Point'n'click adventure
Setting: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Year: 1999
Studio: Funcom
Publisher: Funcom (NA), IQ Media Nordic (SWE)
Designer: Ragnar Tørnquist
Engine:
Platforms: iOS, Windows
Rating: 53 %
Story: 6 ..
Gameplay/Interface: 6 ..
Puzzles: 6 ..
Graphics: 5
Music, Sound: 6 ..
Voices: 6 ..
Packaging: 4 ..
Fun: 6 ..
For most gamers The Longest Journey came out of nowhere back then in 1999. There's no back story. Norwegian developer Funcom had no history of point'n'click adventure games, not even of Windows games. Designer Ragnar Tørnquist had no history of point'n'click adventures either. He had a small team at Funcom, and a mediocre budget. And then, all of a sudden, there was this huge, classic point'n'click adventure on the market. How was that supposed to be a decent game when them guys at Funcom had no genre merits to their credit? Well, let's take a closer look.
The Story
The intro
The story that slowly begins to unfold now is one of the greatest in adventure history. You slowly get to expore the game world, or one half of it, a well designed sci-fi metropolis shaped after East Village, New York, and various cities on the northern US Pacific coast. You also get to know a handful of interesting characters that you'll re-meet for a long portion of the game. April herself is an art student with a rough past and a lot of self-doubts. We follow her through parts of her daily routine when she experiences... "incidents", short visions that let her doubt her sanity until she learns that they weren't visions at all, that she has an ability she didn't have the slightest clue about, and that there's a whole other world waiting for her where she has to fulfill a task that's sheerly insoluble. Quite a lot to take in, eh? Well, it's not called "The Longest Journey" for nothing. TODO: Bewerten
The Graphics
The Longest Journey hasn't aged well. I mean, back in its days is was impressive, but that was almost 25 years ago. As a rule of thumb, 2D graphics can still look good after such a long time because they are, at least often, art. 3D graphics on the other hand tend to get dowdy after some time simply because of technical development. Well, The Longest Journey is a 2.5D adventure, with pre-rendered 2D backgrounds and 3D character models. You can guess where this leads. The backgrounds are still pretty handsome, at least the outdoor scenes with beautiful lighting and colour palettes. The indoor graphics often look grimy and low on details, especially in Stark, but hey, Stark is supposed to be grimy. Unfortunately, in 2023 the character models look like Minecraft characters that got hit by a truck. Well, okay, a bit better. Well, you can't expect 25 years old 3D models to look as detailed and crisp as they would look today, so let's live with it for now. Rest assured that back then they were top notch.
The Interface
The Longest Journey uses the coin interface established by Monkey Island 3 two years earlier. The cursor changes its look when you hover it above something interesting, and a left click brings up a small context menu with three options: An eye (examine it), a mouth (talk to it, if applicable), and a hand (physical interaction, if applicable: pick up, push, pull etc.). Right click brings up the inventory, chosing an objects lets you use it with your cursor and use it on the game world. Easy, robust, intuitive. Leaves nothing to be desired. Of course this way the "use" (hand) option will have to do as a placeholder for a lot of different actions, but Tørnquist was aware of that and avoided puzzles where it's unclear which click does what. The only type of interface I personally like even better is the "left click look, right click action" interface that e.g. the Black Mirror series uses.
Sometimes you're forced into a bit of pixel hunting. That's something today's kids don't get anymore - why would I spend time slowly moving my cursor across the screen looking for super small objects to interact with? That's the contrary of fun! Well yeah, from a 2024 point of view that is indeed a rather obscure feature of point'n'click games. From my point of view today's gamers (at least the casual ones) have a very short attention span, and if they don't make progress for five minutes they consult a YT walkthrough or scrap the game. Now back in the 1990's PnC games often contained pixel hunting situations, and those were... accepted by PnC fans. Not by fans of other genres; if an action game loving editor of a computer game magazine (the archaic ones, which were printed on plant fiber) had to review a PnC adventure he would've immediately criticized any occurence of pixel hunting. PnC fans were hardboiled though, and as long as there weren't too many they accepted pixel hunting situations. Me being one of them. Pixel hunting gives you a "Gotcha!" moment when you're successful, so it can be entertaining (for me) when it's implemented well, namely when you know something must be in the room where you currently are. When you're stuck in a game because you didn't find an object randomly placed in an unrelated room, well that's bad design. Is The Longest Journey badly designed then? Hm, it's maybe a bit sketchy at times.
The Puzzles
The Longest Journey is a classic point'n'click adventure. It's also a pretty long game, as the name already indicates. It thus has puzzles, and a lot of them. Most of them are pretty straightforward and don't stand in the way of the story. Like, use A on B. Over the course of the game our inventory becomes somewhat clogged which means you'll have to try out quite a lot of things when you're running out of ideas, but I personally prefer large over small inventories as that enables more puzzles and more Ah! moments.
A few puzzles require you to manipulate individual items in your inventory, and that's a somewhat sketchy feature. Like, an item in your inventory is usually just a thing you use with another thing or person. Who'd have guessed that at very rare occasions you have to check if the item can be deconstructed into several other items? It's a cool feature for sure, but it could have been implemented in a way that makes it more intuitive to use. Once you've found out that items can have a "sub-item" you automatically pixel hunt every piece of trash you get to lay your hands on, only to find that, dunno, one out of fifty? items features a sub-item. It's still a cool feature, but its lack of applicability takes the fun out of it. My opinion.
'Tis the time for a word of warning. Talking to NPCs plays an important role in The Longest Journey. Some dialogue options trigger events, but their main function is to provide background info. Through dialogues you get to know the NPCs' background stories, how they're related to each other, how the game world works and what's been happing in April's life lately. The point is, it's a lot of dialogue you'll go through. Some people, especially those with a short attention span and a nervous trigger finger, will be turned off by this. There's no real shortcuts; in order to trigger certain events you need to go deep into the dialogue tree, so you'll end up trying out all options, which especially during the initial contact with an NPC can be considered tedious by some. I personally like it though. I do have to admit the dialogues are lengthy, but then it's immersion and a credible game world and credible NPCs that I'm after, and The Longest Journey aces that. So, thumbs up for the dialogues from my side, but if you're less patient you have been warned.
Music, Sound, Voices
The musical score is pleasantly unobtrusive. Some classic music or short ambient pieces to emphasize dramatic situations or to introduce a new location, that's mostly it. And that's fine! April comments on everything she sees and does, and there's plenty sound effects, so it's a good thing there's no continuous, repetitive background music all the time. Sometimes music is appropriate, for example in the Fringe Cafe, and there the game shines again, this time with... dark ambient goa? Something like that. Made me want to dance - mission accomplished.
The voiceovers are generally awesome. A few times there's loudness level issues, some NPCs are louder than others, or rather more quiet than others. But apart from that it's all professional voiceovers. Especially regarding the main characters. April's voice, Sarah Hamilton, is absolutely superb. Sidenote: The German voice, Stephanie Kindermann, is also superb in a technical way, but she sounds a little like she's in her mid-80s rather than in her mid-20s. Apart from that detail all speakers are pros and it shows.
The point'n'click adventure as a genre died in 1997. LucasArts' The Curse of Monkey Island was released in that year, and so was Westwood's Blade Runner, and that was it. None of the big US studios produced p'n'c adventures after that. They didn't sell anymore. Well, they did, the video game market exploded at that time, with all other genres benefiting from powerful new graphics cards, but not the p'n'c adventure. Well, same happened to the text adventure ten years earlier. LucasArts tried 3D adventures (Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island), but while those are seen as classics now, they didn't meet the financial expectations of their creators. So, point'n'click was dead.
Ragnar Tørnquist, 2013 (right, with random weirdo)
Tørnquist had a history of gaming, and his favourite genre was the adventure game. As a teen he fell in love with the Infocom text adventures and coded a few own ones on his Commodore 64, using the The Quill engine. Later on the LucasArts point'n'click adventures became his new love subject. In 1996, with Casper and DragonHeart in the shelves, Funcom entrusted Tørnquist with producing a game of his liking. He liked point'n'click adventures. The rest is history.
The game title itself refers to a quote from Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld from his posthumously published diary Vägmärken:
The longest journey is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
The game world is partially inspired by Tørnquist's personal experiences: He had lived in the East Village part of New York from 1990 to 1993 to study film and television. At least the Venice part of Newport is modeled after East Village. Other influences are plenty, according to Tørnquist: Comic books, especially Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. The TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other stuff written by Joss Whedon. Myths and fairy tales in general. Sounds pretty generic to me, but who am I to judge.
The production process was torture. The team was small, the budget was small, their knowledge regarding realistic timings was small. They had to develop their own game engine. According to Tørnquist, the team had to work on weekends for over a year. On the other hand, there were practically no limitations regarding the actual game content, so the team could do their own thing. Among the programmers was Audun Tørnquist, Ragnar's brother. The original Norwegian voice of April Ryan was that of TV presenter Synnøve Svabø.
The Longest Journey was published in Norway and Sweden in December 1999. The rest of Europe followed in spring 2000, North America in autumn that year. MobyGames lists a French version for December 1999 but I couldn't find proof for that.
Reviews were favourable. Metacritic aggregates 26 critic reviews into an overall score of 91/100. In 2011, Adventure Gamers placed it on rank 2 of their "Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games" list (after Grim Fandango, which is... acceptable).
IGN called it "one of the most polished adventure titles ever made" that "reinvents how stories can be told in the medium". As most mainstream magazines and websites IGN has stranger anxiety when it comes to point'n'click adventures, and so it criticizes "all the frustrations" of the genre, manifesting in having to search for objects and go through all dialogue options. Which brings up the idea in me to review a FPS criticizing having to use mechanical skills to bypass obstacles. And the developers forgot to add a pause key. Anyway, IGN concludes that within the adventure genre, The Longest Journey "delivers like no other game before". Germany's #1 source for adventure games, Adventure Treff, called the game "a miracle" as it popped up in a time where 2D point'n'click adventures were rare, and at the same time it was unique and sold well. The magazine praised pretty much everything about the game, criticizing only a certain wordiness, manifesting in dialogues and tasks dealing with large amount of text (e.g. books).
Sources:
- https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/24090
- https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/11/21/the-longest-journey
- https://www.adventure-treff.de/test/11166-the-longest-journey11
External links: Wikipedia.
Prologue: A Lion in the Streets
So here we are now, in the middle of a nightmare, in a quirky fantasy landscape. The intro wasn't very enlightening. We're a girl and we probably live in the future, that's more or less all we know so far. And the game is about some kind of "balance". In our dream we're on the edge of a steep cliff, like, hundreds of feet above ground, with a bizarre landscape of edged rock formations around us, and a menacing sky with dark clouds and stuff. We're wearing undies only, and our inventory is empty. Jeez. Okay, let's look what's behind us, on the right of the screen.
More rocks, a dead tree, and some kind of... nest? Then, out of nowhere, a screech, a rumble, the whole cliff shakes, and an egg rolls from the nest, across the cliff, and it lands on a branch fork conveniently placed on the edge of the cliff. Phew. Okay, seems natural we need to save that egg. Can't reach it though. And what was that eerie screech?
Use funnel with stream
Whoa! Okay, so that tree, or something like a spirit inside the tree, can talk. And has only apocalyptic ejaculations to offer, probably because the tree is wilting. Hm, hadn't we see a lively brook just moments ago? All right, the water disappears in a ravine although it'd better nourish that tree, and we have stuff. Classic adventure situation, shouldn't take too long. Combine the scale and the twig to form a funnel, ram that one into the ground, and voilà - tree fixed.
The next few minutes are confusing but will make sense much later in the game. For now let's just remember it's a dream. We have one happy tree who saves the egg, and seconds later a glowing female dragon arrives who addresses me as "daughter" and tells me stuff I don't understand. Then a mass of black chaos pops up and I fall down the cliff, waking up. Phew.
Chapter One: Penumbra
April wakes up in her apartment, a shabby room in a border house in Venice, Newport, which is a likeness of East Village, New York, ca. 23rd century. She obviously has money issues. The room offers a lot to examine, but there's only one that's important right now and needs to be picked up and examined, namely the diary, because it contains the timesheet from April's job as a waitress at the Fringe Cafe. That might solve the money problem, and we have a first topic on our mental todo list. There's a strange item to be found in the cupboard: If you pick up the toy monkey ("Constable Guybrush") and examine it, you can pick up its eye. That will come in handy at a later stage, so we pocket it now already. The window will also play an important role in a bit, but right now we're ready to leave the room. April will dress automatically.
In the hallway we'll automatically stumble across our neighbour Zack, a conceited, latently sexist turd who buttonholes us into some unpleasant smalltalk. I haven't found a way to lock myself out of later content at this stage, but to be safe, try to be nice to him.
In the front of the screen there's a pot plant; it's made from plastic, but you can pick a leaf anyway. I don't remember if I ever found a use for that, but it's in our inventory now. A bit down the hall is an odd machine. It's called Free Access Terminal or FACT. It's basically an internet terminal, supposedly with e-commerce functions. It tries to engage you into a sales talk that is mildly amusing, but if you're in a hurry you can just ignore it. Down the stairs and into the living room.
So, there's Fiona, our landlord. Time for some chit-chat. But first, there's two items you want to grab. On the corkboard on the wall to the right there's some stuff to read for mildly entertaining background knowledge, but there's also a pink notice that talks about a gold ring. Of course we want to get our greedy little hands on it, so we take that notice. And there's a matchbook on the table in the middle of the room - matchbooks always come in handy. Now, smalltalk with Fiona. Nothing to achieve but background knowledge. Afterwards we hand her the pink notice, and voila - a golden ring! Nice. Time to move on - let's leave the house.
The Bridges
A few metres onwards and we're at "The Bridges", a crossing in Venice. We'll be... crossing it quite some times. For now, search for an exit called "to the park" and take it. Nice little park, but nothing to do here. Onward to the academy. A couple we know is having a chat in front of the academy building, but we don't have time for that. In we go. On ground level there's a guy called Olav who also plays no role in the game. At least he's decoration for an item we can make use of later: In the dustbin next to him is a rubber glove that's still good to use. Sack it and go upstairs.
On the gallery there's our canvas, and on one of the workbenches there's a palette and a paintbrush (one item). Before you use the palette on the canvas, have a quick look at the holosculpture on the right side that Emma made. Okay, time to get some work done. Paint! Cutscene, and Emma drops by. She's got a message for me - Cortez, the weird old creep from the bench in front of our home, wants to meet me "where children visualize their dreams". So he wants to meet me in... therapy? Well, we'll see. Insist on telling Emma about your nightmares, and agree to meet her later at the Fringe café. Emma leaves, and we clean our tools, only to have a brief vision of Emma's holosculpture coming alive. Weird times...
Next stop: The Fringe café. Leave the academy building and cross the park towards The Bridges. The top right corner exit is the one that leads to the café. Side note: The door to the left of the café entrance is some sort of mystery - it will open much later in the game, and once only. So, let's enter the café. On our todo list: Meeting Emma, and squeezing some money out of our boss.
First person we meet inside is Charlie, a good friend of ours. He currently runs the bar, and he's also a housemate of ours. Looks like the entire staff of the Fringe Cafe lives in the Border House. So, let's talk to Charlie. Pour yourself a drink and sit comfortably, it's gonna be a lengthy dialogue. Lots of infos on his background, but also some info bits on Cortez: He's into books and old movies, and when he dropped by earlier on he inspected a the poster next to the jukebox. Okay, we gonna do that, too. Let's go deeper into the bar's bowels. Nice urban vibes. Three points of interest: Our friend Emma, our boss Stanley, and the poster Charlie mentioned.
The dialogue with Emma is lengthy, almost as long as the one with Charlie, and apart from an update on her current affairs we don't get any news from her. Well, she has the hots for Cortez, sort of. Stanley is a hard nut to crack. Insist on getting paid, give him the timesheet from the diary in your room, insist again, and threaten him to quit the job eventually - that's when he finally gives (or rather: transfers) you your money. He asks for an extra shift - I agreed, no idea if that was a wise move or not. The poster advertises a gallery exhibition, which is probably where we can meet Cortez. We don't know where this "Roma Gallery" is, but there's a free ticket attached to the poster, and upon examining it (after taking it of course) we get to know the address (it's near Watertown Bridge) and how to get there - the subway.
The subway is left of The Bridges and left of the park, and maybe you've already been sightseein' there. It's the East Venice station, one of three stations in Venice. April doesn't have a car but she's not sure about the number of subway stations in Venice - looks like she doesn't leave the house often. To access the subway system you have to buy a ticket. Three options - single ticket, day ticket, week pass. April takes the decision for you - a week pass it is. Before your encounter with Stanley at the Fringe Cafe you couldn't get past this spot because you had no money, but now you can. Use your cash card with the camera lens, and that's it. Fifteen dollars for a week pass - If we linearly extrapolate inflation that's probably around one scoop of ice cream. ;-) Enter the subway track, but if a train arrives, don't enter it yet. See the sparks on the left side? Examine them. There's a large iron key hidden down there in the trackbed, but at the moment we have no means of reaching it. Probably needs some fishing means (like, the old stick & string trick), and maybe some kind of insulation. Keep that in mind when we stumble across new items. For now, enter the next incoming subway. There's a map under the ceiling of the train car, click on it and find out that all available locations within the city are depicted there as icons - right now it's just East Venice (where we are) and Watertown Bridge (where the gallery is). No debating - click on the Watertown Bridge icon, and a second later we're there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvpAJJnx5RU&list=PLC7FC6404630E8106&index=14&ab_channel=Dilandau3000