I just finished playing 'Dreamfall' a few days ago and want to share some thoughts. This is one of those rare games, or pieces of popular media in general, that actually made me stop in my tracks and think "oh wow, is this art? I think this is actually art". Sure, 'all games are art' or at the very least someone's artistic expression, but I mostly engage with them as entertainment, and frankly most of them don't rise above the level of entertainment. Dreamfall is one of those games that goes beyond "this is good/great/amazing" or just praising elements of it like the story, music or gameplay. It really felt like a transformative "I have experienced something" moment, that I assume people (who aren't uncultured rubes like me) have at galleries or whatever.
I had the same experience with the first in the series, 'The Longest Journey', even with starting the game with average expectations. I had never heard of the Longest Journey before, I just thought it looked cooked on it's GOG page and I love janky point-and-click adventures. I then found out it's rated as the 'best adventure game of all time' by numerous outlets, and after playing it I can confirm that is correct. It immediately catapulted to within my top 3 games ever played. Similarly when starting the sequel, Dreamfall, my expectations were average. I thought it would be overshadowed by TLJ and fall to the depreciating returns thing that often happens with sequels. But it was actually a totally different experience of equal quality.
Dreamfall focuses on a new character, and expands the scope of the lore in different but interesting ways. Something I really loved about the story of both of them is how unique they were, they both blend storylines of a dystopian cyberpunk future world (espionage, evil corporations, surveillance/police state stuff) with a medieval fantasy world (magical creatures, spirituality/religion, sword & sorcery). It was mind blowing while playing how seamlessly these are blended, while also not just falling to derivitives of both genres. The cyberpunk stuff is more complicated than "oh this is just blade runner/X phillip k dick story rearranged", with the medieval fantasy similarly not just being "lord of the rings rewritten". I find a lot of 'hero's journey' stuff to be too predictable that it becomes dull and I lost interest. There were so many times in Dreamfall and TLJ where I was incredulously muttering "what the fuck.." at how unique the story beats were.
Shit like; I need to travel by ship to some island of magical winged people, speak to shipyard captain "can't help ya, theres no wind anymore, a sorcerer in a floating castle took it away". Then going to his castle, finding it chained down to stone statues, except they can hear me talking... they are people the sorcerer turned to stone, and now I have to convince one to push through the pain of movement and drop a stairway to the castle for me to go confront the sorcerer. After getting through the sorcerer's laybrinthian gauntlet, you end up trapping him in a calculator you picked up off a coffee table hours ago back in the cyberpunk world. There are dozens of moments like that in TLJ and Dreamfall that make them so engaging to play.
To refocus more on Dreamfall, it was really nice to see returning characters again and promptly regaining a familiarity and warmth with them. The characterizations were very grounded and realistic based on what they have been through in the ten year gap between TLJ and Dreamfall. The new characters had an equal near immediate warmth to them as well, from a great voice acting cast. It also has a phenomenal score/soundtrack too, a lot of mid 2000s indie pop incendental stuff, with more unique styles grounding you in each environment (I absolutely adored the trip-hop Saint Petersburg track). Dreamfall could be like a high quality limited television show with very little work, the way it is paced and layed out gave it that vibe, a kind of 2000s young adult network TV style. They also don't explain absolutely everything within the lore either, which I actually like. I think it helps with the writing, leaving stuff open to change as they need later. But as a fan/consumer of this media, I like retaining that mystery in an extended lore, you never really know what could be coming next.
The only real negatives I encountered in the game were the control scheme/camera setup being a bit janky, on occasion I had to rely on a walkthrough guide to work out a few things, and the ending felt a bit out of nowhere. I think they intended to make a follow up very soon after, but the third in the series, Dreamfall: Chapters, didn't release until 2014, after the original writer (Ragnar Tørnquist) left Funcom for his own studio (Red Thread Games). If I had been playing these games as they came out, that 2007-2014 gap would have been excruciating, probably to the point it would sour my memory of Dreamfall. I am playing this series for the first time now, after only stumbling across it last year. I can not believe I had never heard of this series before though, it is so extremely up my alley, and I agree with the opinion of the fanbase; TLJ-Dreamfall saga is THE greatest story ever put to games.
Anyway, I am going to try out the next game, Dreamfall: Chapters, thanks for reading this rant/love letter thing to my new favourite game series! :)