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 and thereafter appears on the Wire, causing white noise disrupting the infrastructure of Stark. Of this, Tørnquist commented that the effects of Faith's presence are much graver than shown and that he was disappointed that he and other designers "didn't manage to really explain what's going on".
Zoë's story begins when her journalist ex-boyfriend Reza Temiz disappears while investigating Project Alchera, and when Faith, through television-screens, begins urging her to "find" and "save" April Ryan. Zoë tracks Reza to Newport, a fictional megapolis on the West Coast, where she identifies April Ryan before herself forcibly attached to a dreamer console by WATI agents. This unexpectedly transports her first to Faith's imaginary world of 'Winter' and then to Arcadia. There, she locates April, who refuses to take part in Faith's case. Waking in Newport, Zoë travels to Japan to meet Reza's contact Damien Cavanaugh, who explains Project Alchera. With his help, Zoë plants a Trojan Horse program in Eingana and later meets Alvin Peats, the founder of WATI and the mastermind behind Alchera. Zoë thereafter reunites with Damien and later returns to Arcadia. Concurrently, April spies on Azadi officials' negotiations with a hooded "Prophet", whom she follows beneath the Northlands' capital Marcuria to a "Chamber of Dreams", which she enters at the same time that Zoë reaches Eingana, so that the latter's overload correlates with eruption of energy in the former. Confused, April consults the reborn White Dragon, who sends her to Gordon Halloway, who in turn assures her that current events do not endanger the Balance. April returns to Marcuria to discover Zoë captured by Azadi on suspicion of witchcraft; while in Marcuria, Kian Alvane goes in search of April, whom he later meets while both are unaware of each other's identities, with Kian's attempts at conversation leading him to question the morality of his mission. April proceeds to free Zoë but again refuses to assist her. At suggestion of Brian Westhouse, Zoë visits the White Dragon but is teleported by her to April. In the climax, the rebel camp is attacked by Azadi troops, Kian is betrayed by his allies, and April is stabbed and falls into the swamp. Kian is then imprisoned for treason.
Zoë wakes in Stark and receives a message from Damien that the static originated from a testing-site near Saint Petersburg, where she discovers a record of Faith's final months as a captive test subject. Distressed, Zoë returns to Casablanca, where she is discovered by Helena Chang, one of Reza's contacts who originally "created" Faith, and who asks Zoë to meet Faith and persuade her to die, so as to dissipate her influence. Zoë enters Winter and converses with Faith, who claims to be her sister, and who then falls asleep in Zoe's lap, disappearing entirely and thus causing a severe Eingana malfunction. Using the distraction, Peats' second-in-command kills him and takes over WATI and Alchera. At this, Chang places Zoë in coma. She is next shown in hospital, with her father and Reza watching her; whereupon an out-of-body version of Zoë identifies this Reza as an impostor. Unable to wake in Stark, Zoë arrives between the Twin Worlds and tells the resident (named "Vagabond" in the game's art book) her story. In the last shots before the credits, a short television broadcast is shown, announcing the release of Dreamer consoles three months after the events of the game.
Two events of the game are seen through the eyes of Brian Westhouse, an episodic character in both TLJ and Dreamfall. In the prologue, a ritual in a Tibetan monastery sends him to Arcadia but he is instead trapped in Vagabond's realm and attacked by the "Undreaming". The exact nature of Undreaming and details of their encounter are never explained in-game; but in TLJ, Westhouse claims having been between the worlds for almost three centuries. In the epilogue, Westhouse struggles through a Tibetan blizzard in 1933 and rescued by Manny Chavez (one of the pseudonyms of the Red Dragon, who appears as Cortez in TLJ).
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