New Fan Of The Genre Here!, Please welcome a new fan.

Hello, everyone. My name is Ben, currently 25, and I'm from central Texas. You can call me that... or my username... whatever you prefer, really, heh. Let me just start by saying that I love writing, as you'll probably find out, the more and more you see me on this message board.

To answer your first question; if you look at my avatar, no... I'm not a fan of Ragnarok Online and I never played it. That's just a version of a character that I created for many games - Final Fantasy XI, PSO, et cetera, and for various online usernames. It's a wonder I even joined FFXI, since I tend to be pretty anti-social and shy at times. Nevertheless, that and many other reasons kept me from jumping into these boards right away. I made on the little page where you can make your own custom character sprite and not have to play the game.

Suffice to say I'm a fan of just about every genre of video games. Although First Person Shooters I'd probably put at the bottom of the veritable totem pole. I've been playing games since I was a child... first on my family's Atari 2600 with a crummy old TV (I was a kid, how was I to know everything was not supposed to be shades of green. Heh.), and then the Sega Genesis... which I loved, and I'm also a big fan of Sonic. That's right... I was a "Sega kid"... let the jokes begin.

Anyway, to make a long story short... even though it's pretty long already, I gradually became a fan of very many genres (there was once a time I 'hated' RPGs, hahaha), and by some chance... it seemed destined, I became a fan of this so-called "Adventure" genre.

A few months ago, at Game Crazy... I was perusing the used games section and saw something called Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I had no idea what this was or what an adventure game is. Seeing as I never had a computer until after high school, and none were too state of the art, and these games being mainly made the for PC, it's understandable. That being said... since it was used, I could read the manual, and thus... the story. I've always been a major fan of the story side of games, and puzzle aspects of games, or anything else for that matter, movies, animation, tv shows, books (duh), et cetera. I was one of the people upset when they changed the Resident Evil games so drastically. I still love the new games... but I liked the old ones with their puzzles, decent story... in spite of their r.c. car people controls... *sigh*

After having a good look at the case and booklet for quite some time, I set it back on the shelf. I regretted that decision, but it seemed I was destined to return to that store, hahah. As chance would have it... I returned to the store with two friends of mine and picked it up, along with something else, another classic Xbox game, I believe. I never had the old one, so I've been trying to pick up a lot of good, original Xbox games for my 360 - first and foremost. Needless to say, this game was right up my alley. As I love good storytelling and exploring and picking a part every last pixel and side adventure of just about ANY game, and many things in my every day life, as well. I played it for hours, nonstop... trying to of course do every little last thing in the game. Even though it had a bad ending... or eh, no ending... I still liked it. I wonder if I'm the only person who replayed that last scenario multiple times so April would live? *sigh*

So of course... I wanted to play the first game. But I had to wait... because I was saving up money to see Wrestlemania XXV, in Houston, in person, with one of my best friends. It was awesome... an experience I'll never forget - now, with that experience over, and money not being an issue, I was free to hunt down Dreamfall: Game of The Year Edition, which was made recently, meaning the version of The Longest Journey it came with had the best chance of working with my computer... PLUS, it came with the soundtrack. I was a bit disappointed there no manuals or artwork any extra goodies. I sort of had to figure out the game on the fly. Oh well, perhaps someone has posted scans or I can search the web. Point being, I was happy to just have the game, and I wasn't about to buy more versions that might not work with my PC, not to mention shell out extra cash for said manual, artwork, box and cover... et cetera.

I read a couple reviews on www.honestgamers.com, and elsewhere (these guys are pretty fair and honest with their game reviews, and don't give anything a good or bad review biased on how popular the franchise is or big the release, et cetera). Cheap plug, but I highly recommend the upstart relatively young site. I was of course, angry when someone threw in the spoiler/solution to the way of beating the last boss, Roper Klacks... but then I remembered I already played the second one, so I guess I have no reason to be upset, hahaha.

In the meantime of waiting to play The Longest Journey, I picked up Syberia II for Xbox. I liked it... and it drew me to it with such temptations as the clockwork powered train, wooly mammoths, ancient human cultures (though in this case, fake... but still)... how can one not love those things? Believe it or not my biggest complaint was the penguins because we all know they live on the SOUTH pole. Hahahhaa. Anyway, I liked this game, but when I beat it... well, let's just say it was nothing compared to Dreamfall, and certainly falls short of what I've played of The Longest Journey so far.

Right now, I'm on Chapter Three and already in love with this game, as I was with the second one (why does it get so much flack on the internet?). I'm in the police station right now... attempting to figure out how to help the repair guys get those doors to work. Now... this isn't asking for help, because I want to solve the puzzle myself. But I'd just like to ask this question: Can these Adventure games quote unquote screw you over? For example... you don't pick up an item or do something early on in the game, and since you don't have said item or done said task you are 'stuck' and cannot progress any further. I can't say I know this for sure, because I tend to pick games pretty clean and explore every last nook and cranny. As I said, I was able to beat Dreamfall and Syberia II. I highly doubt anyone would do something like that in a game... but I put nothing past programmers. After all... someone had to program Ghosts n' Goblins. <--- Check your anger issues at the door, Lol. But yeah, that's all I wanted to know as far as that goes.

In conclusion, I decided on this particular message board because the other one seemed less fan friendly and the people extremely bizarre, and generally uninviting, unfriendly, and I'll just leave it at that. This one just seemed more inviting and open, I guess, so I decided on this one... the unofficial fan board, I believe it is? The other one being official, I assume. Anyway, I have both boards bookmarked, along with the company page, and the official sites for both games, and Mr. Ragnar Tornquist's website.

Hahaha... Oh man, It's bad enough I have so many games I need to beat, books I haven't read... an online game I play off and on that's very addicting, but now I've become addicted to a whole new genre... one that died ten years ago, it seems. That's all this wordsmith has to say for now, hopefully I'll get along with everyone here and enjoy my stay. Thanks everyone for letting me join your community, and hopefully someone has some words of wisdom on the things I addressed (manual, artwork, et cetera scans (Who knows, perhaps they released an art book of sorts? That would be awesome. I'd buy it.)... it not, I'll have to figure it out, eventually, out on my own. If so, then I thank you ahead of time. Either way, I'm relatively certain everything will go well here. For now, I'm going to get back to playing and see if I find the solution!

Hey, welcome to The Divide.
Quite the résumé there hehe
It's been pretty quiet here for a while now so new recruits are always good news.

Some adventure games, yeah, but as far as I know, not TLJ, nor Dreamfall.

I've got the manual and there's nothing really special for you to read in it. You got the controls and that's pretty much it. Mine's in Norwegian though.

Welcome to the Divide!

Hey and welcome!

There is a Dreamfall artbook released with one of the special editions, and there's a lot of concept art about on the internet too, just a Google away -- plus there's loads on the official site.

Oh, and when you've finished TLJ, you might be interested in TLJWiki.

Welcome Ben, it's great to have you here!

Regarding the TLJ manual, I have to say I'm surprised it wasn't included on the GotY disc as a PDF. You can view it at the Steam store here. As for concept art, etc., I'll just hint that there's an easter egg in TLJ that gives you a whole bunch of that stuff. You can work out how to access it yourself.

Thanks everyone for welcoming me; the advice and information and such. Trust me... as soon as I get done playing the game, I'll check out that Wiki, as I have it bookmarked, along with the official pages, and have been drooling over it for quite some time. I'll definitely check that stuff out when I finish the game. And knowing me, I'll figure out what that secret is and how to get it.

I always loved games with great stories, no matter what kind of games they were, and/or games with puzzles. I love action/adventure games, RPGs, platformers, even sports games (NHL '97 for the win ) I'm a big fan of the Tomb Raider series, for example. The way I like to explore and nitpick/comment on every detail of myself and my life and things and people around me, and of course it extends to games as well... it stands to reason these games would be right up my ally. It's a shame I wasn't able to play them sooner, or wasn't aware of them.

There was no PDF for a manual on the disc as far as I could see... it just ran the installer, and that's it. But yeah, thanks for that link and as I said I'm happy to have the game period, even it doesn't have the prettiest cover, or manual, et cetera.
When I get finished playing the game, I'll have to delve into the old threads on the board, and the other resources that were mentioned. Trust me, I'm that obsessive about things.

Welcome, great to have you here

Welcome to the Divide!

I'm the on-again off-again poster thats been here forever. I always seem to forget to post here once my life gets too crazy....like right now. Only 2 weeks till I'm out of Western Washington University!

...and I'm ready to quit right now.....