Dreamfall: Have you considered that if, "everyone disagrees," maybe everyone is looking at you wondering why you're the odd one out?
As I said in my review, the protagonists have 6 goals between them. They accomplish one of them (save the girl); in the process letting loose a greater evil (the release of the Dreamers). The one you accomplish happens in a cutscene without player interaction. April and Kian, on the other hand, accomplish nothing. The protagonists actions had a negligible effect upon the world around them, invaliding their, and the player's, very significance as protagonists. As a stand alone story this is only "special" in the way that school districts have a second, short, school bus for "special" students. It's garbage.
This is not to say that I want a fully happy ending. Suggesting that there is only the ending we got and happy daisy land is an insulting strawman argument. Great stories can end in death and failure. Some of my favorite movies are Terry Gilliam's tragedies like Brazil and Twelve Monkeys. But those stories still have significance; the protagonists made hard decisions and suffered the consequences. More importantly, the major plot lines tied up. Dreamfall failed here.
There is one view that redeems this. As part one of a two part story it works. It would be logical that the game end on a low point. But that's not what was sold to me. The box didn't have "Part 1 of 2!" on the box. It would be like Lucas shipping The Empire Strikes back with zero clue that there would be a third movie. So the series would appear to end with Luke screwing up and being maimed for the attempt, Han being captured, and things generally looking bad for the rebellion. As a stand alone movie, Empire was terrible. Instead it shines because there was the understanding up front that the story wasn't done.
So, a new player perfectly aware that the game is incomplete and that further resolution may come from the coming Dreamfall Chapters* may be satisfied. But that's not who I was. That's not who most players were. Many of us bought Dreamfall based on the strengths of The Longest Journey, a game that managed to be quite satisfactorily self contained.
* This of course assumes that Dreamfall Chapters actually ships, that it shows up soon enough that you remember what happened in Dreamfall, and that they actually write an ending instead of stringing players along until they run out money from the suckers at the Norwegian Film Fund. Betting on future video games shipping is a fool's gamble unless the game is named Halo. I say this with the bitterness of someone who bought into Shenmue, which also failed to finish its story.
