In the dystopian future of the year 2052, society slowly spirals into chaos. A lethal virus, the “Gray Death”, ravages the world. The only vaccine, “Ambrosia”, is in such short supply, it is only available to those wealthy enough and deemed “vital to the social order”. With no hope for a cure for the common people, riots occur worldwide and a number of terrorist organizations have formed.

The story of Dreamfall is presented as a narration of Zoë Castillo, a 20-year-old resident of Casablanca in 2219, who lies in coma and recounts the events that led thereto. Her narration concerns Project Alchera, an international conspiracy by the Japan-based toy manufacturer WATIcorp, that aims to introduce a potentially-destructive lucid dream technology ("dreamer console") to the market. One byproduct of their research is Faith, a girl used for testing the hallucinogenic drug Morpheus, who upon dying thereof transferred her consciousness to the DreamNet mainframe computer Eingana. As a result, she appears on the Wire, causing white noise disrupting the infrastructure of Stark.

The year is 2084. If you somehow survived the Nanophage, odds are you were killed in the War. Those who live have turned to drugs, VR, neural implants — anything to distract themselves from this new reality. You are Daniel Lazarski, an elite neural detective known as an Observer, and part of a corporate-funded police unit whose purpose is to hack and invade suspects’ minds. In this future, anything you think, feel, or remember can be used against you in a court of law. When you receive a mysterious message from your estranged son, a high-level engineer for the almighty Chiron Corporation, you journey to the seedy Class C slums of Krakow to investigate. But as you hack into the unstable minds of criminals and victims to look for clues, you are forced relive their darkest fears. How far will you go to discover the truth?