Hi!
I don't know if anybody else already had this idea, i only read the first and the last page of this thread, but...
I guess, April has been saved by Zoe in a more metaphoric sense. Actually she didn't want to become involved, didn't want to help Zoe when she first appears in Arcadia. But Zoe keeps coming back and I guess it's rather obvious that it has an impact on April and her view of things over time. It's pretty much about purpose as somebody here has already pointed out. So while we don't know for sure what happened to April it seems, that Zoe mere presence changed her and (although she is told by the guardian that she is not to become involved) made her re-think her idea of her future and that's why she (April) ultimately decides to help and save her (Zoe). This really changes April's character and brings her back into the story which makes the following even more disturbing. I also believe that the meeting with the guardian has parallels to the famous Matrix movie, when Neo visits the oracle and is told that he is not the One. I believe it's kind of a deceit-with-purpose.
I have to say I really loved the game. I've been studying (in a scientific sense of the word) 'interactive storytelling' for some time and it's really hard to tell a story and make a game out of it without cutting short on at least one of the two halves which means making it too much a game (like HL2) or too much a(n) -interactive- movie. The story is really great, would be a great movie but it's also embedded in a really fascinating interactive world. I would go with some of the inquiries like the movement of the characters could have been more fluent (especially the facial animation) and that there are many scenes during which you feel like watching a movie but all-in-all the unique story doesn't get hurt too much by it and that's most important to me. And you always feel involved/immersed.
About the ending, yes it's very, v e r y open. I really couldn't believe at first that the game was -already- over. So many question remained. But I guess in a way that is very brave as well and it's as far from hollywood stereotypes as you can get. I'll definitely want to play the next sequel.
A common problem with interactive stories is that there are not really common tools in computer games atm to tell stories with. It's like with movies in the 1920s and 30s when they were mostly just filming stage plays because that's what the people knew about. And accordingly today's game developers use techniques from movies, novels etc. to tell stories in interactive software because there are no media-specific tools yet. Therefore we have a lot of non-interactive sequences in story-driven games which is not such a good thing as many of you pointed out. But they will develop (just look how the language of film is still changing after almost 100 years). So I guess we'll keep seeing experiments with the -still very new- kind of media combined with familiar techniques. But for the time being I really think games like Dreamfall prove that it's actually possible to tell great, in-depth stories with a computer game and that it's worth the effort.
