Synopsis[edit]
Like the previous games in the series, Dreamfall Chapters is set in two parallel worlds: Stark, a dystopian vision of the Earth in 2220 CE, and Arcadia, its magical fantasy counterpart. Having suffered the catastrophic Collapse in the aftermath of the original The Longest Journey in 2209, the society in Stark is now crumbling, as billions of people become addicted to "Dreamachines", a lucid dream technology invented by the WatiCorp company. Meanwhile, in Arcadia, the villainous Azadi Empire consolidates its power again, while their tower in Marcuria "continues to harvest dreams".
In the prologue, anti-Azadi guerrillas in Arcadia pay their last respects to their late leader, April Ryan. The scene then cuts to the House of All Worlds, where a woman is giving birth. The baby, revealed to have been named Saga, appears again at the end of Book One, encountering a spirit who calls her "sister-daughter" and promises to watch over her.
The game proper opens several months after the conclusion of Dreamfall, where Zoë Castillo exposed the conspiracy behind the Dreamachines, but failed to prevent their release to the public and was betrayed and left in a coma. Her consciousness and those of the many Dreamachine addicts are now trapped in the otherworldly realm of "Storytime", where Zoë uses her dream-controlling powers to help others escape their nightmares. Recognizing her efforts as insufficient, she resolves to find and confront the cause of the nightmares and manages to awaken herself in the real world, but loses all memories since her first usage of a Dreamachine prototype. Estranged from her father, she moves to Europolis (a dystopian megapolis covering most of Central and Western Europe) to start a new life, rekindling her relationship with Reza Temiz and volunteering as a political activist. She visits a therapist to restore her memories, but to no avail. All the while, shadowy forces observe her from a distance.
Meanwhile in Arcadia, Kian Alvane, an elite Azadi soldier imprisoned for high treason, learns that he is to be summarily executed in a few hours, but the resistance, seeking to recruit him, stages a prison riot and breaks him out. Concerned about this development, Sister Sahya, the Azadi governor of Marcuria, orders Commander Vamon to find and kill him before he can deliver a testimony to an Azadi Empress currently on her way to Marcuria.
Characters
Main article: List of The Longest Journey characters
The game features three playable characters: Zoë Castillo, Kian Alvane (both of them previously playable in Dreamfall), and Saga, a new protagonist who appears as a toddler in the first interlude. April Ryan, the protagonist of TLJ and the third co-protagonist of Dreamfall, died in the previous installment, but her voice actress Sarah Hamilton is involved with the game, although in what role is still undisclosed. Zoë's voice actress, Ellie Conrad-Leigh, has expressed readiness to reprise her role, but RTG have not officially confirmed her return. Gameplay previews thus far have featured Charlotte Ritchie in the role[citation needed]. British actor Nicholas Boulton will voice Kian[citation needed], taking over the role from Gavin O'Connor.
Other returning characters include Crow, Blind Bob, Benrime Salmin, Roper Klacks, Abnaxus, the Vagabond, Brian Westhouse, Emma de Vrijer, and Reza Temiz.
Themes
The subtitle "Chapters" refers to the theme of the game, which Tørnquist describes as "chapters of life" and "life in chapters", such as birth, life, death. The game's plot covers roughly a year of the protagonists' lives, beginning in spring and ending in winter. The narration is divided into thirteen chapters (like the previous games) or five "books", themed around a particular phase of life, e.g. birth (or rebirth) in the first book. Originally, three books, corresponding to summer, autumn, and winter, were planned, but this number grew to accommodate the expanded story.
Another topic of the game is the stories as such and how they become reality. In the game, the realm of "Storytime" is "the place where every story begins, and where dreams come to life", and the developers cite the Australian Aboriginal mythology as inspiration (see Dreamtime).
The Longest Journey series as a whole is rooted in a predeterministic philosophy, which compares life to a journey with a set destination, wherein a person may choose their course freely but will ultimately arrive to a "predestined place". In Dreamfall Chapters, this philosophy is expressed in the player characters' ability to make story-altering decisions, which, however, have no effect upon the ending.
The megacity of Europolis is presented as "Europe [...] finally paying the price for hundreds of years of imperialism, reactionary politics, wasteful spending and industrialisation". In an interview, Ragnar Tørnquist said that "there's definitely a political element to Dreamfall Chapters, as there was to Dreamfall as well."
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