Myst series - Spoilers abound!

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Spoilers start later, this bit's safe

Anyone in the chat this weekend will have seen me talking about and playing Myst and Riven. I'd wholeheartedly recommend both of these games to literally anyone who uses a computer more than the bare minimum of what's possible these days (so you).

I must add though if you're on Vista or Win7 you may need to install a virtual machine with XP to run them as they're veeeery old games (Myst is legally old enough to drink in the UK!)

Microsoft offer a very painless solution themselves for Windows 7 users called XPMode. Overall installing the VM then installing Riven on it took way less time than downloading pretty much any game released in the last 10 years so it's NOT a hassle at all. (less hassle than installing steam the first time you bought a steam game without realising it needed steam)

I wouldn't recommend the later sequels to anyone unless they'd enjoyed Riven. So start from the beginning if you're gunna start anywhere. I personally enjoyed all the games thoroughly up until number 5 which I thought was just a total waste of time. The thing Myst did so well was totally beautiful immersive environments by pre-rendering all of their art and using live action actors. You can't get better than an actual actor, yet for some crazy reason they decided to make the final game in the series fully real time and visual quality (and immersion) went to shit.

Spoilers from here on! Myst games are puzzle games and reading about the solutions WILL ruin your experience!

The fire marble puzzle in Riven, oh man. What a puzzle. I remember the first time I played these games, I was too young to understand that I might need to write stuff down (or even really read the journals in the game) and my dad kept a journal with the solutions hidden from me. Having played Riven again today and doing it mostly from scratch rather than memory (like I never actually figured out the marble puzzle myself in the past I just looked it up) I found the experience incredible.

Having to keep a journal whilst playing a game? That's something that needs to happen again. There's no way I'd be able to finish Riven without writing down all the different eye symbols, numbers and codes.
Myst could be done on a postit really, which is where Riven excels over it's predecessor (not to mention better graphics, story and pretty much everything else)

I read the books too, I enjoyed though but I never tried URU, based on my dislike of Myst 5 I'm guessing I wouldn't enjoy that either.

Anyhow, just some of my thoughts.
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
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Sep 28, 2009
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I brought that asshole the blue pages, and look where that got me.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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I brought that asshole the blue pages, and look where that got me.

I always thought it was a bit one-sided. Achenar was clearly insane from the get-go whilst Sirrus came across as a very sane and well spoken man, if a little twisted. I'm not really sure why anyone would trust Achenar :/

EDIT: yes frozen, yes you should.
 
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3Dnj

Ducks
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Dec 21, 2008
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I played Myst when i was 9 so I don't remember a lot about it but I remember I spent more than 10 hours serching the return book on pirates land but I never found it :( I did all other 3 lands.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
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Jul 31, 2009
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If you're going to play Myst, go ahead and play the RealMyst 3D edition. It's pretty cool to be able to really move about and look at things from multiple angles.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Perhaps compared to Crysis, but not compared to Myst.

Yes and no, see when I look at Myst I compare it to games of the time, and it stands head and shoulders above the rest, so to me Myst is stunningly beautiful but RealMyst stands besides a bunch of other games of better visual quality so it loses all sense of beauty, it's just another real-time world.

(Even by today's measures it's certainly not ugly)

Riven's increased graphical quality makes me think that even today, the very best of real-time rendering will struggle to top it. This Starry Expanse stuff is close to the quality of Riven, but not quite.

I just don't feel like the bonus of being able to roam free is worth the mammoth loss in quality from not pre-rendering everything.
 

Jack Riguel

L10: Glamorous Member
Jul 19, 2009
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I just don't feel like the bonus of being able to roam free is worth the mammoth loss in quality from not pre-rendering everything.

Wouldn't even say that. The whole build up around the first few myst games was the ability to roam around, especially Riven.
 

Sel

Banned
Feb 18, 2009
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Realmyst is fine, it's a lot less trouble than fidgeting with myst's settings in a virtual pc trying to get the damn thing to actually launch. Though a proper super high detail cryengine2 remake would be nice too. Get on it ym there is your new project.