I didn't really have time to address the Neverending Story/Longest Journey issue earlier, but I'd like to do so in greater depth here. Spoilers abound here for both works.
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The twin worlds of Fantasia/Arcadia and harsh reality or science (called Stark in TLJ). What's happening to them and why. The big nothing or chaos (this really nails it for me) eating up the world of imagination.
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Ende's novel didn't really emphasize the "twin worlds" concept as much as Longest Journey did; the real world wasn't "the world of science," nor was Fantasia/Fantastica (depending on the translation) "the world of magic" so much as it was the world of
stories. Whereas in Longest Journey, Stark and Arcadia represented the worlds of logic and magic, only Fantasia represented a concept in Neverending Story, while the real world simply...was. Also, individuals from the real world could change the landscape of Fantasia but not vice-versa, while Stark and Arcadia were independently functioning (ie, something that happens in Stark doesn't have to happen in Arcadia). The overarcing theme of balance between worlds was also absent from Ende's novel.
Also, the Chaos Storm wasn't eating up Arcadia; it was certainly causing havoc, but it wasn't tearing Arcadia apart or causing it to stop existing. Nor was it a force of nothingness. It was the half of Gordon Halloway that belonged in Arcadia, the physical representation of an individual completely composed of the chaos that is emotionality. The half of him that belonged in Stark was the cold, emotionless represenation of a being composed entirely of logic. The storm wasn't indicative of a problem with Arcadia as was the Nothing in the Neverending Story, it was an individual creature created by splitting Gordon in half. What was happening in The Longest Journey was that the Balance between worlds was breaking down in the Guardian's absence, and both worlds were suffering equally because of it. However, the way the worlds suffered struck me as very different than the way Fantasia began disappearing in The Neverending Story.
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The troubled father-child relationship. Dragons.
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In Ende's novel, Bastian and his father are emotionally distant from one another. In The Longest Journey, April's father physically abused her rather brutally. Bastian still loves his father in the Neverending Story, whereas April (for most of Longest Journey) despises and fears hers. Their relationship is much more than troubled.
Dragons have been featured in stories for ages, so I don't think they really hold up as evidence for The Longest Journey being based on Ende. Besides that, the dragons in the two have almost nothing in common besides the name "dragon."
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The stories-within-stories theme.
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I don't recall this featuring in The Longest Journey at all. Both worlds existed; they weren't stories, and the nature of stories and storytelling had nothing to do with The Longest Journey's themes as far as I remember.
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I would have no problem with any of this except that TLJ seems to have nothing to add on the subject.
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I see The Longest Journey saying many independent things on the subject, personally. The fact that a fragile balance exists between logic and magic in the human mind, for instance, or the idea that destiny isn't predetermined, but chosen by a person's actions both strike me as valuable things that other world-jumping stories (Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Talisman and Black House, for instance) haven't said.
