The Longest Journey (1999) (PC) (Funcom)
9Dreamfall Chapters Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey
My video of the Swedish version of The Longest Journey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3D-vtSITvg
Some people are *really* passionate about Funcom's critically acclaimed adventure games The Longest Journey (1999) and Dreamfall (2006), and a good indication of that is the recent success of lead designer Ragnar Tørnquist's Kickstarter campaign for a new game in the series (Dreamfall Chapters).
While I personally wasn't as impressed or touched by the tales of April Ryan and Zoe Castillo, there's no denying that these games still rank among the most ambitious attempts at video game storytelling we've seen so far. If nothing else, there's just an insane amount of fully voiced dialogue in The Longest Journey alone - indeed, the wordiness is one of its problems as far as gameplay is concerned - and there's some serious world building going on which gives the impression of the whole thing being sufficiently fleshed out to support a ton of games in the same universe.
Funcom's controversial change of direction in favor of the divisive MMO sphere surely had something to do with the excitement surrounding the possibility of a sequel to Dreamfall, and it's definitely going to be interesting to see what those endearingly earnest Norwegians at Red Thread Games (i.e. Ragnar's new studio) can achieve without the need to satisfy traditional publishers.