The Longest Journey: Chapter 1, Part 1!
SUP MAH HOMIES. Who's ready for more beautiful backgrounds and really badly done frontal graphics and snarktastic dialogue? I KNOW I AM! :D
But first, a discovery.
So in replaying and screencapping this game, I've realized that this game is incredibly dialogue-heavy. Srsly. You can ask people all sorts of random questions to get information or just listen to arguments/funny things. And it's great! The voice acting in this game almost makes up for the really crappy graphics. But this poses a problem to me, because if I screencapped every single conversation in the game, every chapter would range in 500+ screenshots.
So, I decided that I'm only going to screencap the most important, automatically-occurring, and really funny conversations. It's depressing, because you'll all miss out on some of the lore behind the game (trust me, once we get into chapter 2, the lore gets intense), and I didn't want to have to do it, but there's just so many screenshots as it is.
The only solution? Buy the game and play it yourselves. :D It should be ridiculously cheap at this point.
ANYWAY. Onward to the adventure!
Prologue: A Lion is in the Streets
The last time we were on an adventure with the intrepid April Ryan, we had spoken to a very emo tree-spirit and a dragon, and then been blasted off a cliff by a gigantic gooey black thing. DID WE SURVIVE? The answer is: yes, because it was a dream.
Trippy titling again. I can only make sense out of like four of the thirteen chapter titles. Prologue and Epilogue notwithstanding.
Newport, Venice is the city where April lives. For some reason, Venice is no longer in Italy, I think. It's never mentioned that you're in Italy, and everybody speaks some form of English, so I think it's safe to say we're in America. Also, April's an artist, as she said in the prologue. Just for reference.
The best part about this game is the fact that you can examine everything and anything (that the game allows, anyway). This is where the best dialogue comes from: all of April's random little monologues to herself about various objects and items that you see or pick up along the way. You can investigate everything in her inventory, of course, but also parts of the environment. For example, you can investigate her plant ...
The view out her window ...
Her bed ...
Her wardrobe ...
Her desk ...
The fan in the corner of the room ...
Her books ...
And her diary.
She says that if you talk to it. Sadly, it appears that in the future, automatic-writing diaries haven't been invented yet. When you're done entertaining yourself, pick up the diary.
D'aww. You can grab that too, although it's not necessary.
Some items in your inventory can be examined up-close, and you can do stuff to them. The diary is one of them.
If it can be examined, it can be grabbed. Yoink!
Ah, college students. We're eternally broke you know. Except around Christmastime.
Let's have a look at our wardrobe, shall we?
April doesn't like her past. Will this be important? Yes. But not until chapter 13.
And these come in memorable later in this chapter, but I've never remembered them. Apparently they're there to remind you that April has always been artistically inclined, or something.
CONSTABLE GUYBRUSH. I think I know who's played Monkey Island ...
Up close, this thing freaks me out. A lot.
Don't worry, he's a toy. He can't feel pain. Anyway, this is something you don't have to do now, but it makes things much easier for you later if you do. I do a lot of this in chapter 1 - doing things that aren't necessary until later. Trust me, it makes the later chapters easier.
Isn't that outfit great? And we get to wear it throughout the entire game. Well, okay, recolors of it. But it's basically the same thing.
Time for our first character interaction with another human! And it's a real ... winner.
Say hello to Zack, the neighbor who desperately wants to get into April's pants.
This is something I love about this game. It gives you occasions to be nice, neutral, or a complete and total vindictive bitch without altering the important events in the game. It just makes specific conversations and chapter-ends different depending on what you do. Zack brings up a lot of these. Since I'm a nice person at heart, I'll go with the neutral route.
Birds in the sea? (You know, this might be an allusion to a later part of the game.)
Lulz. Time for a Completely Optional Thing! You can examine the plant in the lower right corner of the screen.
You can take a leaf from this plant and use it later, in chapter 4, to unlock the Book of Secrets, which would otherwise remain closed to you until the end of the game. It's not that exciting, so you don't have to take the leaf, but I always do. And then never remember what to do with it. Anyway, let's go downstairs.
The downstairs of our apartment building. Our landlady, a TV, a table, a corkboard ... and so on and so forth.
Suspicious.
Take the matchbook. Otherwise, you don't get to be a vandal in the next chapter. :D Then go examine the corkboard in the back of the room.
You can examine most everything on the board. For lulz, here's what April says.
And when you take the pink note and examine it further ...
*insert LotR joke here*
I've cut out a lot of various decisions you can make regarding conversations, except the highly entertaining ones. (Mostly.) Just for my ease of screencapping. I had 384 screenshots for Chapter 1 alone, and that's without all the optional but fun dialogue ... D:
Words of wisom.
Yes, folks, our landlady is a hedonistic lesbian. Sometimes, I love Norway.
Isn't that usually the personality type of the main character, and not the main character's best friend? I'm just saying. Emma and Charlie, for reference, are your friends. Your good friends, unlike Zack.
This is an example of the dialogue I cut out for time-saving measures (and space-saving measures). I took a handful more screenshots, then realized it was just going to be very painful for me and deleted them. If you really, REALLY want to see and hear everything in the game, go buy it and play it yourself. You'll know what to do important-wise, and can investigate everything freely until you need to do it~
Anyway, let's give Fiona that note we found on the corkboard.
Father issues. Apparently, this is a popular theme for main characters. Either that or mother issues.
Ouch. Those must be some serious issues.
And that's the end of Part 1. I'll post up Part 2 some time tomorrow, once the images have finished uploading. (stupidphotobucketbulkuploader) And then it's onward to Part 3, and then Chapter 2, In Which Things Get Awesome! Or at least fantastical.
But first, a discovery.
So in replaying and screencapping this game, I've realized that this game is incredibly dialogue-heavy. Srsly. You can ask people all sorts of random questions to get information or just listen to arguments/funny things. And it's great! The voice acting in this game almost makes up for the really crappy graphics. But this poses a problem to me, because if I screencapped every single conversation in the game, every chapter would range in 500+ screenshots.
So, I decided that I'm only going to screencap the most important, automatically-occurring, and really funny conversations. It's depressing, because you'll all miss out on some of the lore behind the game (trust me, once we get into chapter 2, the lore gets intense), and I didn't want to have to do it, but there's just so many screenshots as it is.
The only solution? Buy the game and play it yourselves. :D It should be ridiculously cheap at this point.
ANYWAY. Onward to the adventure!
Prologue: A Lion is in the Streets
The last time we were on an adventure with the intrepid April Ryan, we had spoken to a very emo tree-spirit and a dragon, and then been blasted off a cliff by a gigantic gooey black thing. DID WE SURVIVE? The answer is: yes, because it was a dream.
Trippy titling again. I can only make sense out of like four of the thirteen chapter titles. Prologue and Epilogue notwithstanding.
Newport, Venice is the city where April lives. For some reason, Venice is no longer in Italy, I think. It's never mentioned that you're in Italy, and everybody speaks some form of English, so I think it's safe to say we're in America. Also, April's an artist, as she said in the prologue. Just for reference.
The best part about this game is the fact that you can examine everything and anything (that the game allows, anyway). This is where the best dialogue comes from: all of April's random little monologues to herself about various objects and items that you see or pick up along the way. You can investigate everything in her inventory, of course, but also parts of the environment. For example, you can investigate her plant ...
The view out her window ...
Her bed ...
Her wardrobe ...
Her desk ...
The fan in the corner of the room ...
Her books ...
And her diary.
She says that if you talk to it. Sadly, it appears that in the future, automatic-writing diaries haven't been invented yet. When you're done entertaining yourself, pick up the diary.
D'aww. You can grab that too, although it's not necessary.
Some items in your inventory can be examined up-close, and you can do stuff to them. The diary is one of them.
If it can be examined, it can be grabbed. Yoink!
Ah, college students. We're eternally broke you know. Except around Christmastime.
Let's have a look at our wardrobe, shall we?
April doesn't like her past. Will this be important? Yes. But not until chapter 13.
And these come in memorable later in this chapter, but I've never remembered them. Apparently they're there to remind you that April has always been artistically inclined, or something.
CONSTABLE GUYBRUSH. I think I know who's played Monkey Island ...
Up close, this thing freaks me out. A lot.
Don't worry, he's a toy. He can't feel pain. Anyway, this is something you don't have to do now, but it makes things much easier for you later if you do. I do a lot of this in chapter 1 - doing things that aren't necessary until later. Trust me, it makes the later chapters easier.
Isn't that outfit great? And we get to wear it throughout the entire game. Well, okay, recolors of it. But it's basically the same thing.
Time for our first character interaction with another human! And it's a real ... winner.
Say hello to Zack, the neighbor who desperately wants to get into April's pants.
This is something I love about this game. It gives you occasions to be nice, neutral, or a complete and total vindictive bitch without altering the important events in the game. It just makes specific conversations and chapter-ends different depending on what you do. Zack brings up a lot of these. Since I'm a nice person at heart, I'll go with the neutral route.
Birds in the sea? (You know, this might be an allusion to a later part of the game.)
Lulz. Time for a Completely Optional Thing! You can examine the plant in the lower right corner of the screen.
You can take a leaf from this plant and use it later, in chapter 4, to unlock the Book of Secrets, which would otherwise remain closed to you until the end of the game. It's not that exciting, so you don't have to take the leaf, but I always do. And then never remember what to do with it. Anyway, let's go downstairs.
The downstairs of our apartment building. Our landlady, a TV, a table, a corkboard ... and so on and so forth.
Suspicious.
Take the matchbook. Otherwise, you don't get to be a vandal in the next chapter. :D Then go examine the corkboard in the back of the room.
You can examine most everything on the board. For lulz, here's what April says.
And when you take the pink note and examine it further ...
*insert LotR joke here*
I've cut out a lot of various decisions you can make regarding conversations, except the highly entertaining ones. (Mostly.) Just for my ease of screencapping. I had 384 screenshots for Chapter 1 alone, and that's without all the optional but fun dialogue ... D:
Words of wisom.
Yes, folks, our landlady is a hedonistic lesbian. Sometimes, I love Norway.
Isn't that usually the personality type of the main character, and not the main character's best friend? I'm just saying. Emma and Charlie, for reference, are your friends. Your good friends, unlike Zack.
This is an example of the dialogue I cut out for time-saving measures (and space-saving measures). I took a handful more screenshots, then realized it was just going to be very painful for me and deleted them. If you really, REALLY want to see and hear everything in the game, go buy it and play it yourself. You'll know what to do important-wise, and can investigate everything freely until you need to do it~
Anyway, let's give Fiona that note we found on the corkboard.
Father issues. Apparently, this is a popular theme for main characters. Either that or mother issues.
Ouch. Those must be some serious issues.
And that's the end of Part 1. I'll post up Part 2 some time tomorrow, once the images have finished uploading. (stupidphotobucketbulkuploader) And then it's onward to Part 3, and then Chapter 2, In Which Things Get Awesome! Or at least fantastical.