UltragigagiganticI never finished, and I'm not going back.
Hobbes_DentI intend to lauch Riven when it comes out just to give up again in the same early game spot.
SzethFriendOfNimiThe code for the book?
Might be, yeah. There were trams. They made me mad.
Trams, stones and then the school and books.
I had to lookup the solution for the book. It’s maddeningly difficult.
The game doesn’t pull any punches that’s for sure. Felt like I was failing a Mensa pre-application qualification test
Captain AggravatedRiven is unique among point and click games, some things it does very well, and others not so much.
I played Riven before I played Myst, and little of what Atrus says at the beginning makes sense, then there’s a guy who speaks two languages to you that you don’t speak, then you’re left to your own devices. You wander around, with basically no goal, with a lot of things to interact with, and no reason to interact with them that you are conscious of. Because unlike every other adventure game including Myst, it isn’t a series of smaller challenges, But it really consists of two very BIG puzzles that require inter-relating information about numbers, sounds, colors, animals, the shape of the game world itself and the locations of items in it, much of this information is given to you in awkward and incomplete ways requiring at least some interpolation.
You’re supposed to spend the first third of the game taking in the environmental storytelling and learning about the lore of this place including a base 25 number system, the middle third solving the puzzle to get to the Moiety’s world, another middle third reading Catherine’s lengthy journal written in the worst handwriting ever digitized, and the last third of the game getting to Gehn and trapping him.
A lot of players spent the first third of the game wandering around not knowing what the hell is going on, the middle third failing to complete certain pixel hunts and failure to find a couple paths that are hidden behind open doors (You open a door to walk through it, and the path is hidden behind the door you just walked through), and the last third failing to recognize puzzle elements as puzzle elements because the signal to noise ratio in this game is very low.
Yeah, that was my conclusion as well, Myst was easy because the puzzles were limited in area, Riven was on another scale because it spanned multiple huge islands.
It would have flopped completely if released now, there were perks to having limited access to new games, instead of giving up when it was hard, I kept coming back because what else was I going to play.
Cant wait for the remake to see if I still remember everything. I think my mom might still have all my notes.
oh man, the trams. I am partially deaf in one ear and trying to hear the difference between the audio ques was infuriating.
Some day I’m gonna finish that fucking game, it’s only been out for 31 years.
Oh it’s a game! I always thought it was just the worst DVD menu out there.
The ambiance of this game just cannot be duplicated.
music starts
“I knew the moment that I fell into the fissure, that the books would not be destroyed as I had planned…”
I have played it through a few times, allways with a walkthrough, the keyboard puzzle SUCKS, but a good walkthrough will explain how to count the notes on the sliders.
Riven is brilliant, but still need a walkthrough to finnish it, I have the official guide book to Riven, and it has damn well helped me a lot.
Myst III was never made by Cyan, but by Presto, and while very similar to the original games, it has a different feel.
Myst IV was made by Cyan, and in terms of story I find it lacking, especially the spirit puzzle was a mistake, there is also too much live action for my taste, but the environments are beautiful and the visual quallity of the game is fantastic.
Myst V is a major departure from the rest of the games, both in terms of story and visual quallity. The story is about the end of Dn’i, and setting a slave race free, I never got into it, the visual design is made in a full 3D engine and looses the gorgeous visuals of the last game.
URU was a side project where Cyan tried to make a Myst themed MMORPG, where you travel to the cleft and start your own Myst adventure, the idea was that people would meet up and go to adventures together, but it never got off the ground.
Myst Online is an effort by the fan community and Cyan to make the URU live portion work, and is currently free to play.
Myst 2021 is a complete remake of Myst in the Unreal engine, the game looks fantastic and can even be played on iOS and in VR with the Quest.
Cyan has had a few other large impact releases:
Obduction: a sci-fi adventure puzzle game where you are abducted into an alien world and have to solve a mystery with a lot of puzzles, fantastic graphics.
Firmament: another sci-fi adventure puzzle game, where you explore worlds with weird technology, I don’t know that much about it despite having played it on release last year.
Fun fact since Myst has been released so many times over the years it has a huge list of supported platforms:
Mac OS
Sega Saturn
Sony Playstation
3DO
Microsoft Windows
Atari Jaguar CD
Philips CD-i
AmigaOS
Pocket PC
Playstation Portable
Nintendo DS
iOS
3DS
Android
Oculus Quest
Quest 2
Nintendo Switch
Xbox One
Xbox Series X/S
Myst, let me introduce you to my friend, Autism.
DaMonsterKneesMental note, direct ask Myst-related questions to stoy. Thank you, stoy!
Myst IV was made by Ubisoft Montreal. They had some heavy hitters on the team, Mary De Marle is an excellent writer and went on to do amazing things! Jack Wall, the composer that did Myst iii became a very productive video game composter.
URU wasn’t a side project, it was cyan’s big bet that nearly tanked the company. They had other side projects like a third party QA and testing department that kept them afloat. URU got cancelled before launching properly.
Myst V wasn’t meant to exist. After losing so much money on URU, Ubisoft pressured Cyan to put their unused assets from URU into a game that would sell. So they slapped it together with the Myst name that was more recognizable. The game plays and feels just like you’d expect.
Obduction was their big comeback and return to form. Myst-like game without the baggage of the old franchise.
You are absolutely right that URU wasn’t a side project, I am sorry for calling it that, I ment it like a different series in the same universe.
As for Myst V, this makes soo much sense, I never felt it belonged to the series.
You don’t need to be sorry, it was still a great post ☺️
URU turned into a side project and still is one now and has been one longer than it was a main effort so technically you’re right 😅
Fun fact, Obduction has a full VR mode, also fantastic.
The Riven remake comes out later this year
yamaniiI loved obduction, I think I got it for free on some giveaway, still needed a walkthrough since even the first area is fuckhuge.
They’re bringing it to VR. So you can experience the pain once again in full 3D!!!
Mossy Feathers (She/Her)It’s already in VR! Check out the 2021 remaster.
If its not jumpy AF I’m not in
What’s the game called?
NakedmoleThat is exactly how I felt playing Myst and I in fact never finished it.
About the only thing I remember about it was there was one section that wasn’t making any sense and seemed completely random, until someone suggested I try playing with the sound enabled.
Haha
I never got past the start bit because it never occurred to me that sound patterns could be used and relevant in a game.
One of my first video games was this Diablo-like, and my brother and I would play it a lot, but always struggle, always getting swarmed by enemies.
After a few years, we got a new monitor. The R in RGB had always been terrible on the old monitor.
Well, guess what we spotted for the first time: The minimap had red dots showing enemy positions long before they came onto screen, making it really easy to avoid groups and bait enemies individually.
Worst part was that you could’ve spotted these dots on the old monitor, but we never did in our hundreds of hours played, because they were basically dark red on brown.
I bet it was it water level.
Amazing. I can’t think of the game without also remembering the creepy noises.
I discovered that all the videos were in the disk unprotected, so I would watch them all for clues and just finished most of the game that way. I also discovered that the end pages could be accessed without doing anything else and worked. I got Riven, got stuck, went to the disk files and laughed since they put all the files in some strange archive I wasn’t familiar with at the time. No cheating for young men. I wonder about now, though.
Pretty sure it was just bink video format, very popular format for the time. Anyway, finished all the Myst games and Riven, 10/10 would get stuck for hours again.
Was that the same style as 7th Guest, and one of the Zork games?
Afraid I don’t know those
7th Guest was the shit
They were QuickTime .mov files on the original version. Myst came out six years before Bink video existed.
I tried this game, but all I remember is the Rotunda and the lever.
It’s worth playing if you want to design puzzle games. It’ll teach you how not to design puzzle games.
I disagree. The puzzles are great: interesting, engaging, genuine. The game just doesn’t spoon-feed the solutions.
There’s a combination lock puzzle where you have to hold the mouse button down so it rotates 3 numbers instead of 2 with just a click. Nothing in the game indicates how this is supposed to work. There’s a line between being spoon-fed and being obtuse.
Edit: after looking around a bit, I think some of the later editions fixed that particular puzzle. You might have played a tweaked version that tightens up the puzzles.
I played several versions, including the first one on an iMac.
You’re right it’s not intuitive, but the whole game was intentionally hard and required the player to explore and try.
Ah, that reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I was stuck at a door with no apparent lock or switch. I finally got mad and pushed it a whole bunch of times despite having tried to push it before and it didn’t work. Apparently, you had to push it a bunch of times to open it…
I bought Myst and Dave Mirra free style BMX from a scholastic book fair. Didn’t get far in myst but beat the other a few times.
I watched a girl play through it on YouTube. It was fun to watch, and I’m glad I did it that way instead of going back and trying to play it myself again. I just don’t have the time.
Speed run? Wonder how long that would take. It seems like my brother and I played this game endlessly.
The video may have had some parts edited for time, and she had people in the live chat (originally a livestream) providing hints. From what I recall it took around 3 hrs to watch.
My sister doesn’t play games but she beat this when we were kids. She’s forever the pro gamer in the family now.
SagrotanOh good times. I played it through ( partly with walkthrough) with my wife, back in the day on our 17 inch tube.
The re-release is actually good. They fixed a few of the worst-offending puzzles design-wise and it is absolutely worth playing. It makes me want them to give the same treatment to Riven and Exile.
Yeah, you have to read some of the books to figure out some of it. I like that the puzzles take some work.
I played as a kid at the library. I kept a notebook full of clues/attempts to solve puzzles. I also had another friend that was really into the game. Somehow together we progressed pretty far over months of play. I don’t believe we solved every puzzle or even finished every age, but I remember we happened upon the end of the game by accident. If I recall, just flipping the switches in a certain combination on the main island without even visiting the other ages or collecting pages for the brothers gives you a white page that you can use to end the game. In some ways it is like a slap in the face to the player because the game is so hard, but the ending is right under your nose. As far as speed runs go, you can finish the game in minutes.
Flying SquidThis was a fun parody, although way too short.
It’s on the Internet Archive if you want to check it out.
Pyst : Parroty Interactive : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
CD-ROM spoof of Myst (1993) featuring John Goodman, for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh.