Dreamfall Chapters Review

Story driven video games have always been a staple in my Steam library on my PC. The pinnacle for me was the Telltale adventure games such as Tales from the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us. I stumbled upon the original release of Dreamfall Chapters, developed by Red Thread Games, on the front page of Steam last year. Now, it’s all happening again on PS4 and Xbox One with the definitive edition, or “Final Cut” version, to bring some point and click action to your console.

To explain the story of Dreamfall Chapters is quite difficult without playing it yourself. The story, which revolves around two characters in two worlds of a multiverse: Zoe Castillo, who resides in the science fiction, 1984-esque future version of Earth, renamed Stark in the multiverse, and Kian Alvane, an Azadi rebel who lives in Stark’s “twin world” of Arcadia, a world of magic and fantasy. The two worlds are connected to the rest of the multiverse by the primordial “Storytime” that people visit in their dreams. Confused yet?

Luckily, the story is structured episodically, in books, each book containing around 3 to 4 chapters, which makes things a little easier to digest. It follows the same gameplay style as games such as The Wolf Among Us, with decisions you make through the game changing the game later on, and puzzles that utilise the point-and-click adventure style of use an object you find on another object you see to proceed, which is a style of game that I very much enjoy.

There were some very creative design choices for the worlds of Arcadia and Stark. The bleak dystopian future of Earth, usually depicted as brown and colourless, was painted in vibrant blues and purples, bright reds and neon greens. The run down, slum area of Propast was covered with graffiti, posters of political figures and various advertisements. Arcadia, by contrast, had a very muted and pastel colour scheme with more emphasis being put on the designs of the characters and set dressing. The opening sequence of Arcadia depicts a funeral ceremony with a blue child, with a headdress of branches adorned with jewels, singing to a ring of boats on a river as the central boat is set ablaze. It sets the visual tone for the rest of the adventure.

While the graphics in Dreamfall Chapters may have been improved, the game has some less than stellar animations. While the default walk animations are serviceable, cutscenes will often jerk and jump uncontrollably. Characters’ lip syncing leaves a lot to be desired as well, with characters’ lips seemingly moving to a different script than the one that the voice actors are reading. The voice acting for the most part is believable and well delivered.

While Dreamfall Chapters does its best to stay open, with many maps being large areas to explore, there are the odd occasion where you’ll need to enter a doorway, or load into a different scene, and when that happens the loading times can grind on. While not a fast paced game, it does tend to hurt the overall flow.