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Dreamfall: Chapters
Yeah, a lot of this just requires optimization of art assets. Simplifying the lighting in ways that don’t necessarily have much impact on the final result. It’s not even about the code.
That said, the game is gorgeous, and it’s refreshing to see such a modern take on the genre in terms of graphics and interface.
Is anyone having perfomance issues in Europolis? Probably my PC that is not up to date… Game generally stutters but in some crowded places in Europolis (for example chinese market) it stops for a second or 2, specially when running.
The City does look lively, lots of interesting stuff happening just by cruising around
Please stop complaining about the puzzles until someone actually finishes the game… Of course all opinions are superficial so far, they are first impressions!!!
Why would the impressions of the first 3 hours of an episodic game(tend to be short) only have to be about visuals/voice/superficial? Are you saying there is no actual gameplay to speak of in those first 3 hours? I read “first impressions” or previews of games all the time, and they all comment on gameplay.
And the puzzle dificulty will most certainly be more dificult than TWD offered.
That isn’t saying much though…
From adventuregamers’ review of Dreamfall-
“I use the word “puzzle” loosely where Dreamfall is concerned…these tasks are few and far between, and offer nothing that should cause you to break a mental sweat…But still, seriously compounding the simplicity of Dreamfall’s puzzles is the general lack of them entirely.”
“Between safes I didn’t need to crack to codes I didn’t need to decrypt to inventory items I didn’t need to procure…it did diminish my involvement in the game, and with that my sense of accomplishment.”
This is how such games were received back in 2006. Games with barely any puzzles or just cakewalks were criticized. Now, people say, “Pretty graphics and voice acting! This game is great!” Oh well. Still, it is important to point out to people which type of game this is.
If you’re using the first Dreamfall as your basis for your expectations, you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised. This is closer to traditional adventure design than that game was. That doesn’t mean it’s Shadowgate or King’s Quest either, but it’s for sure a step in the right direction. I’m not sure what more you were expecting from this.
It’s also quite a bit better than Dreamfall. The puzzles are better designed, the storytelling is better, and the interface isn’t a trainwreck. I’m hopping into this one after just playing Dreamfall and it pretty much improves on everything.
The game is gorgeous. The exploration is fresh. The voices and music spectacular. Story is very engaging. Though my PC is not top-of-the-line, the lag issue definitely is annoying and is bring addressed…...I’m sure a patch will be forthcoming. Will not comment on puzzles so I don’t feed the troll.
Even with one more sitdown to finish the episode, I would highly recommend this 
Thanks Ragnar!
I’ve clocked a b it over 3 hours myself, I’ve been taking my time, soaking in the atmosphere of Europolis. It’s pretty awesome environment with rich and vivid atmosphere.
The game is gorgeous. The exploration is fresh. The voices and music spectacular. Story is very engaging. Though my PC is not top-of-the-line, the lag issue definitely is annoying and is bring addressed…...I’m sure a patch will be forthcoming. Will not comment on puzzles so I don’t feed the troll.
Even with one more sitdown to finish the episode, I would highly recommend this
Thanks Ragnar!
If your only comments are on aesthetics, and not puzzles, then you are essentially admitting what everyone else has already said. This is fine. There is nothing wrong with interactive stories like this, Broken Age, or Telltale. It is important for people to know which type of game it is.
The word “troll,” on the internet, is simply used as a personal attack when one feels personally threatened, as a way of skirting moderation for personal attacks. Anyone could claim that anyone is a troll. It would be nice if people were capable of handling others’ opinions without these blatant personal attacks. In many ways, calling someone a “troll” is worse than a personal attack, because it is a way of avoiding moderation by slyly misrepresenting your true intentions. At least with a personal attack, I could respect the honesty.
Finished.
Pros
- VAs are great , all around, Stark is mega-cultural mix, Muslims/Arabic language, Hindi, Cantonese etc. like Little Asia within with some local words.
Ragnar has tight grip on culture and languages, seems well aware.
VAs are way better than Dreamfall.
(btw Maderchod = Motherf**ker and Kutriya is local slur for Dog/bitch in Hindi.
You will know who say it, for those who don’t get it. Some slur in Mexcian too, but
are common abuses, Cantonese is translated).
- Music is A+. Ambient music actually sets the mood , highly atmospheric. Even the intro Song and Final Results Screen Music is awesome.
- Writing = Long conversations and i really loved all the monologues, while inspecting objects and ones in conversation trees. They never feel like filler and useless.
- Gameplay
Here is the deal, i got lost in Stark 2 times, so its not linear stuff, there are events that you need to trigger by going to certain locations.
Some puzzles are easy , but again needs exploring stuff, Stark is BIG, its like Bricks of Anachronox, so don’t equate the simplicity of exploration with BrokenAge limited 2D pictures and puzzles within.
You get assistance of adorable Bot to solve one of them, then you need to get Item for someone and figure it out yourself, what to do, which can leave you with no clue, which means exploring and thats a positive sign.
Choices (TTG effect).
Its a totally TTG ripoff on the surface, but the choices consequences fallout is hinted in the end.
Whether they are longterm , short term, their magnitude on relations etc.
They feel meaty because Ragnar did great job to build NPCs, some you know, some new.
The cliffhanger is good, looks like stage is being set.
5/5
My satisfaction list of AGs this year
KZ0 Chapter3
DC
D4
Dronpa2
BS5/Tex
TWAU
@wilco
Yeah Stark had that lensflare and lighting effects going haywire bug.
The framerate was 20 to 24 on my laptop.
Stark is huge so i don’t blame them for reusing NPC models, some Punk Mohawk guys and Hijab ladies were overused. Still the highs are real highs, and i just want the tempo to remain intact.
Another successful KS story.
If your only comments are on aesthetics, and not puzzles, then you are essentially admitting what everyone else has already said. This is fine. There is nothing wrong with interactive stories like this, Broken Age, or Telltale. It is important for people to know which type of game it is.
I think it’s pretty nutty to put recent Telltale stuff in the same category as Broken Age, but if that’s how you see the world, then it’s probably best to avoid this game (and this thread).
If your only comments are on aesthetics, and not puzzles, then you are essentially admitting what everyone else has already said. This is fine. There is nothing wrong with interactive stories like this, Broken Age, or Telltale. It is important for people to know which type of game it is.
I think it’s pretty nutty to put recent Telltale stuff in the same category as Broken Age, but if that’s how you see the world, then it’s probably best to avoid this game (and this thread).
I think they are in the same vein. Focus on story, with light gameplay. The gameplay is a minor hindrance to the primary focus, the story.
I think they are in the same vein. Focus on story, with light gameplay. The gameplay is a minor hindrance to the primary focus, the story.
On the contrary. Puzzles are a big part of the enjoyment of a game like Broken Age, even if they aren’t as frustrating/challenging as a lot of super old school games. They’re enough to make you stop, think, try a few things, and then feel good when you figured it out, which is a very different experience from just clicking on hotspots to progress like TWD.
Broken Age and Dreamfall Chapters are not simplified adventures, they’re just not very hard. There’s a big difference between that and streamlined interactive fiction. It may not be to your taste, but your wrong to think that they appeal to people in the same way.
Personally, I love old-school adventures, and I’m pretty decent at adventure games, but they could be maddening at times, often in ways the designers never intended, and these newer adventures that have the benefit of more playtesting and greater clarity are a lot of fun without having to pull my hair out.
Stuff like Heavy Rain or TWD, on the other hand, bore me, or at least they’re only as interesting as their stories.
I think they are in the same vein. Focus on story, with light gameplay. The gameplay is a minor hindrance to the primary focus, the story.
On the contrary. Puzzles are a big part of the enjoyment of a game like Broken Age, even if they aren’t as frustrating/challenging as a lot of super old school games. They’re enough to make you stop, think, try a few things, and then feel good when you figured it out, which is a very different experience from just clicking on hotspots to progress like TWD.
Broken Age and Dreamfall Chapters are not simplified adventures, they’re just not very hard. There’s a big difference between that and streamlined interactive fiction. It may not be to your taste, but your wrong to think that they appeal to people in the same way.
Personally, I love old-school adventures, and I’m pretty decent at adventure games, but they could be maddening at times, often in ways the designers never intended, and these newer adventures that have the benefit of more playtesting and greater clarity are a lot of fun without having to pull my hair out.
Stuff like Heavy Rain or TWD, on the other hand, bore me, or at least they’re only as interesting as their stories.
“There’s a big difference between that and streamlined interactive fiction. “
In your opinion there is. In my opinion, it is so minor as to be indistinguishable. Broken Age, for example, was so easy that non adventure gamers were complaining that it was a walk in the park.
“but your wrong to think that they appeal to people in the same way. “
Why do you think this? To me they are targeting the exact same audience. The audience that is wowed by visuals and video game stories and don’t care to be bothered with puzzles that will in any way stop the constant flow of story.
In my opinion, it is so minor as to be indistinguishable. Broken Age, for example, was so easy that non adventure gamers were complaining that it was a walk in the park.
Well, as an adventure gamer who has played and enjoyed many difficult games in the past (like the Space Bar, Riven, Black Dahlia or Discworld, to name some of the hardest ones), I certainly NOT found Broken Age a walk in the park, but rather an adventure game of medium difficulty, like the majority of adventure games released these days or even many Lucas Arts classics like Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. And of course there is no comparison with Interactive fiction games like Heavy Rain or TWD, where there are no riddles whatsoever. Now, I haven’t played DC yet (Resist!!Resist until all episodes are on!!!), but if the riddles are in the same page as Broken Age’s, then it is perfectly fine by me.
Finished the first book - Once I started playing I simply couldn’t stop, and pretty much played it in one long session.
First of all, storywise it has made my brain hurt!
When Dreamfall ended it left us with a whole bunch of unanswered questions, and even more things that are open for interpretations, and even though I didn’t expect that they would all be answered in the first book, then I didn’t expect that they would throw in a whole bunch of new question and add to the mystery instead of starting to answer some of those.
** Story spoilers - read at own risk **
First they brutally dump us into April funeral without any warning or first easing us into the game. Something that pretty much came as a shock to me, as I was convinced that April had somehow survived, then we see the shift portal giving us some hope, and then in the interlude, we have the whole scene with Saga in the House of All Worlds and the ghost of? Is it April’s ghost or is it the white dragon? Is Saga April Ryan Reborn? Is that why the book is called Reborn?
Otherwise I have to say that storywise it so far fully lives up to both TLJ and Dreamfall and it is a delight to be playing Zoe once again.
The game looks gorgeous, the controls work well and the city of Europolis has to be one of the largest free exploration parts I have ever seen in an adventure game. And it is not empty streets we are exploring they are packed with people, and you can even eavesdrop on a lot of different conversations or listen to a street musician, all to give extra ambience to the game. There does however seem to be some performance issues in Europolis.
The decision system seems to be working very well, though it is at this point (with one exception) not at all clear what the consequences of our decisions are, or if they will have major or only minor impact on the story. I actually prefer it this way and think it works much better than it did in TWD.
Regarding puzzles, then it is not a puzzle heavy game, but there is still quite a few puzzles, and even though most are fairly easy, then the game doesn’t hold your hand telling you exactly what, where and how you need to do things, so if you miss a clue or simply don’t get the right idea, then you can easily end up walking the streets of Europolis for hours without having the slightest idea of how to proceed. It actually happened for me once.
In terms of overall difficult, then I will say that it looks like something similar to Dreamfall, so far perhaps a bit easier. The difference being that where the challenges in Dreamfall were mainly in the form of sneaking puzzles and some mini-games, where Chapters is more of a traditional adventure game in this respect, though with a lot more focus on exploration.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
Darthmaul…have you played the game? I would definitely call this an adventure game and does a better job of combining choice gameplay with logical puzzles than The Walking Dead. There is nothing too challenging but there are a few that involve combining items and multiple steps to complete that would definitely take someone new to genre a little while to figure out. To people that are veterans of point and click games they will not struggle at all during this first chapter. But the fact that it wasn’t hard doesn’t mean it is not an adventure game. It definitely improves on Dreamfall in many ways.
If you are only a fan of hard-core puzzles and games with generic or no story to get in the way of the puzzles than I would definitely avoid this game. I am biased in the sense that I enjoy this game world so much that I would be cool with it just being a book or something but the fact that it’s a game and a decent one at that I’m excited for the next parts.
S***bot!!! 
Edit: City also reminds me of Omikron in Nomad Soul. Futuristic city - lots of exloration
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