There is a piece of paper laying on the ground that gives you your first hint of what to do, which then leads you to a hidden chamber with a voice message from the master of the isle. The physical parameters of the world don’t match up with the expansiveness that the world impressed upon me in my youth. And while Selenitic is jagged and requires a lot of turning about, it too is essentially a single straight line around the lip of a large crater. The Mechanical Age has a rotating center isle that can move its platform to several surrounding isles, but they are tiny and contain only a single clue to return to Myst. While there are two long underground corridors, they are straight lines. The Stoneship Age was a single rocky outcropping with a light house and sunken ship attached to it. I did not get lost, nor lose track of the valve switches that were a part of that Channelwood’s puzzle. The world was not endless, nor was it so complex. On replaying the game, I discovered the reality was much different. All that wandering made it feel like the treetop village was an expansive complex network. My dad and I had to draw a map so we wouldn’t get turned around. The Channelwood Age consists almost entirely of paths made of wooden plants set on pontoons and water powered elevators that lead to a network of tree houses. My dad and I had to draw elaborate maps to keep track of where everything was. While my memory of Myst largely matches up to the geography that actually exists in game, I was very surprised by the reality of the four Ages. Solve the puzzles of each Age, and you will find the book that will return you to Myst. They weren’t before as the diaries in the library tell us. There are scraps of letters and the occasional video recording, but mostly the story is told through the artifacts left in each brothers’ rooms that reveal their character. In these ages are the missing pages but also the story of the two brothers. Unlike the prison of the red and blue books, these are doorways to other islands called Ages. Solving the puzzles around the island will eventually reveal other linking books. The two brothers that are the authors of these “texts” tell you to find the missing pages, and at that point, you begin to understand your quest. You mange to make out that there are pages missing and that is the cause of the lack of coherence. Someone is trying to speak to you from the other side, but there is more static than there is a clear picture. Opening them, one finds a small window to another place. But there are two other books in the library - a red book and a blue book. Most have been burnt, but there are a handful of diaries that contain some of the backstory to this now abandoned place. Yes, the are books of the sort that you might find anywhere in our world on the shelves in the library. A moving tree controlled by steam power, a music controlled rocket ship, and other such oddities litter the isle of Myst.īut most important are the books. A sunken ship is at the docks, two unconnected massive gears lay in one corner, and a mini planetarium with a dentist chair in the middle sits next to a half burnt library that contains magical paintings that open and close doors. The island of Myst itself is a strange place that looks like a Salvador Dali painting. Clicking on different parts of the screen would move you around the island, either moving towards something in front of you or turning to either side. In any case, the essential fact remains that Myst was a much smaller world than it was 21 years ago.įor those who don’t know, Myst was essentially a large stack of HyperCards with images of the in game world, connected in such a way to preserve the illusion of an interconnected space. Maybe it had something to do with how I remembered how the world of Myst worked. Maybe it’s that I’m older or more experienced with adventure games. I played it to completion the other day in an afternoon. For all intents and purposes, it was the first video game that we played together, and it took us months to get through. My dad had just gotten a new CD-ROM drive for his self-built PC and Myst apparently came with all PC CD-ROM drives back then. Recently I went back and played the Cyan Worlds classic from 1993 and couldn’t help but notice that simple fact.
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