The Longest Journey

The story of Dreamfall is presented as a narration of Zoë Castillo, a 20-year-old resident of Casablanca in 2219, who lies in coma and recounts the events that led up to this point. Her narration concerns Project Alchera, an international conspiracy by the Japan-based toy manufacturer WATIcorp, that aims to introduce a lucid dream-inducing technology ("dreamer console") to the market, which can also be covertly used for mass brainwashing and even murder. One byproduct of their research is Faith, a little girl used for testing the hallucinogenic drug Morpheus, which is part of the dreamer technology. After receiving an overdose of Morpheus, Faith died but managed to transfer her consciousness to the DreamNet mainframe Eingana. Throughout the game, she randomly appears on the Wire, causing massive amount of white noise or "static", which disrupts the infrastructure of Stark. Tornquist commented that the effects of Faith's presence on the game world are much more grave than shown in the released version and that he was disappointed that he and other designers "didn't manage to really explain what's going on". Throughout the game, the player alternatively controls four player characters (in chronological order: Brian Westhouse, Zoë, April, and Kian) from third-person perspective to explore various locations, gather and combine items and solve puzzles. This advances the story, which is told through cut scenes rendered by the game engine and dialogue with non-player characters. The interface system is simplistic, seemingly geared toward console play. The player can either interact directly with characters, or listen in via a remote system. It is possible to eavesdrop on certain conversations at a distance, although used rarely in the overall plot. Conversations have 4 options at the most, portrayed on the screen in a vaguely circular fashion. Inventory is a scrolling list on the bottom, with the option to either select, interact, examine or return after selecting an item.