Quick Look: Dreamfall Chapters: Book One: Reborn

I remember playing Dreamfall: The Longest Journey after reading Greg Kasavin's review back in 2006. Played it on PC, and REALLY enjoyed it. This should be a fun QL.

EDIT: 10 minutes into the QL and bought it on GOG. I don't think I can continue this until I play past that part. Bravo Alex, Vinny and game!

This game looks hilarious, and kinda pretty. Those lens flares have GOT to go, though. That's not how lens flares work.

shitbot ... best bot

wow, that is really one of the funniest characters I've ever seen in a game. It isn't forced humor at all. He is just like damn watch out for assassins and being a robot is easy why arent you good at it?

"It's easy just engage rear thrusters and forward propulsion"

This looks so excellent.

Looks great! Here's an example of a quick look selling me on a game that wasn't on my radar before, thanks.

Found this super charming. Mark down the wider Longest Journey series as one for me to get into.

god I wish you could run up and smash that guy's guitar

Shitbot has to be a contender for best character of the year.

I'm really digging this, some of its mechanical problems excepting. I'm pretty sure I have the other games of this series; I'm really going to have to bump them up to the top of my list.

I'm liking what they showed of the writing in this game. Never played the other games tough as I usually don't like adventure games. Still not really sure if I should get it. How important are the older games to understand this one? If I need to play those first I will probably until I can get them in a sale.

TLJ still one of the best adventures games out there. Absolutely loved it.

My sides are literally aching.

Dreamfall is pretty important, as the events of that game do not resolve at all and funnel directly into this. The Longest Journey is the better game I think but more self contained, you'd benefit more from playing it but it's not quite as necessary.

GBeast quick look the most interesting games.

So I sez to Mabel, I sez.... Gosh, I love Alex's small Simpsons references

They weren't kidding with the differing paths through the game, I didn't get to chat with Shitbot on my play through. Not sure about the politics 'plot' as it isn't very subtle and wonder if there's going to be much more of that in future chapters, perhaps I'll be able to choose a path to ignore it.

Also the technical problems that remain suggest it was a bit rushed out of the door and I hope they get fixed. The frame rate in the city can get really bad and that lens flare is obnoxious and as has been said the "you're making a choice" text could do with an option to turn it off.

Still, can't wait for the next chapter.

I'm really glad this seems to be good. I'll buy it once I'm done with Grimrock.

Other visual mediums don't have choices.

I hope Shitbot gets voted to be Giant Bomb's character of the year. I feel this game is very similar to Telltale's The Walking Dead, even to the point that the characters will remember dialogue choices you made which I kind of wish the game wouldn't tell me as I feel that would be more effective at surprising me. I just can't wait till the next chapter to be released.

Can't wait to play this (but I have to, because of money). In preperation of this release I replayed the first two games. Turns out, I still love them. The voice acting in the first one is "of the era" but the writing itself is still great.

Ahh, that map talk was great. It's amazing how Vinny's first instinct is to run in the opposite direction. XD

Edit: I vote "two random policemen from Dreamfall Chapters" best characters of the year.

@dagas: The old voice actress do not work in that line of work anymore, from what I could find TLJ Dreamfall was her last gig :(

The new actress is also terrific but I miss old Zoë

I got to say, she has a very nice video game butt. Also Shitbot is hilarious.

@knurrunkulus: You could get away with just playing Dreamfall (the second game), as this is Zoe's story. They are gonna go a game after to finish TLJ (first game) and April Ryans story.

Oh God. Shitbot at 27:40 is the best, most depressing thing.

I loved every single line of dialogue (from Vinn and Alex AND the game) Getting this for sure, thank you!

They seriously didn't notice the graffiti? I mean, this is the internet, but it sure got a lot of screen time. Next Quick Look: Whatever the hell Illusion's releasing these days.

I'm just so glad two of my favourite adventure franchises have had new games this year. Broken Sword and now Dreamfall. YES! :D

Shitbot, early Best New Character nomination?

Kind of want to play this game, but I didn't play the previous ones. Some of that shit was hilarious.

@corporalgregg: hahaha. YUP! I was wondering if anyone else noticed...

Its good to see that the writing is still up to the level of the previous games. I kinda forgot how funny these games can be

Looks like this game has a great sense of humor. I'll have to check it out.

She has a great butt! Honestly it was distracting hahah.

hahaha, that fool mouth followed by shitbot was fucking amazing.

No one is more authentic than shitbot!

Electro-Shock Blues by Eels is a great album.

I played through this last night, and I knew in my heart that Shitbot would be the focus of the quick look.

@skurk said:

The game is actually quite serious. It isn't without humour which is why the characters seem so well realized.

I should also warn you that the beauty comes at a great cost, as it stands currently it murders graphics cards they were running it on a 780ti and had to put things on medium (the fps still tanked in open areas).

Holy shit, I need to name something I have Shitbot in tribute.

I really enjoyed the Longest Journey when it was new, but Dreamfall didn't hold my attention. I'm not sure if my reasons were legit, but nevertheless it's kind of hard to think of picking this up since I have no idea what was going on.

Also I haven't finished an adventure game since the new Monkey Island.

Remember Shitbot when Game of the Year and the associated Best Character awards come back around.

Oh my God this is my favorite QL of the year hands down. Dat part when Vinny was gliding away as the guy was singing, holy shit! Bravo sir... bravo.

I played through this a couple of days ago and never ran into Shitbot. I think I'll have to play through it again.

Oh, and the named people around the city are actually Kickstarter backers.

Wow. I was not expecting that to be as good as it was. I've always heard of the The Longest Journey and Dreamfall but now I have to play them so I can dive into this.

Wow. Shitbot is great.

I love the way this game looks, and this seems like something I'd really like... but considering Vinny built a pretty good computer I'm doubting I could run it well at all. Hopefully they'll try to release some optimization via a patch.

That street musician is completely Jimmy Harting "Heartattack in a Lay-By". Even sounds like Steven Wilson.

Really. Don't let Jeff juke you out, either!

dat booty though. it shines.

I really hope Tornquist can actually finish an arc with this one. Dreamfall was great, but it really hurt to have it end without any closure. Maybe he learned a bit from that experience and satisfies at least a few goals by the end of this game, in case they run out of money again?

It's too bad we didn't see any of the fantasy world. The science world has always been where you do the silly nonsense, and the fantasy world is where the heart is. The story we did get here was way too dry and involved in the lore of the world instead of giving the character a good reason to do anything, which has always been an intermittent problem with Tornquist's writing.

Ah... I see on Wikipedia that they're running Unity. That explains the performance issues - in another engine you'd have some concept of static geometry that allows it to quickly cull anything you can't see because a building's in the way. But Unity just has everything hanging out (I don't know if it even uses an octree or anything), and any culling it does do is through occlusion queries, which are a really heavy load if that's all you have to depend upon. The upshot is that if you look at a building, the engine has to at least think real hard about rendering everything behind that building.

You can address this a bit by manual use of layers and culling masks, but that's a lot of work, it's very prone to mistakes, and it does nothing for actors. It's a real big problem with the engine, and considering how cheap and powerful UE3 and UE4 are, I can't see any reason why you'd go with it.

I love you Shitbot!

This game looks... actually kind of great and funny? I wasn't a huge fan of the previous games and didn't get too far into them, but the writing and the art in this seem to be top-notch.

@abendlaender said:

I was referring to the viewer being able to understand what a character is going through without a text prompt explaining it. Understanding that a conversation is having an effect on one or more person's emotional state without being directly told.

You don't need to be told that being rude to someone might make them unhappy with you.

aaaaaaaaaaaahaha that guy on the guitar is a real dude

Can Giant Bomb hire Shitbot?