There is this... not a genre, nor a trope, but a feel perhaps, that I default to calling the ~Grand Adventure~. The Grand Adventure is your classic story of a young, plucky no-one important soon finding themselves in the middle of something larger than life, discovering the whole vast world beyond their imagination and setting on a quest that takes them from one end of the realm to the other, in the process becoming Someone. It's the classic hero's journey tale that most stories in the world tell in their own words, but the difference between them and a Grand Adventure lies in a certain kind of je ne sais quoi atmosphere of it all. That the heroism is almost incidental to the journey of self-discovery and how you see the world that the protagonist and their confidants take in the process of quite literally travelling from one corner of the world to the other and beyond. I, primarily, associate this with the fantasy genre: Lord of the Rings is an obvious pick here, but my favourite example of that feel being nailed perfectly is Final Fantasy 9. That, and The Longest Journey.
The Longest Journey is the tale of the young art student April Ryan who discovers not only that beyond her year 2200-something Earth lies the fantasy realm of Arcadia, but that these two worlds used to be the one and the same before being split in half and that she has a prophesied role to play in ensuring that the balance between the two remains in place while a secretive organisation moves to tilt the game in their favour. It is, also, is a wonderfully well crafted Grand Adventure. April's haphazard search to understand why all these weird things are happening around her soon opens up to an epic tale that takes her from cyberpunk hellscapes to underwater cities and space stations to enchanted castles, and the more you spend time in the twin worlds the more grippingly fascinating they become. Both Stark (our world) and Arcadia are beautifully designed and rich in detail, and the major characters in them are excellently written (and often also brilliantly acted though the standard slips randomly here and there). April herself is a main character who you latch onto almost immediately, and the change in her her demeanour and personality over the chapters due to everything she's seen and heard feels realistic and engaging; she also keeps a very wordy journal which ranges from quaint attempts at comedy to genuinely adding new shades to what April experiences. Tørnquist's writing and world building knows when to introduce elements with a lighter touch and when things need to be focused on with more serious intent, and the balance (and the world is indeed so much about Balance) is executed so well that whatever tone the game takes, it feels like the right one.
The Longest Journey was already familiar to me and what I especially loved playing it through this time around is that its strengths aren't just in rose-tinted nostalgia. The last time I replayed The Longest Journey was back when I was still installing the game from CD-ROMs (it was a four disc game!), though this time I opted for a simple GOG download instead as - coincidentally - the game happened to be on sale at the time (it was fate!). So it has been a while and in the eons between I had either forgotten more than I thought I had, or I simply didn't get all the nuances when I was younger - but whatever the case, I felt like the story and the world felt even deeper and more nuanced this tiem around. You begin to care about the places and the characters so much that you just want to spend more time with the game, and though not everything has perhaps aged perfectly (the game lightly tackles sexism on account of April's gender in a very masculine world, but it's handled with all the nuance of an adult male videogame writer imagining how his fantasy witty young female videogame protagonist would clap back at such things) the strengths more than make up for it. Arcadia in particular is a joy to learn more about and there's a tangible passion in how its different cultures, traditions and extended histories are portrayed - and how the game very nicely avoids forcefeeding it all so that the discovery feels genuine and not like an exposition dump.
Outside its narrative and design, The Longest Journey is a click 'n' point adventure game and it's mostly a really well done one. It suffers from a few obtuse puzzles, most infamously the inflatable duck puzzle which has a Reputation with the fans of the genre (and which the sequels enjoy lightly ripping into), and there's a few puzzles where a relatively simple task is made a lot trickier to decipher thanks to how they're presented moreso because of what the ask actually is - but generally speaking there's a logic to what the game tries to coax the player to go through and there's some enjoyable Checkov's Gunning going around in both the world and the items the player carries (some which can take up space in the player's endless inventory for several chapters - make sure you hold onto that wholly optional plastic leaf from chapter 1 until you find a suitable garden patch...) which feel particularly satisfying to tackle when the time comes. The only real grumbles I have primarily come from where it's clear the original vision had to be streamlined in order to ship the game in time: when you finally stumble onto the much foreshadowed underwater city you're restricted to a single room and a few exterior locations despite the vast towers visible in the horizon, and it feels genuinely awkward how April cracks the long-forgotten secret history of the city's denizens by simply removing some seaweed from a cavern couple of minutes away from the city walls. Likewise, after spending so much time getting two of the macguffins she needs, the game literally hands her the remaining two in the space of ten minutes. Though April's journal acknowledges it as well (in what feels like a mea culpa from the writers), it takes away from the epic sense of adventure that the game is otherwise so good at delivering.
But in the wider sense those are very minor qualms which the player easily forgets once the next big part of the plot kicks in, and the achingly bittersweet ending closes off the game in such a poignant way that it sticks with you and removes any memory of what other complaints you might have had. The only real bother I had during my playthrough was the weird glitch where the game wouldn't always recognise my mouse clicks when trying to use the interaction menu (my poor mouse L1 button must feel hammered). Spending a few days again with this game overall felt like seeing an old friend again for the first time in years, still instantly familiar yet intriguingly changed. I was in love with this world again.
The Longest Journey is the tale of the young art student April Ryan who discovers not only that beyond her year 2200-something Earth lies the fantasy realm of Arcadia, but that these two worlds used to be the one and the same before being split in half and that she has a prophesied role to play in ensuring that the balance between the two remains in place while a secretive organisation moves to tilt the game in their favour. It is, also, is a wonderfully well crafted Grand Adventure. April's haphazard search to understand why all these weird things are happening around her soon opens up to an epic tale that takes her from cyberpunk hellscapes to underwater cities and space stations to enchanted castles, and the more you spend time in the twin worlds the more grippingly fascinating they become. Both Stark (our world) and Arcadia are beautifully designed and rich in detail, and the major characters in them are excellently written (and often also brilliantly acted though the standard slips randomly here and there). April herself is a main character who you latch onto almost immediately, and the change in her her demeanour and personality over the chapters due to everything she's seen and heard feels realistic and engaging; she also keeps a very wordy journal which ranges from quaint attempts at comedy to genuinely adding new shades to what April experiences. Tørnquist's writing and world building knows when to introduce elements with a lighter touch and when things need to be focused on with more serious intent, and the balance (and the world is indeed so much about Balance) is executed so well that whatever tone the game takes, it feels like the right one.
The Longest Journey was already familiar to me and what I especially loved playing it through this time around is that its strengths aren't just in rose-tinted nostalgia. The last time I replayed The Longest Journey was back when I was still installing the game from CD-ROMs (it was a four disc game!), though this time I opted for a simple GOG download instead as - coincidentally - the game happened to be on sale at the time (it was fate!). So it has been a while and in the eons between I had either forgotten more than I thought I had, or I simply didn't get all the nuances when I was younger - but whatever the case, I felt like the story and the world felt even deeper and more nuanced this tiem around. You begin to care about the places and the characters so much that you just want to spend more time with the game, and though not everything has perhaps aged perfectly (the game lightly tackles sexism on account of April's gender in a very masculine world, but it's handled with all the nuance of an adult male videogame writer imagining how his fantasy witty young female videogame protagonist would clap back at such things) the strengths more than make up for it. Arcadia in particular is a joy to learn more about and there's a tangible passion in how its different cultures, traditions and extended histories are portrayed - and how the game very nicely avoids forcefeeding it all so that the discovery feels genuine and not like an exposition dump.
Outside its narrative and design, The Longest Journey is a click 'n' point adventure game and it's mostly a really well done one. It suffers from a few obtuse puzzles, most infamously the inflatable duck puzzle which has a Reputation with the fans of the genre (and which the sequels enjoy lightly ripping into), and there's a few puzzles where a relatively simple task is made a lot trickier to decipher thanks to how they're presented moreso because of what the ask actually is - but generally speaking there's a logic to what the game tries to coax the player to go through and there's some enjoyable Checkov's Gunning going around in both the world and the items the player carries (some which can take up space in the player's endless inventory for several chapters - make sure you hold onto that wholly optional plastic leaf from chapter 1 until you find a suitable garden patch...) which feel particularly satisfying to tackle when the time comes. The only real grumbles I have primarily come from where it's clear the original vision had to be streamlined in order to ship the game in time: when you finally stumble onto the much foreshadowed underwater city you're restricted to a single room and a few exterior locations despite the vast towers visible in the horizon, and it feels genuinely awkward how April cracks the long-forgotten secret history of the city's denizens by simply removing some seaweed from a cavern couple of minutes away from the city walls. Likewise, after spending so much time getting two of the macguffins she needs, the game literally hands her the remaining two in the space of ten minutes. Though April's journal acknowledges it as well (in what feels like a mea culpa from the writers), it takes away from the epic sense of adventure that the game is otherwise so good at delivering.
But in the wider sense those are very minor qualms which the player easily forgets once the next big part of the plot kicks in, and the achingly bittersweet ending closes off the game in such a poignant way that it sticks with you and removes any memory of what other complaints you might have had. The only real bother I had during my playthrough was the weird glitch where the game wouldn't always recognise my mouse clicks when trying to use the interaction menu (my poor mouse L1 button must feel hammered). Spending a few days again with this game overall felt like seeing an old friend again for the first time in years, still instantly familiar yet intriguingly changed. I was in love with this world again.
Dalaamclouds
1 month ago