It’s time to go old school again! And this time I’ll be visiting one of my all time favourites, The Longest Journey. If you’ve been following this blog, you probably know that my love for TLJ knows no bounds. It’s made every Top 5 list and it’s mentioned at least once in almost every post. So I finally indulged my nostalgia craving and re-installed it on my computer to see how well it holds up today as a game. And the answer is: still pretty damn well.
You play as April Ryan, an 18 year old art student living in the 23rd century. Life is all art shows and café shifts until April begins to see and experience some strange visions, first in her dreams and then even in the real world (eventually her friends can see them as well). As it turns out, the Earth is split into two worlds: Stark and Arcadia. Stark, or our world, is the land of science and logic, Arcadia is for magic and chaos and they are both held in balance by one individual called the Guardian. There’s just one problem. He’s gone missing, throwing the balance of the two worlds into disarray. April luckily is a Shifter, someone able to travel between the worlds, and it’s up to her of course to save both worlds from certain destruction. The usual.
I first played this game in my first year of university, and the sheer magnitude of it still impresses me today. It is an enormous and lengthy game, full of some great fantasy. April Ryan is a wonderfully complex and witty protagonist, and the story and supporting cast make for an incredibly cohesive gaming experience. Really, it has become one of my chicken soup games: the game that you play every once in a while to just feel good. I’ve mentioned the great story, writing, voice acting and characters in previous posts. I won’t bother repeating myself too much here, but it’s bound to happen.
Obviously there are certain elements of the game that are incredibly dated now. The character models are the most notable, full of polygon goodness and awkwardly handing each other objects by vaguely waving their hands towards another character. The magic of the quick cut transitions hadn’t been discovered yet either making going back and forth between locations fairly tedious when you have to continually watch April slowly run across every screen.
Most notable though are the dialogue conversations. The first thing you’ll notice about this game is that characters love to talk. And talk. And talk some more. It is skippable, but for the full experience of the game you’ll want to listen to it. Now, it’s not the voice acting that makes this dull. Quite the contrary. The characters and conversations ARE interesting. What makes the dialogue tedious, and where TLJ could really have benefited from modern game design, is the static camera angle. Watching two character polygons stand stock-still on a screen for 10-15 minutes at a time is boring for the human eye to watch.
Dreamfall, the sequel to TLJ, would remedy this with multiple camera angles and a more cinematic approach, however there were downsides to that as well which I’ll get to in the next review. What TLJ could have really benefited from was an in-game dialogue system like Half Life’s. It would have made the game even more immersive and would have kept me in my seat for those lengthy conversations. As it was, whenever I knew something long was coming up, I would actually get up and do stuff around my apartment while listening.
For one, it's long. Like, really long for an adventure game. In the modern world of gaming and smart phones it's hard to find a legitimately lengthy game that has quality to match. But it took me quite a while to get through this game again. Yes, some of that has to do with the long dialogues, but there's a lot more to fill up the space as well. Like insane inventory puzzles involving a clamp, a clothesline and an inflatable duck. Or trying to defeat an evil alchemist (still one of my favourite parts to play)
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| It's time for ADVENTURE GAME LOGIC! |
I also never really appreciated how much detail was given to BOTH worlds. Arcadia was obviously the place I was first attracted to with its Tolkienesque landscape. In many ways it still is. But Stark is an incredibly well thought out world as well. Maybe it's because I've lived in Toronto now for five years, but I never really appreciated just how well the game designers captured the feel of a city. It isn't just a generic gritty futuristic setting. Old architecture clashes with modernization, there are bad neighbourhoods and good neighbourhoods, the public transit system will always be dirty, and there is a beauty hidden within the various neighbourhoods of the city.
I can even pinpoint neighbourhoods in Toronto that remind me of the game settings. Newport, April's neighbourhood, reminds me of a mix of The Annex and the Distillery District. Dundas and Sherbourne make an appearance in Hope Street. The more you explore the sights, the more you get a sense of what the heart of New Venice is.
On the other hand Arcadia feels just as vast and magical as it should be but characters living there make it a point to let you know that despite the awesome magic all around, it can still be a very dangerous place to live. There are politics and cultures just as complex as our own, and it rarely feels like a generic D&D feel. The key to both of these settings is that they are treated like characters themselves. It's this fundamental belief that games like Alternativa could have really benefitted from.
What helps this game hold up over the test of time is it's incredibly strong storyline and writing. Only once or twice did I feel like things might have gotten a bit heavy handed, but for the most part I was completely immersed in what was going on, even though I knew what was going to come next! I loved it then and I love it now. Now that is the mark of a great game. Next week I'll be giving more of a review for it's sequel: Dreamfall.
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