfully we didn't have to wait long for any more news, it has been more than 6 years since Dreamfall, we've waited plenty. As I said in the intro, a kickstarter campain for Dreamfall Chapters is well underway and the way it's going it seems like 2014 will be the year we finally get the third game in the series.

From what they've announced so far it will conclude the story of Zoe. She will be the main protagonist but she will be joined by two other playbale characters. One of the two I guess is probably April but no announcement has been made so far regarding them. I'm also happy to report that it will be a more traditional adventure game than Dreamfall. The team have said that they intent to make it the best of the three, borrowing the best elements of the first two games. As they say in these circumstances, only time will tell. However, given their track record, I'm confident that at least the story will be deep and engaging and imaginative and magical.

This concludes my retrospective of the Longest Journey series. As I mentioned all I've wrote about the two games is from what I remember and it has been more than 12 years since I played the first and 6 years for the second, so if I've gotten some things wrong or didn't mention really memorable moments, I apologize. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

The future of adventure games is looking better and better and this in particular is a series that I'm happy to see survive and thrive due to the love of so many people.

Best PS2 games that didn't come out for PC

Hello everyone. This is my first post on this all new blog. I know I should make some kind of introductory entry about who I am and what's this blog is about. However I won't. At least not yet. I'll do it somewhere down the line. I decided to make my first post about something far more interesting, at least to me.

Now I started gaming when I was about 10 on a 486 IBM PC. Over the years I have always had a PC so that has been my main venue for gaming. I can't complain. I firmly believe that the best games are PC games. However I was always a bit envious of my friends who had consoles, not because they could play on the couch with a controller on a big screen TV. No I happen to like my desk and mouse and keyboard setup. It was always about games. There were always a couple of games of each console generation that I really wanted to play. Sure there were emulators but it was not the same and not all systems were properly emulated anyway.

It was several years after the release of PS2 and Xbox that I finally gave in and decided to get a console for myself. The prices had gone down considerably since their release. From the two I went with PS2. It had more interesting exclusives and as an RPG gamer the choice was easy. Xbox to me was more for people who didn't have a PC since it had some ports of great PC games like Morrowind.
Actually the first run in that I had with a PS2, appart from playing at friends' houses, was when a friend of mine let me borrow his for a Summer. He urged me to play Final Fantasy X, it was the game he bought the console for. I had played several Final Fantasy games that far and I'm a fan of the series so it definitely was a game I wanted to play. However I didn't till I got my own unit. That summer I played two other amazing games, but more on that later.

So what is this list about? First of all why make a list? Well I happen to like lists, although I tend to dissagree with 90% of the lists on the internet. I'm sure a lot of people (if a lot of people actually read this) will disagree with mine. However I find them fun and useful as a way to get aquainted with games you may not have known as well as the person making the list. If someone agrees with mine they might be more willling to read my future posts to see what my opinion is on other things gamey.
So since I already mentioned I'm a PC player that turned to consoles to play games not available on the PC, my list includes just that. I could say Playstation 2 exclusives but there are some games that may have made it to the Xbox or GameCube (not sure if there is any on the list but there might be).

Finally a warning. This post will contain spoilers about the games mentioned. I for one hate for games to be spoiled for me even if they have been out for years. I tend to play older games now and then. I'll try to have the titles visible so you can skip over the text for games you haven't played and plan on someday playing, if you care about spoilers. Finally, on with the list:

Final Fantasy X

There has been much debate about which is the best Final Fantasy. Different people have different opinions. Common answers are FF 6, 7 and X. Personally my favorite is Final Fantasy 8 (why requires a new blog post altogether) but FF X is close second. It features the best elements of the series. Stunning visuals, jaw dropping cutscenes (at the time but they stand the test of time very well), a fantasy story full of twists and some interesting and lovable characters (Tidus wasn't so bad as his appearance would imply). And for the first time in a Final Fantasy game it had voices. The combat system was more or less the same with previous instalments but it had a bit more focus on tactics based around elemental resistances and weaknesses. It also had some great minigames. I must have spent half of my time in game playing Blitzball. The game went away with the overhead map but I think because of that, among other things, had the most believable world. There was no disconnect with cities extremely different from each other like in FF7. The game was also a system seller, a lot of people bought the PS2 just to play Final Fantasy X and were not dissapointed.

Shadow Hearts 2

 

But is FFX the best RPG on the PS2? My answer is no, there is Shadow Hearts 2. A bit of history first. There was a game for PS1 named Kudelka. It was a strange mix of survival horror and RPG. The gameplay was interesting and the writing was amazing. A game in the same universe with loose connections to Kudelka was one of the first RPGs on the PS2. It was Shadow Hearts 1. It is an alternative history game that takes place in early 20th centrury Europe (if I remember right) where there is magic and vampires and a shapeshifting protagonist. The premise is interesting the setting original and fresh and a new mechanic is introduced that makes the battles more active and engaging. However it doesn't have a spot on this list because it is also boring and repeptitive. In addition, being one of the first RPGs on the PS2 it looks and plays more like a PS1 RPG. However there is a very important reason to play it. Shadow Hearts 2 is a direct continuation and it is that good.

I like games with good stories. To be the good hero in a quest to save the world and everything turns all right in the end isn't a very good premise for a story. The best RPG stories aren't about saving the world but about saving yourself (cue Planescape: Torment, Mask of the Betrayer, etc). Shadow Hearts 2 won me right from the start. Shadow Hearts 1 had two endings a good and a bad. SH 2 considers the bad ending canon and continues from that with the main character reeling from the loss of his beloved, his actions throughtout the game driven by the trauma of his past. Also early in the game the main character is cursed, a curse that is more or less a ticking time bomb. Till the end I was convinced that he would remove it somehow. However none of the two endings is exactly a happy one. Both have fair doses of melancholy. Now other than the begining and the ending the game takes place in an alternative Europe, including actual historic figures like princess Anastasia (a little girl that joins your party) and Rasputin (one of the main antagonists). There is a fair share of world saving but the story is one of the most interesting I've played in a JRPG. The cast is colorful and sometimes and silly. You have a bodybuilder wrestler vampire, a puppeteer, a dog, among other. They each have their own optional side quest that is either emotional or funny. There are some over the top scenes but I didn't mind them much. The battle system is also one of the most interesting in JRPGs with actions being decided by a roulette and your reflexes playing a major role but the positioning on the battlefield is equally important. I would say not only that Shadow Hearts 2 is the best JRPG on the PS2 but it's also a game very few people have played. The game is also known as Shadow Hearts: Covenant in case you have trouble finding it. I think I should make a blog entry just for this game some time.

God of War

 I'm sure this game is in many people's lists. One of the best action games on the PS2 or any console for that matter. A friend introduced me to it as a game like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Although I maintain that the Sands of Time trilogy is better than the God of War games this doesn't reduce at all the value of this great game. More focused on action than acrobatics, God of War was dark and brutal and viceral (despite the word being PR candy nowadays it is actually true in this occasion). The combat mechanics were awesome, the graphics amazing. This is the game that for good or bad introduced quick time events to a mainstream audience. However in God of War they were well done and served the purpose of seeing Kratos, the protagonist, deliver punishing fatalities to his enemies while not taking the control away from the player. Kratos himself was one of the most interesting elements in the game. His story was trully dark, a story of revenge and redemption. He was a character that in most accounts can be considered evil. He was a barbarian, ruthless, vindictive. A welcome reprieve of the good paladin types or charming rogues of other games. The other God of War games are all pretty good but none of them as good as the first when you play it for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid 3

 

This was the first game I played the summer I had borrowed a PS2 from a friend. I had played MGS 1 and 2 and I was a fan. MGS 3 is still one of the best games in the series. For the first time you controlled Big Boss and not Solid Snake (or Raiden). He was the villain of the first 2 Metal Gear games (not the Solid games) and Snake's mentor. Here we saw his story for the first time. The game, it takes place in the 70s, set the stage for the games that followed, it introduced new characters and plots while bringing back a few favorites in their younger versions. The biggest departure storywise is that it a much more emotional game than the first two. Big Boss seemed more capable of emotion than his clone of the first game and the mission itself was much more personal. He had to assassinate his former mentor. The whole game takes place in a russian jungle and it incorporated many new elements like survival mechanics, the need to eat and some ingenious Kojima gimmicks. You could for example defeat an old sniper by turning off your PS2 for a couple of days and wait for him to die of old age. The final battle happens in a field of white flowers, a one on one fight between mentor and student and it is one of the best final battles in this type of game. The sequel, MGS 4 for the PS3 was probably the worst in the series but Peace Walker for the PS3 lets you once again control Big Boss and is a worthy successor to MGS3.

Kingdom Hearts

 

The other game I played that summer. I was already at college so I had outgrown disney movies a long time ago. I played it because it was by square and had good press inspite the disney crossover. What I found was a gem. The game is a platformer with RPG elements. Like many other games on this list it had a great story, very imaginative, blending disney worlds with square characters. The beginning scene is one of the best in video games. Playing it I felt like a kid in a dark fairy tale where things were lurking behind what was visible. The gameplay is very fun with easy platforming bits and action combat. To my surprise revisiting the disney worlds of my youth was a delight and Donald and Goofy, your trusted companions were excuisite company. There are tons of hidden things like power ups or story bits. Some of the cameos are formidable. The first time I battled Sephiroth it was a rare experience. The second time I played the game I managed to beat him even and althought it's not that hard, he had kicked my ass so bad the first time that I was ecstatic. Kindgom Hearts 2 sadly doesn't make the list. It changed a couple of things, probably for the worst. It had a more RPG focus and it did away with all the platforming. The story in KH1 has a lot of hidden staff and requires some thinking but in 2 it was unnecessarily complex and convoluted. The battles are the main focus. There are a lot more things to do and they are flashy but are also pretty easy. The worst thing for me is that they rewrote the disney stories it featured and the game versions are much worse, making the characters stupid or shallow.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

 

Another game I played due to its interesting premise. The world comes to an end. Everybody but very few dies. You are a half-demon/half-human. You are thrown into an interim world populated by demons who each have a different idea of how the new world that will emerge should be shaped. There are three major powers representing different philosophies and there are all in all five different paths you can follow. Your choise will at the end be the determining factor of what will happen with the world. The game has very little story development and dialogues apart from key moments. There are some interesting things like your friends, those of them who survived, each have chosen a different demon/phiosophy to allign with and try to get your favor. The game is in fact a japanese style dungeon crawler. The interesting premise wouldn't be enough to keep me going through the endless dungeons and battles if the game mechanics weren't so interesting. Appart from yourself you control demons. You collect these demons by persuading your enemies to join you and by combining demons together to make new ones. Demons level up and learn new attacks. The battle system while classic turn based JRPG fare has some twists that make it one of the most interesting and brutal out there. Attacking enemies with resistances costs you not only damage but also part of your turn while exploiting weaknesses makes your opponents lose theirs. Combined with a punishing difficulty if your build isn't on par, it makes for a very interesting dungeon crawl experience. Now there are other Shin Megami Tensei games on the PS2 that could potentially make the list, I'm a fan of the series, but this is the only one I've played on this console.

Soul Calibur 3

 

Now there are a lot of good fighting games on the PS2. Others prefer Tekken, others Soul Calibur 2 or some other series all together. For me it's SC3, one of the first games I bought for me PS2. My brother and me used to play a lot of fighting games. The first one we spent countless hours on was Mortal Kombat 3 (and then Trilogy). Then it was Samurai Shodown 4. The third was Soul Calibur 3. We would sit and play for hours. I had actually ulocked all secrets in the game through versus play. The single player story is just awful so I won't even mentioned it. What I liked was the fast pace, how different each fighter was to the others, the use of weapons, the enormous moveset and how easy it was to execute each move but it was all about timing, learning to block your oppontent and counter with your own attacks at the right time and height to go through his defence. I have played some other fighting games since then, like the new Mortal Kombat, but gone are the days of playing fighting games for hours so I look back to SC3 with fondness.

God Hand

 

This game is awesome and it's a shame so few people have played it. Remember those great 2d beat em up like Double Dragon or Cantilacs and Dinosaurs? God Hand is that in 3d. And it is awesome. ( I know I already said that but it can't be said enough about this game). You play as a man who has the hand of God and you battle hordes of demons, including a lot of the most imaginative demon bosses I've seen. The game is hilarious with way over the top scenes and characters, bordering to ridiculous. It also features very deep fighting mechanics with unlockable moves and tactics. I rarely play a game more than once but I've played this three times, almost back to back. The second playthrough doesn't offer anything new, it's just that much fun.

Onimusha: Warlords

 

The first Onimusha game is a blend of survival horror and action. It takes place in medieval Japan and you control a samurai fighting demons. The game won't scare you but it is creepy and distrurbing. The first Onimusha I played was no 3 for the PC but I think the first is better. It is darker and has some great cinematics. It featured 2d backdrops and 3d characters. That allowed for some very detailed environments compaired to other games of its time.

And with that this list comes to a close. 9 great games for the PS2 that never made it on PC. I'm sure you guys will have your favorites that I didn't mention. That could mean one of three things: I haven't played them, I played them and didn't like them or I played them, liked them but just forgot about them, it has been a few years since I last touched a PS2 afterall. If anyone does happen to read this blog post, feel free to share some of your favorite PS2 games on the comments and tell me if you dissagree with me (in a civil manner please :). Keep in mind this list is of games that never came to the PC so the Sands of Time trilogy, Psychonauts, Devil May Cry 3 and a lot of other games are out by default.