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The cloud-like and ethereal turquoise Aurora Borealis are dancing over your head, while, a few steps behind you, there's a bed on the snow in which a body lies dormant. You slowly walk through the snow and approach the bed to find out what kind of a person could be sleeping out here. To your surprise, it's your own body sleeping on the bed.
Sounds bizarre, right? In fact, that's the beginning of Dreamfall Chapters, a game being described as a story-driven adventure but which to me seems more like a fantasy, science fiction, interactive movie – riddled with puzzles in which you, the player, have a direct influence on the outcome based on the choices you make. According to developer and publisher, Red Thread Games, Dreamfall Chapters is “a game about choice and consequence, about dreams and reality, magic and science, chaos and order” – and parallel worlds, and the people in these worlds. This game is a true gem which I highly recommend. Dreamfall Chapters is visually stunning with an emotionally engaging soundtrack which, together with the compelling voice-acting, draws the player into its sci-fi, fantasy dream in which every decision we make weighs in on the balance of a possibly catastrophic or enlightening consequence. The more I play the game, the more I find that my decisions may render either consequential repercussions or illuminating revelations down the line.
Dreamfall Chapters can be bought directly from redthreadgames for $29.99, or better yet, for $34.99 you can get the Dreamfall Chapters Season Pass which not only gives you the game as it currently stands, but it also grants you the remaining chapters still waiting to be released. Dreamfall Chapters is also available through Steam, gog.com, and through humblebundle, for more or less the same price. You may be lucky and find it on sale at any of those three stores. I originally bought the game through gog.com while it contained only the first two books, but having paid for the Dreamfall Chapters Season Pass, I am now about to update the game to include the third out of five books released so far. If you buy the Dreamfall Chapters Season Pass through Steam, the game will be patched by Steam as the remaining books are released. If you buy it through other sources, like myself, you'll have to manually patch the game at your own convenience. Having found it on sale for a great price, I opted to go through gog.com, which is a digital game distribution store which prides itself on offering DRM-free content to Windows PC, OS X and Linux.
Book One: Reborn was released in October 2014, followed by Book Two: Rebels which was released in March 2015, and most recently Book Three: Realms was released in late June 2015. All three books are currently available for Windows PC, OS X and Linux. They will also be released for PS4 in the near future, but a date hasn't yet been announced. The remaining two books don't have a release date or title announced yet, but, judging by the rate at which the first three were released, a conservative forecast would have four and five released by the end of 2015.
The two main characters in Dreamfall Chapters are Zoë Castillo and Kian Alvane. However, these characters each exist in two completely different parallel worlds. Zoë lives in Stark, a futuristic cyberpunk society here on Earth around the year 2200. Kian lives in Arcadia, a sort of Tolkien-inspired magical fantasy land. The game begins with Zoë being trapped in a coma and existing in “Storytime,” which is where other people addicted to the “Dreamachines” are also trapped. She sets out to help these people wake up and eventually she also manages to wake up. Awake, she then has to undergo therapy to restore her memory which she lost when she first began using her first Dreamachine. About the time I was getting used to playing as Zoë and getting used to the mechanics of the game, the first chapter ended with Zoë waking up from her coma. Chapter two begins with Kian Alvane trapped in a prison apparently due to high treason. His first interactions are with the warden who is giving him the news that he is about to be executed. Shortly after this, a riot erupts in the prison, and resistance fighters manage to help Alvane escape from prison through the use of some dark magic as the second chapter ends. The third chapter shifts back to the future as Zoë is beginning her therapy to regain her memory. Overall, the two worlds are a refreshing contrast as they shift back and forth from Stark to Arcadia.
The lack of a dedicated tutorial made the first chapter a bit harder than the rest to play, but once I got used to the game mechanics, it was a pleasant experience which would in time clutch me in its orbit as the story-line would unfold all around me. To play as one of the two primary characters, you move around using the WASD keys and the mouse. There are certain objects and people with which you can interact, and it's pretty easy to distinguish these from the very beginning. When selected, some objects or people reveal an interface which prompts you to make a choice ranging from slowing down time, or grabbing an object, to choosing between two or more arguments as a response in a dialogue with another character. Some of the puzzles I had to solve were frustratingly hard, and I must admit, I had to look online for how to solve the problem at hand. Unless you go into Settings and select to play offline, some of the more important choices you have to make will allow you to click on a balance which reveals the choices other players have made. After making your choice, the game tells you that “the balance has shifted.”
Pro's
I really liked the graphics in Dreamfall Chapters. The characters were near life-like and there were certain facets of the game's graphics which really grabbed my attention, such as the water in many places which looked unmistakably real as it reflected the environment through its ripples. The futuristic city of Stark was also visually pleasing to the eye with its myriad of 3-D holograms, robots and skyscrapers. The soundtrack proved to be a real strength in this game as it often helped to set the mood and further draw me into the characters and the story. The voice-acting, though not ground-breaking, is also a strength.
Con's
One aspect which did aggravate me was how at times there seemed to be too much reverb/echo as the characters spoke. There was also too much repetition in some of the lines spoken by non-playable-characters which was happening a little too often for my taste. These two voice-related con's make me deduct a full star from a perfect five star rating.
I definitely recommend Dreamfall Chapters to anyone looking for a good adventure-puzzle game. Though it may seem like the game is too short, I assure you, it isn't. So far, only three out of five books have been released, so by the time all five books have been released, the game will be just the right length, not too long, not too short. I haven't come across any glitches yet and I'm about to begin the third chapter, so that's a good sign.
Minimum system requirements: • Linux: Linux Mint 17 or Ubuntu 14.04 • Processor: Core 2 Duo 2GHz or equivalent • Memory: 3 GB RAM • Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 • Hard Drive: 5 GB available space
My gaming box: • AMD FX-6100 3.3GHz CPU (overclocked to 3.5GHz) • Asus M5A97-EVO motherboard • Gigabyte Windforce GeForce GTX 960 graphics card with 346.72 proprietary driver • 8GB of Kingston Hyper X RAM & 1TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive • Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS with Unity desktop