Dreamscape
Dreamscape is the sequel to 1998's platformer hit The Dreamers, which was itself based on the OTL game Project Dream that eventually became Banjo-Kazooie. Unlike The Dreamers, which had many resemblances to Banjo-Kazooie, Dreamscape is nearly an entirely different game from anything that existed in that franchise IOTL. While it shares a few characters, most notably the witch Gruntilda, along with Banjo, Mumbo Jumbo, and Bottles, Dreamscape is more like OTL Kingdom Hearts than Banjo-Kazooie, and can more accurately be described as an action-RPG, with more emphasis on the "action" than the RPG part. The game introduces a number of new mechanics, including leveling up. Characters will gain levels, but not from killing enemies. Instead, finding treasures, exploring, and completing objectives is what allows your character to level up, and doing so will unlock either a health power-up, an ammunition capacity power-up, or a new special move, depending on what the player chooses to do. There are 15 total level-ups possible for each of the game's three playable characters. The game ditches the "animal companion" mechanic from The Dreamers: Dreamscape is strictly a solo adventure. There are three playable characters: Edison, Madera, and Edison's younger sister Ella, who is essentially the game's primary protagonist and who you'll be playing as for a majority of the game. Certain game segments require the use of a certain character, though others allow you to choose between the three. However, for the game's final battle, Edison and Madera are incapacitated and you'll be forced to play as Ella. There is no longer an "imprinting" mechanic for abilities: abilities gained as you progress are automatically equipped and stay equipped for the remainder of the game. Once again, these special abilities can be used to access different areas of the map. The game itself is much more of an open world than The Dreamers. Though there is a clear progression, and certain areas are blocked off until certain objectives are completed, the map is much more seamless than the one in The Dreamers and the game plays out like a Metroidvania in a lot of ways. The combat system from The Dreamers returns, but with a few differences. Weapons and melee attacks return but are now augmented by ranged attacks and magic. Edison and Ella possess ranged weapons, while Madera and Ella possess magic, and all three can utilize melee and weapon attacks. The Dreamers' "special meter" returns, allowing for the use of special attacks that are gained via level-up. Presentation has gotten a big boost from The Dreamers, which was itself considered one of the best looking games of 1998 from a graphics perspective. Dreamscape's world is big and gorgeous, and though draw distance and background detail can't approach most of the next generation titles, for the Ultra Nintendo it's considered superb. Most of the voice actors, including Parminder Nagra, return from The Dreamers, with a then completely unknown Jaime Murray as the most notable new addition to the cast, playing the voice of the now grown-up Ella.
The game takes place 15 years after the original. Madera has come to live in Edison and Ella's world (based on a steampunk alternate history London) permanently, and she and Edison have had a son named James together. However, shortly after Madera came, some ten years prior to the events of Dreamscape, Ella, then 13 years old, ran away from home after telling Edison that she had a dream and needed to go. Though he tried to stop her, Ella left. She never returned, but Edison and Madera managed to find her in their former homeworld. They tried to get her to return, but Ella refused. They would return several times. Some five years prior to the events of Dreamscape, the two visit Ella, now 18, one last time. By now Ella has become much stronger and braver, and seems to be the leader of a hidden society of thieves and fugitives. This time, Ella, much more defiant, tells them not to return to her world. But four years later, Edison and Madera, along with their son James, do return. They explore and try to find Ella, but she is gone. James wanders off, and he is accosted by a strange, ethereal being. The being causes James to have nightmares, and Edison and Madera are barely able to wake him up. They leave the world and this time vow not to return. In the present day, Edison, Madera, and James are living a normal life...but we don't see anything of them when the game starts.
Dreamscape is divided into six chapters, though each chapter is larger than the chapters in The Dreamers, making for a game of comparable length, perhaps a bit longer.
Chapter One: The Dreamer
The game starts out with Ella in her home, a big treehouse in the middle of a vast forest. The first part of the game serves as a tutorial, introducing players to the game's controls through Ella. This segment also introduces players to Ella's friends, both human and animal. She must defend her home from a horde of reptilian thugs, but they're easily dispatched. However, in the commotion, Ella's owl friend has been abducted, and Ella must sneak down to the beach to save him. After Ella's friend is safe, we learn that the world has been getting more dangerous over the past year, and Ella looks out over the sea, only to see a massive wave coming her way. She and her friends flee through the forest, but the wave keeps coming. She manages to get to a raft just in time, and watches as the wave destroys her home. She and her friends drift away, and Ella seems to realize what's happening as she looks at a massive pillar of darkness rising up from the sea. The scene then switches to Edison, Madera, and James, and after a brief introduction to their peaceful life, a pillar appears in the middle of their city, and Gruntilda, restored to life but also back to her old, ugly self, sweeps James away with a massive wind. She cackles as she disappears, with Edison and Madera having no way to get to their son until Ella arrives and tells them to come with her. She explains that when the two of them brought James back to her world, it attracted the attention of a dark force, and set events into motion that jeopardized both of their worlds. Ella explains that both she and James are Dreamers, with the capability of using dream energy to create and destroy at will. Ella has just barely learned to control her powers, but James hasn't, and is easily molded. Ella suspects that Gruntilda and whatever dark force brought her back are conspiring to use James' powers for their own evil goals, and that Edison and Madera will need her help to get James back. The final segment of the chapter takes place after Edison and Madera return to Ella's world. Ella needs to get them back up to speed on adventuring, and takes them up a mountain to gather harpy feathers. They are set upon by a powerful harpy queen, but after Edison and/or Madera manage to defeat her in battle, Ella reveals the queen as an old friend of hers, a very close old friend, and as Ella brings her up to speed on what's happened, the chapter ends.
Chapter Two: My Sister
Chapter Two alternates between flashback scenes of Ella's first adventures as a teenager and Edison, Madera, and Ella's adventures in Picarie, an enormous "hub city" where shady bounty hunters and unscrupulous adventurers gather. Picarie will be revisited throughout the game, though only in Chapter Two does the city comprise the majority of the action. The heroes' main goal during this stage of the game is to catch Jacquard, a thief who deals in dark magic artifacts and who may know where Gruntilda is hiding. In order to pin down Jacquard, the heroes must accomplish a variety of tasks for characters throughout the city, meeting more of Ella's friends in the process. Edison and Madera learn that Ella hasn't exactly been the most well-behaved person during this time, and that some of her friends are extremely shady. When someone implies that Ella's own actions may have attracted the attention of villains, Edison starts to blame her for James' disappearance, while Ella snaps at him and tells Edison and Madera that it was all their fault. Ella eventually gets in over her head, and in the chapter's final mission, must be rescued from Jacquard in a showdown in Picarie's biggest cathedral. Edison and Ella reconcile somewhat, though Edison still suspects that Ella is hiding things from him.
Chapter Three: The Witch's Brew
During Chapter Three, there are a few more Ella flashbacks, and we also see for the first time that Gruntilda is trying to get James to warm up to her: indeed, she says that she wants him to be her son. James resists at first, but Gruntilda is uncharacteristically kind to him. Most of the action of this chapter takes place in an icy realm where Gruntilda once searched for ingredients for her spells. We learn more and more about Ella's past, including a lost love of hers who she met as a 16-year-old still trying to protect people as an adventurer. We also learn a few of her reasons for leaving, but not the most important one, which isn't found out until later. Madera falls ill during this chapter, and Edison and Ella must explore a massive cave complex in search of a flower that can be used to save her life. We learn that Ella's love fell victim to the same illness and that she couldn't find the flower in time to save him. The final battle of the chapter takes place against an enormous ice-breathing dragon which Ella and Edison must work together to defeat. They get the flower and Madera is saved, though it seems that Gruntilda has finally won James over and is now one step closer to completing her revenge.
Chapter Four: The Face Of Illusion
Most of this chapter's action takes place in a massive swamp/lagoon that Ella claims to have visited for purposes of learning to control her power. This is a bit of a spooky chapter, and we learn a LOT about the so-called "dream" power, via both Ella's flashbacks and exposition told to the characters by an old sage. Essentially, both Ella and James were born with something called a "dreamspark" that allows them to bring to life anything they experience in a recent dream. Through learning to have lucid dreams, one can completely gain control over reality. However, the risk to this power is that one's subconscious thoughts can leak into reality as well, causing dangerous psychic storms that endanger everyone around. Because James' life was so happy, this power never manifested in him, and thus he was not a danger to their world. But Ella, in the leadup to her leaving, was having increasingly vivid nightmares, and was starting to hurt people. She knew she had to isolate herself, and that's why she ran away from home. Even now, Ella fears losing control of her power, and tells Edison and Madera that she became an adventurer both to help people and to exercise more control over her life so that she'd keep the confidence to take control of her dreams. Throughout the chapter, the lagoon's scary illusions seep into Ella's mind, threatening to cause her to lose control of her power. She must battle against Scycris, the Illusion Lord, in order to save her own mind. After Scycris' defeat, Gruntilda reveals herself to Edison and Madera, and reveals that she's won over their son James, who has fully mastered his dream powers even moreso than Ella, and turns them on his parents. Ella barely manages to get the three of them away in time.
Chapter Five: The Open Sky
Chapter Five is probably the biggest chapter of the game. This chapter has Edison, Madera, and Ella visiting each of Ella's friends and completing a task for them. The last few of Ella's flashbacks are shown, fully revealing her story. It is also revealed that Gruntilda is hiding in a sky fortress and that the heroes need an airship to reach her. In order to acquire one, the heroes must challenge Cadmus, the brother of Ella's lost love Friedan. Cadmus blames Ella for Friedan's death and claims that she caused his illness with her power. Togther, Cadmus, Ella, and Friedan overthrew an oppressive ruler who was trying to take over in the void left by Gruntilda's absence. In order to stop him, Ella had to use her powers before she was ready, and in doing so, she accidentally caused the illness that took Friedan's life (and, we also learn, caused Madera's illness as well). We also learn that it was Ella who caused the storm that killed her and Edison's parents and stranded the two of them on that island when they were children, and that the storm that nearly sunk their boat and killed them was Ella's subconscious desire to take her own life out of blame for what happened to her parents. Though all of Ella's friends rally behind her, Ella quits being an adventurer and goes back to the island where she and Edison lived for much of their childhood. Edison and Madera return to that island, where Cadmus confronts them. A boss battle ensues, with Edison and Madera starting out and then Ella finally leaping in, with the last part of the battle taking place as a one-on-one fight between Ella and Cadmus, with Madera and Edison helping her. Eventually, Ella defeats Cadmus and spares his life. By acknowledging her feelings and accepting her past, Ella fully masters her powers. She is able to use her powers to conjure a vision of Friedan, who tells Ella not to blame herself and asks Cadmus to forgive her. He does so and gives the heroes his airship, which they use to head to Gruntilda's sky fortress. It's on that sky fortress that Ella reveals to Edison and Madera something that has been alluded to in flashbacks throughout the game. Their true enemy is not Gruntilda, but an entity known as the Vainglory. This entity inhabits the minds of Dreamers, trying to utilize their nightmares to conjure himself into the real world. Ella managed to fight him off, but by bringing James into the world, Edison and Madera inadvertently allowed the Vainglory to find James. It managed to implant Gruntilda into James' mind, and using his nightmares, conjured her back to life, in exchange for helping to bring him back into the world. To this end, Gruntilda abducted James, in the hopes of getting him to summon forth the Vainglory which has promised Gruntilda eternal life, beauty, and power.
Chapter Six: The Vainglory
Part one of the chapter is an assault on Gruntilda's sky fortress, which climaxes in a battle against Gruntilda and James (James himself isn't fought, being an innocent child, but he conjures up monsters and spells to protect Gruntilda). After Gruntilda is defeated, the Vainglory tries to get James to conjure him, but Edison, Madera, and Ella manage to get through to him, and free his mind from the dark forces influencing it. However, the Vainglory then uses the last of the dark magic available to him to attack Edison and Madera, wounding them. This causes James to exert a massive burst of negative energy, which is enough to bring the Vainglory into reality. It drags Edison and Madera into the nightmare realm with him and tries to do the same to James, but Ella uses her powers to protect him, and the Vainglory is forced to retreat into the dark dreamscape. Ella follows him with James in tow. Ella battles through the dreamscape with James, defeating powerful foes as she goes. She and James bond over their shared power, and Ella realizes that James was only born a Dreamer because Ella imprinted him with a fragment of her power. Finally, they reach the Vainglory, which is keeping Edison and Madera trapped within his body, feeding off their life energy. Ella battles it bravely, but can't overcome its power. She realizes that in order to have enough power to defeat it, she'll need to extract the remainder of her power from James, but this process might kill him. There is one more way...if Ella bestows the entirety of her power on James, he might be strong enough to defeat the Vainglory, and she might be strong enough to survive it. She does so, and James uses the power of his dreams to empower Ella, enabling her to free Edison and Madera from the Vainglory, weakening it. The final phase of the battle is Ella, assisted by Edison and Madera, battling a rapidly-shapeshifting Vainglory who is being assaulted by James' psychic dream powers. After an incredible fight, Ella defeats the Vainglory, but it strikes her with a furious assault as it dies, mortally wounding her. The dreamscape disappears, returning Edison, Madera, James, and the dying Ella to reality. Ella seems to accept death, and has one last conversation with Friedan, but James, using all of his dream power, has one final dream...that Ella survives. She glows and her wounds are healed, though James has to give up the entirety of his dream power in order to do so. The family reunited, the four of them visit their friends one last time. Ella says goodbye to her friends, finally ready to return home with Edison, Madera, and James. The four resume an ordinary life, but will always remember their amazing adventures.
Dreamscape is released in North America on June 25, 2001, and in Europe and Japan in July. The game immediately becomes one of the year's best reviewed games, with overall average review scores slightly higher than The Dreamers. Sales are robust, the game sells even faster than The Dreamers, though not quite as quickly as the other two big Ultra Nintendo games of the month, Novus Ordo and NFL Play Action. It draws immediate comparisons to the upcoming NiGHTS sequel on the Katana, though NiGHTS plays like much more of a traditional platformer. The game's success solidifies for Rare that the Dream series should continue to drift away from the platformer genre, and the third installment, which will be developed for the Nintendo Wave, will complete the series' transformation into an action-RPG franchise, leaving the Conker and Donkey Kong Country series as Rare's two big platformer franchises.
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"If there's a game that started the 'RPG-ification' of action games that we began to see in the sixth generation, it was almost certainly Dreamscape. The more Rare developed that game, the more like an RPG it became, and the third game was designed with the action-RPG genre in mind. Its success led a lot of developers to start work on those types of games, and we saw a few franchises that started out as platformers begin to drift more in that direction, blurring the lines between Mario-like games and Zelda-like games. When asked why Dreamscape had gone in such a direction during development, Chris Seavor said 'we just wanted to make something different than Conker'. The game's influence was felt throughout the decade, and continues to be regarded as one of the best action titles of all time to this day."
-Patrick Klepek, from the article "How the 00s Transformed Our Favorite Genres Forever", published on Gamesovermatter.com on January 18, 2010
