I didn't like Syberia when it was released. Too many empty screens that were only designed to walk on them (meaning: to see our girl's bottom moving from one side to another) and I didn't like most of its puzzles. When I finished it, though, I felt like there was really something something that surfaced from those negative aspects: it is the first, and maybe only, adventure which tells an emotional story, and the end really works.
The second Syberia was not necessary. The first one was about escaping reality, and we knew what Kate Walker had chosen. Surprisingly, I found it - and still find it - miles better than the first: the screens are better designed, so they are continously animated and the characters are bigger and walk less, the puzzles are much better just from the first one, and the story is miles more focused: a continous metaphore of a twilight voyage (into death) which had Kate Walker as one witty witness. The characters were much smarter, the information was given in less bits so you had to imagine a bit more, and everything was much intriguing, from the landscapes and animals to the reasons for this obstination to go until the very end.
Ok, Spoiler alert.
The ending rounded the game a lot. It was misty, just some shapes going to neverwhere. Death. Death of Voralberg? Not at all: death of Kate Walker. This way, the game is very similar to a great book from Connie Willis: Passage, which had Titanic as a metaphore of death. Syberia 2 was also amusing because of the evil characters (who added a much needed sense of humor to the story that balanced it a lot), and, in the end, it justified the first game all along. I still have shivers remembering some parts of the game, really. And lately I played it again, and still amazes me how this team managed a such intelligent, mature, deep and layered story, much better than the first one because it didn't need to show how intellectual it was with obvious opera numbers (which brought to my memories the most embarrasing Final Fantasy parts: opera only worked in Gabriel Knight 2 because there the composer seemed to know what classical music really is) or fake paneuropean feel. It shows how being a bit campier can work much better. It is a lesson. And those two games are two milestones of something I doubt even Sokal will better (seing how disastrous Paradise is)
Cheers
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