One of my all time favorite games is also a game that most gamers today never played, or even heard of for that matter. FunCom’s 1999 classic “The Longest Journey” is to this day praised as one of the best adventure games ever for its interesting, magical story, mature dialogue and superb voicework. The 2006 sequel, Dreamfall, was released on the original Xbox and the PC, and while it did not win as much critical praise, it is a fantastic adventure. The Longest Journey is a tale of two connected parallel worlds, where the Balance has been disturbed, causing chaos on both sides. The backstory and plot of both games are intriguing, connected and complex, so I urge you to take a peak at excellent Wikipedia pages for both games, just be careful with the spoilers.

The Longest Journey is a hardcore point-and-click adventure, with notoriously difficult puzzles. I dare you to beat this game without peaking at a guide, often. Dreamfall was, for better and worse, made much easier. While the first game was criticized for its difficult puzzles, the sequel was criticized for its shallow puzzles and tacked on combat. None of this really matters, because these games are heavily story driven, and here is where they both shine. You sit back and take a journey, following the excellent storytelling. Be forewarned, if you don’t enjoy listening to long segments of dialogue that develops the story and attachment to the characters, these games are not for you.

Today Steam is the best way to obtain both games in a package at a good price. Dreamfall is also available via “Xbox Originals”. Seeing as it is much more recent, Dreamfall still looks good by today’s visual standards. The Longest Journey however is an old game, and it is stuck at 640×480 resolution on the PC. I recommend tweaking an ini file to make the game run windowed because it will stretch and pixelate something terrible on today’s large widescreen monitors.

The game’s storyline is not complete and both FunCom and the game’s main designer, Ragnar Tørnquist, promised as late as March 2007 that there are plans for episodic sequels, called “Dreamfall Chapters”. The plot has been written but development of the game is yet to begin…

-Daniel Lindberg

Tags: BFTP, Dreamfall, Funcom, PC, The Longest Journey, Xbox 360

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