Lu 

Dreamfall Chapters: The Undreaming, also dragons

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Yeah, I just skimmed through the video, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN HEARING YOU GUYS TALK, JUST TAKE MY MONEY!

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Shhh, Ragnar, shhh. You had me at hello.

I should probably have stopped at that point too. Instead I let him describe the ending of Dreamfall and decided not to pledge.

I quite liked The Longest Journey when I first played it, but couldn't stand the gameplay of Dreamfall. Or the plot for that matter (which probably was not much worse than that of The Longest Journey to be honest). So yeah, I think I'll wait until the game is released before making the decision.

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I'm in the same position with this Kickstarter as the Broken Sword one. It's been a while since the last game and I have no idea how good the game will be and I really think I should replay them just to make sure they stood the test of time... I haven't played either game since they first came out... I can't even tell whether the few memories I do have are from this or Syberia... or if I ever really liked them.

Oh well, I guess a month is enough time to play at least one of the games?

At least this Kickstarter didn't come out at the same time as every other adventure game... Unless this is just the start and tomorrow we'll have a Syberia Kickstater. And... Frankly, I can't think of any adventure series that hasn't been Kickstarted already.

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TLJ: awesome

Dreamfall: terrible

The kickstarted video doesn't convince me to spend $20

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As long as there are no stupid combat sequences...

There will not be any, according to RPS.

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New trailer!!!

The game is now episodic, and the first part (called Book One: Reborn, the first five episodes) will be out this Fall, which is very exciting.

 

Minor spoiler (for Dreamfall, the original) wrt the trailer (not sure if that needs to be in spoiler tags or not, but better safe than sorry)

I think the ghostlike figure that Zoë caught was April, which would make some sort of sense, if true

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New trailer!!!

The game is now episodic, and the first part (called Book One: Reborn, the first five episodes) will be out this Fall, which is very exciting.

 

Minor spoiler (for Dreamfall, the original) wrt the trailer (not sure if that needs to be in spoiler tags or not, but better safe than sorry)

I think the ghostlike figure that Zoë caught was April, which would make some sort of sense, if true

 

Cautiously optimistic about the episodic model.  I'm not totally sold on their "narrate my character's inner thoughts about my dialogue choices before narrating my actual dialogue choice" design, though.

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Holy crap, the first episode comes out this month.  I honestly wasn't expecting the first one out this year based on some of the previous updates.  I just had a sense that it would end up being early next year for some reason. 

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Yeah me neither, that's super soon! I'm really excited but I also have a ton of other games I'm in the middle of. I'll put things aside to play this though.

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I started playing this yesterday (they released it to backers, I think the game should be available on steam for purchase today or tomorrow, they said there were some bugs). I like it, but I have mixed feelings on the start, in particular. Some of the intro with Zoe and recap writing, as well as stuff with Kian Alvane (who I don't even remember from Dreamfall, maybe I should have replayed it first) didn't seem great, but once I got more into it, past what seemed to be the intro chapters, it seems to have gotten a lot better -- more like what I would expect out of a game with the heritage of TLJ and Dreamfall. I need to replay those though, I think. I miss April.

 

Another weird thing is it has choices you can make and says like THEY WILL REMEMBER THAT. And also theres apparently some social integration with your choices. That's kinda weird and seems out of place, but is mostly inoffensive. I've never played like, the walking dead, but I assume this is similar to that.

 

As far as stuff wrt previous games, i think it is mostly just related to Dreamfall, not TLJ. A lot of dreamfall characters are involved and referenced, which is a bit of a problem because I don't remember all of them that well, I perhaps should have replayed Dreamfall first.

 

Anyway, i'll have more to say once I play more of it. 

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I played through the first two 'chapters' of Chapters, The social integration is optional, and shows statistics of the binary choices that players have made. The weird thing is that you see these statistics by toggling them on during a 'choice' section, rather than only as a summary at the end of the game like in The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. (I haven't reached the end of Chapters yet).

 

This can obviously affect the choice a player makes, especially when you see things like 90% of players chose A over B. I don't really know what the point of it is, maybe it'll be more meaningful when the sample size of players is larger and i've encountered more choices. I still think they should have only shown statistics after the end, as it stands now it's very easy for a choice to be a reaction to what the majority chose rather than what you personally feel.

 

I'm liking the story so far, it's been a while since playing TLJ and Dreamfall so I'm also having trouble remembering some plot details.

 

*Also my laptop always seems to struggle with Unity engine games, getting framerates between 14 and 30 per second. I have a GTX 460M and it runs most other engines pretty well.

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I played through the first two 'chapters' of Chapters, The social integration is optional, and shows statistics of the binary choices that players have made. The weird thing is that you see these statistics by toggling them on during a 'choice' section, rather than only as a summary at the end of the game like in The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us. (I haven't reached the end of Chapters yet).

 

This can obviously affect the choice a player makes, especially when you see things like 90% of players chose A over B. I don't really know what the point of it is, maybe it'll be more meaningful when the sample size of players is larger and i've encountered more choices. I still think they should have only shown statistics after the end, as it stands now it's very easy for a choice to be a reaction to what the majority chose rather than what you personally feel.

 

I'm liking the story so far, it's been a while since playing TLJ and Dreamfall so I'm also having trouble remembering some plot details.

 

*Also my laptop always seems to struggle with Unity engine games, getting framerates between 14 and 30 per second. I have a GTX 460M and it runs most other engines pretty well.

 

Yeah, I agree about the choice stuff. I haven't looked at any of the community stuff when I make a choice though, which I think I prefer. I don't mind reporting my data to them, but I do like making the choice without knowing what other people have made. None of those choices so far have seemed particularly deep though. I think there were only like, 2.

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You know, for some reason making choices and seeing what other people picked made it a lot less stressful to actually make choices. Even if I chose to not go with what the majority did. I kind of like that in the round up, they vaguely tease when the choices you made are going to be relevant. 

 

It was really nice to be back in that universe, though! I've always been a big fan of the series! They really start it

on an emotional note with that funeral. I don't know if that is actually goodbye for April Ryan, but if so, damn that's a sour end for the character.

The new voice actors for Zoe and Kian did a bang up job, although there were some REALLY hammy lines in there. "Shine you crazy diamond, you!" And Kian's reflections on this one candle, and a broom. I had to listen to what was said again to see if I somehow missed the joke, but the lines are played completely straight. I bet he'd kill at a Goth poetry slam competition over in Stark.

 

I was less excited by was some of the puzzle design. Rather, I don't think it was the content of the puzzles as it was the design around it. It could be so unclear and the UI really unhelpful in figuring out what you were supposed to do. In particular a puzzle in the latter half of the game

where, before you can see Queenie, you need to bring a gift. I think the game fails to communicate a few very key points to actually figure out the puzzle. I did not realize at all that the bottles next to the little girl were gifts and not goods she was selling. It's not mentioned in the dialog at all when you look at those bottles. She just states the type of wine it is. I looked at all the right things, but I was completely unsure if I was on the right track. Maybe I missed a completely obvious hints there, but I kind of walked into the solution by accident after 30 minutes of wasted time.

There were a couple of times where the messaging was rather unclear like that. I wish there was a button that just showed you all game relevant interaction points.

 

They set up a lot of things in this first chapter of the game; I'm really looking forward to see where this is gonna go! Hopefully I don't have to wait too long! C'mon Zoe, you have to remember you beautiful diamond you!

 

Oh (Dreamfall plot spoilers),

am I the only one who doesn't trust Reza AT ALL? There is one line at the end of Dreamfall that I remember very vividly and that was "Careful dad. That is not Reza."

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Oh (Dreamfall plot spoilers),

am I the only one who doesn't trust Reza AT ALL? There is one line at the end of Dreamfall that I remember very vividly and that was "Careful dad. That is not Reza."

Haven't played this much yet, so haven't actually run into Reza again (still in ch 2 with Kian!!), and don't remember much about Dreamfall (last I played it was a few years ago ;_; feel like I should read an in-depth summary of the previous games if I can find one), but

Zoe mentions that again if you examine the picture with her and Reza enough times, and then sort of goes on a "well maybe I was just freaking out" line of thought. Still, I'm inclined to agree that I would be distrustful. WE'LL SEE HOW I FEEL I GUESS.

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You know, for some reason making choices and seeing what other people picked made it a lot less stressful to actually make choices. Even if I chose to not go with what the majority did. I kind of like that in the round up, they vaguely tease when the choices you made are going to be relevant. 

 

It was really nice to be back in that universe, though! I've always been a big fan of the series! They really start it

on an emotional note with that funeral. I don't know if that is actually goodbye for April Ryan, but if so, damn that's a sour end for the character.

The new voice actors for Zoe and Kian did a bang up job, although there were some REALLY hammy lines in there. "Shine you crazy diamond, you!" And Kian's reflections on this one candle, and a broom. I had to listen to what was said again to see if I somehow missed the joke, but the lines are played completely straight. I bet he'd kill at a Goth poetry slam competition over in Stark.

 

I was less excited by was some of the puzzle design. Rather, I don't think it was the content of the puzzles as it was the design around it. It could be so unclear and the UI really unhelpful in figuring out what you were supposed to do. In particular a puzzle in the latter half of the game

where, before you can see Queenie, you need to bring a gift. I think the game fails to communicate a few very key points to actually figure out the puzzle. I did not realize at all that the bottles next to the little girl were gifts and not goods she was selling. It's not mentioned in the dialog at all when you look at those bottles. She just states the type of wine it is. I looked at all the right things, but I was completely unsure if I was on the right track. Maybe I missed a completely obvious hints there, but I kind of walked into the solution by accident after 30 minutes of wasted time.

There were a couple of times where the messaging was rather unclear like that. I wish there was a button that just showed you all game relevant interaction points.

 

They set up a lot of things in this first chapter of the game; I'm really looking forward to see where this is gonna go! Hopefully I don't have to wait too long! C'mon Zoe, you have to remember you beautiful diamond you!

 

Oh (Dreamfall plot spoilers),

am I the only one who doesn't trust Reza AT ALL? There is one line at the end of Dreamfall that I remember very vividly and that was "Careful dad. That is not Reza."

 

To the first point you made

I really really hope that isn't the last we will see of April. I don't think it is though, they mentioned in their kickstarter that after chapters they want to the "The Longest Journey Home" which would be the conclusion of April's story. They may have changed their mind, or it might take place before these events though. That did make me quite sad

 

Also, man I totally forgot about that last bit. I need to play Dreamfall again, or at least refresh myself on the plot. TLJ was my favorite, but that one is hard to revisit. I just like April as a character a lot.

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I did finish the game. I think it had an unfortunately weak start (some of the intro writing was just... bad. hokey and bad) but it redeemed itself and I saw the kind of writing I was expecting out of the game. not that the intro wasn't still bad, not excusing that. I am kind of dissapointed though I guess. I enjoyed it and I look forward to what comes next, im quite invested in the story. I think though, were I not already invested, this wouldn't do much at all. Gameplay was never the strong suit of the series, and this one has fine gameplay, but nothing worth metioning, aside from some small complaints, perhaps (I don't play many adventure games now so I can't compare either) but it ended up satisfying me, character and story wise, but I hope there is more to come. Also my favorite character is, understandably, absent. many questions there.

 

 

I am curious about the choice and "they will remember this" thing. I haven't played them, but from what I have heard, that sounds like its a mechanic right out of recent telltale games as I mentioned earlier. I'm also not into it, but I dont' dislike it either, I guess. How does this compare to the telltale implementaion? it does seem very derivative/

Edited by coaxmetal

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Finished the 2nd book and uh... Yea, I'm really interested in the world and story, but the puzzles so far have been an annoying distraction from that. I just don't enjoy most of them, mostly because I think the game does such a poor job communicating what it expects you to do. I found myself AGAIN walking around aimlessly for long times, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. They're just so vague and the solutions so specific; it bums me out a bit.

 

Then there are the characters that just monologue at you for the longest time; just talking at you while you're just standing there rotating the camera around. There has got to be a better way to do that.

 

I suppose most my complaints are really a matter of budget. Time and money and all that. Seems that it's scope is bigger than what they can muster and there's just a lot of jankiness, which is unfortunate. 

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