Are the plots of "The Longest Journey" and "Dreamfall" influenced by the work of novelist Charles de Lint?

Question

About ten years ago a friend lent me "The Longest Journey" and it struck me how similar many themes in the game were to those in a series of novels I'd coincidentially been reading around that time, that is to say, Charles de Lint's work. De Lint's stories tend to mix urban and fantasy themes, usually -but not always- feature young women as protagonists, many are set in a city called Newford (the games have a city called Newport), deal with the idea of multiple realities, have talking animals and/or shapeshifters (crows are a favorite), deal with the concept of dreams being a way to enter other worlds, and with the folklore of several cultures of the world, including the power of storytelling and the idea of a "Dream Time" dimension as seen in "Dreamfall."
I ask this because I recently got around to finally playing "Dreamfall" and all those elements I'd noticed years ago in the original game came back to me, but I haven't been able to find anything about De Lint being an influence.

Answer 1

To get a true answer to this question you would need to talk to the person who crafted the original storyline of the games. It is certainly possible that at some point they did read De Lint and drew on that influence, whether it was consciously or subconsciously.