11
votes
Let's talk about the Myst series
They're all really cool games. Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelations, End of Ages, and Uru. Discuss?
Edit: ok and yeah Obduction I guess
They're all really cool games. Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelations, End of Ages, and Uru. Discuss?
Edit: ok and yeah Obduction I guess
Can we also discuss Obduction? I played through the game last Christmas and enjoyed it (although I got the bad ending at first and my brother showed me how to get the other one).
I haven't played through Myst, although I really should. I have multiple different versions of the game, including the most recent one re-made in Unity. But I have a really old Thinkpad (755CE from 1993) and it might be fun to do my first play through on the original version of the game on that little machine.
Myst is accessible and pleasant. Play it with a notepad -- ideally that will slow you down a little bit to help enhance the sense of place, which was a huge part of the draw -- as you probably saw with Obduction.
I wound up slightly frustrated that Obduction had only a few puzzle challenges, but exploring the space was a really successful immersion experience. Myst's puzzles are less integrated to the world around them than in the sequels, but they still work very well.
Are the mobile variants good? I always wanted to play this but felt it a little too dated.
While it wasn't my favorite from a story or puzzle design standpoint, I've always thought Revelations was the technical peak of the series, and probably of that whole genre/style of first person point and click games.
The detailed high resolution environments, the rich sound design (as always with Myst), the way you could hear your finger tapping on surfaces; I still haven't seen many games that felt as richly detailed as what Cyan achieved with that engine.
I've kind of assumed that pre-rendered approach was dead, but I'm starting to wonder if there might actually be a chance to see it come back for VR games.
While I've only played 3D Myst (I just cannot get into the storyboard point and click gameplay), I actually own all three of the books in first edition hardcover. The map of the trail from the Ridge to D'ni is framed above a computer in the house. One of my books is even signed!
My friend and I spent a while with Myst V this year, it being the only one neither of us had played -- but a bug in the astronomy level prevented us from moving forward. I was sooort of into the closer exploration of the Dni and Bahro, but actually it was very rough and arbitrary and many of the environments were falling very flat for me. The tablet magic system wasn't interesting to me at all.
I gotta replay Riven, though. That game is incredible.
I recently played through the first Myst for the first time. I had a lot of fun, although it still took me two days to complete. A couple things stuck out to me:
I played RealMyst Masterpiece, which is the fourth(?) main version of the game. I was going to wait until the sequels got their own remasterings before playing, as I'm sure I'd be frustrated by the click-based movement. I'm hoping that's what the upcoming Myst 25 Anniversary Collection will offer.
There was a trick to the tunnel maze! Every time you moved you would hear a sound. The sound would indicate which way to go next. There was a different sound for left, right, or straight ahead. If you were able to decode which sound corresponded to which direction it would guide you fairly painlessly to the end.
Unfortunately not - the 25th anniversary editions (which have now been released, by the way) are purely the minimal modifications necessary to make the games run on modern systems. They play exactly as the originals did. Remastering them all to the same kind of thing as RM:ME would take orders of magnitude more budget than Cyan has access to.
OTOH, all the games since Myst III: Exile have free camera movement, and I think both IV (Revelation) and V (End of Ages) have free movement, so it's just Riven that forces you to use the slideshow-style gameplay now. You may even be glad that you're being told where to look for some of the puzzles :P
IIRC Revelation was the last game to feature the fixed-point "bubble" system, while End of Ages switched to the free-movement full 3D Plasma engine they used for Uru.
Apparently Cyan no longer has the original assets for Riven, which is why there's never been a "realRiven" style official remake, but there is a fan project Starry Expanse which intends to recreate Riven from scratch in the Unreal Engine.
I remember attempting to play the original Myst on my Mac LC III. That poor computer just wasn't up to the task! Scene transitions would take upwards of 10 seconds, audio stuttered horribly, and the scenes with embedded QuickTime movies would glitch out or even crash to the desktop. Eventually I picked up the Sega Saturn port just so I could complete the game! It was pretty awkward to play with a gamepad but at least it ran smoothly.
It's funny, today I can play the same game game, smooth as butter, inside a classic Mac emulator running inside a VM. Or on my phone. We've come a long way, baby.
I also played Myst on the Saturn. Ironically, it was the only time I ever finished the game. I think having it on the TV helped me to enjoy it more. More realistically, it was just because I was older when I found it and was able to find the puzzles more easily. Myst really is not a game for children.
I bought Riven a while back, but I haven't been able to gather the patience to play it. Which is a bit of a shame, since Riven is where the series is supposed to really take off, I've heard.