Almost every video game has a story of some kind. Mario was originally trying to rescue his princess from her kidnapper. Sonic was trying to take down Dr. Robotnik (or Eggman if you prefer) and save his woodland friends from their robot forms. The guy in Doom just wanted off Mars. Even if it's barely there most games have some kind of story, a reason for our hero to be a hero. It is for the story that I play most of my games, I don't care about and generally never so much as look at a games multiplayer. I can overlook a great many faults for the sake of a good story, poor controls, program bugs, lousy visuals, annoying soundtrack. If the story is strong enough I can and will overlook all those things I just mentioned. It is the single player narrative experience that I spend my money on and in my time playing games to date I've had the pleasure of playing some truly fantastic stories. Some of the best stories are so vast, so long, so epic that they cannot be covered in one game. Metal Gear Solid, Prince of Persia, Resident Evil, .Hack, Kingdom Hearts, on and on I could go. Some series, like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil, drag on and on long after they should be tied up and finished, spanning multiple console generations with their installments. Perhaps the worst thing about that is the fact that if you want to the whole picture you would have to find the series roots, where it all began. When a story started two console generations ago this can be difficult to impossible and sometimes very expensive depending on what you looking for.
But this blog post isn't about those games. This blog post is about the stories that were never finished, that just kind of hung along with those that enjoyed them. Not only that but little or no show signs of never being finished. In this two part blog post I'm going to talk about two game series that offered me stories that blew me away while leaving questions unanswered, and events far from resolved. While the focus of all this will be their respective stories there may be some spoilers but I will keep them to a minimum and I certainly won't ruin the experience for those that might be interested in seeking these titles out. To start off we'll cover the shorter of the two.
The Longest Journey and it's sequel Dreamfall have a story that left me floored and desperately wanting more. The Longest Journey was released for PC back in 2000 and was a point click adventure. With no combat and a heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving it was at times infuriatingly frustrating leaving you little to no idea what you were supposed to do at times. But that could be forgiven for it's brilliant story, unique setting, and superb voice acting. The Longest Journey centered on the character of April Ryan, an art student living in the distant future. It would seem that several mellenia ago the earth was home to practitioners both science and magic. To avoid a techno magical apocalypse the world was split into two separate worlds, both existing in the same place. These two words were known as Stark (our world) and Arcadia, a world of magic as opposed to science. The divide was overseen by a succession of guardians, powerful beings chosen from either world to oversee the balance and ensure that the two words did not recombine. April discovers that she possesses the exceptionally rare ability to shift between the two words and her once simple life is turned upside down. At first struggling to survive in a alien fantasy world while getting used to things like talking animals and the idea of magic being real she befriends a talking crow whom she names . . . . . . . crow. The two of them travel together as April tries to understand why she has this power and to find a way home. Eventually things escalate and she becomes wrapped up in events that threaten the balance itself.
The story for The Longest Journey continues in it's sequel Dreamfall which was released for PC and Xbox in 2006. The story starts off several years after the events of The Longest Journey with the character of Zoë. After dropping out of university Zoë is just kind of living in limbo with her father in Casablanca. Shortly after the start of the game she starts seeing a little girl on screens around town. The little girl pleads with her to "find April Ryan. Save her!". It seems that a huge company is trying to use technology to induce lucid dreams as the new breakthrough in entertainment. Problems is, a number of the people testing the product have a habit of not waking up. Dreams are a strange thing and are one of the few things that travel freely between Stark and Arcadia. Once Zoë starts investigating bad things start to happen and eventually she finds herself sucked into Arcadia, after which the narrative really takes off. In general the only real fault the game has is that it's over much to fast. Superior to it's predecessor in just about every way Dreamfall was nominated for a number of game awards the year it was released taking home the MTV award for best game soundtrack. Unlike April Zoë could defend herself if the need arose and also ended up sneaking around a number of locales. At times Dreamfall was more like an interactive movie then a game with long cut scenes and tons of superbly done voice acting. After it's climax it was apparent that a sequel was intended but to this day nothing has surfaced. In March of 2007 it was announced that the story would continue in episodic content called Dreamfall Chapters though nothing relating to the project has seen the light of day, not even any word about development so much as starting.
To date the best way to play The Longest journey and Dreamfall would be to pick up the collectors edition of Dreamfall for PC which includes both. If your not one to care about owning a physical copy you can purchase both on Valves Steam service, which most PC gamers will likely be familiar with. If your looking for a game with serious focus on story then Dreamfall will blow you away. It would be a shame if this story were to be left unfinished as to date it remains one of the best stories I have had the pleasure of playing.
I shall continue this train of thought (hopefully within the next month) with an epic series of games. Spanning five games across two console generations over the course of seven years. Six years after the last installment the story remains unfinished. The story of The Legacy of Kain.
