I finally got around to finishing The Longest Journey, a very popular classic adventure game from about eight years ago that people have been exhorting me to play for ages, because, y’know, it’s a storytelling marvel and stuff. Last month or so, I saw it bundled with a special-edition copy of Dreamfall in my local game shop, and thought that was just as good an excuse as any to get around to it. Here’s an amalgam of my thoughts:

At the beginning, I was far from impressed. Graphically, everything that was supposed to impress me back in 1999 has long ago started to show its age; unlike Grim Fandango, which was released a year previously, TLJ opted for making its 3D models look as real as was possible using the technology of the time, rather than designing its characters in an iconic fashion that served the dual purpose of masking current technological limitations. The cutscenes were nice, owing to Ragnar Tørnquist’s cinematography background, but then, I have a bit of a grudge against cinematic cutscenes in general, both because the player can’t interact with them and because they’re hard for little indies like myself to make.

But wait! There’s more…