MYST Opportunities! Let's talk about First Person Adventures!

[John]

In the old forum, we had a nice thread from when Obduction was fairly new, talking about Myst and various inspired games. It's that time again!

MYST (2021) - The OG puzzler from Cyan has been remade five or six times, depending on what you consider different games. Myst: Masterpiece Edition first upgraded the graphics from 8-bit color to 24-bit. RealMyst was the first big departure, switching out point and click for a FPS-like control scheme, and rendering everything in objectively worse polygons instead of a pretty slideshow, but it added a new small Age as a coda. That version was upgraded over a decade later as RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition, which used the Unity engine to bring the polygons on par or exceeding the original renderings. In 2020 that version was ported over to Unreal Engine 4, and released as a VR exclusive title for the Oculus platform. Under a year later, they slightly tweaked that version and released it on computers and Xboxes as MYST, coming full circle.

I've purchased and played every one of these except for the Oculus version, and consider the original one of my formative gaming experiences. My mother was a teacher, and got the educator's discount on Apple products, so the family computer through my middle/high school years was a Macintosh Performa. It meant I couldn't play all the fun DOS and Win95 games that I would read about in magazines, but I did get Myst before the PC owners could. As a 13yo, my brain was at the perfect age to absorb the concepts of a game being created as both a puzzle and as art, and postage stamp sized FMV on a 14" monitor sealed the deal. The one-two punch of Myst and the Marathons impacted me just as much as Mario did when I was in early elementary school.

I played through the new version on its PC release last year, and thought the game as a whole still stands up. They tweaked it for modern tastes, now you can pick up both red and blue pages in each age on a single run, no need to go back in afterwards for the other one. I appreciated this from a time perspective, but as a kid without having anything spoiled, I legitimately agonized over the decision of which pages to give to which brother, especially as the game got closer to the conclusion.

The only detractor from this version (when I played) was they had replaced the original FMV with 3D renderings, which were not on par with anything else in the game. They have since added in a patch to restore the original FMV, and I say turn that on immediately. The Rime Age from RealMyst hasn't been recreated yet, but is alleged to be coming in a later update.

If you haven't played the original, or just haven't played it in years, it's highly recommended (by me). You can get the new one on computers/Xbox/Oculus, and RealMyst Masterpiece on Switch/Mobile. As for me, a few years ago I started replays of the series and got midway through Myst III: Exile before burning out. I'll be picking and choosing a few games to peek in on, but not committing to the full series again.

 

[John]

URU: Ages Beyond Myst (2003)

Similar to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this was the endeavor that almost killed Cyan as a company. Myst was the surprise success in 1993, and they took all that money to make Riven in 1997, which was even more ambitious, if flawed. Riven was still a success, but not as much as Myst, and Cyan eventually was burned out as a company. They had signed deals with Broderbund to let other developers make Myst games, but Broderbund was in dire financial straits in the late 90's, and Riven sales weren't enough to make up for other business deals. Broderbund was absorbed by Mattel, and Myst III: Exile was given to Presto Studios of Journeyman Project fame. Cyan was able to focus on the next big thing: URU.

URU (You Are You) was originally supposed to be an MMO Puzzle Game set in the Myst Mythos, a very ambitious design even today. They wanted to make it third person so you could see your avatar and interact with the world and other players in a more tactile manner, which threw off the fanbase a little bit who liked being faceless cyphers. With all the behind the scenes business issues going on, Cyan wasn't able to release the multiplayer portion on release, and eventually shipped just a single player version through Ubisoft. It was not well received, being called out for not Myst-like, hard to control, adding in light platforming elements and "deaths", and just overall being weird.

The multiplayer part was cancelled, and Cyan pivoted to just making more single player content, releasing two expansions, which only sold to the hard-core fans. Eventually, GameTap partnered with Cyan to release the multiplayer game on their subscription service, but it only lasted for one year. Cyan reacquired the rights to the game and the series, and released the source code for the online portion. Fans have made their own version, titled Myst Online: Uru Live (again), or MOULa. You can go to that link and try it out for free, if you're inclined. I read a minor bit about the online versions, and there are some puzzles that require 5-8 people working in unison. That's crazy and will never happen today, so will be Youtube fodder for me later.

I've never tried the online version, but yesterday I booted up URU: Complete to check it out so many years later. It's still an odd duck, but interesting, once you get past the controls, which aren't super intuitive. You can sort of map it to WASD and switch to first person mode, but sidestepping is extremely slow, and you still need to manipulate stuff with the mouse cursor. It goes deep into the MYST lore that was fleshed out in the novels, but moreso, with texts from both archeological researchers as well as in-universe stuff. It's kinda like Tolkein's Histories of Middle-Earth in a very small scale. Could be interesting, but I skipped most of it.

I didn't get far yesterday, but I want to try more. It reminded me of exploring a combat-less version of Morrowind, with minor puzzles and tiny platforming elements. It's open ended, and they leave it up to you to discover how to do anything, which is refreshing. All the Ages are apparently open from the beginning (after the prologue), you just have to figure out what does what. I haven't had to take any notes just yet (in my Myst branded notebook that I use exclusively for adventure games), but I'm sure that's coming.

 

[John]

Uru's got some technical issues, being a 2003 3D Computer game with platforming elements. I ran into one problem in an age where I have to jump from one sloooowwwwly rotating platform over to an island, and each time on landing I fell through the geometry. After about 5 times of doing this I looked up the issue, which seems to be related to frame rates since the game wasn't expecting modern video cards. I was finally able to land by not jumping on the top of the island, but to a little ledge below it, and then skating my way up.

Also, there's an officially released beta patch available which fixes a couple minor things, and adds in "true" widescreen support. It does get a little fisheyed though, and when you look through telescopes/view lenses you can still see the outside of the screen. It's all part of the "fun" of playing nearly 20 year old games on modern hardware.

 

[madhair60]

Hey, just want to say that while I don't have much to add, I love these games and am paying attention.

Do stuff like the Rusty Lake series come within the remit?

 

[John]

I'd say they're one of the evolutionary paths that came out of Myst/Manhole, sure. On one path you have the quiet solitary treks where you're manipulating items (Quern/Rhem/Obduction, even The Room games) and another you have the straight puzzlers/pixel hunters like Rusty Lakes and all the detective/ghost games that you still see in the Computer Games sections at department stores, for people who still have CD-ROM drives. Those can be more in line with The 7th Guest, but everything's intermingled.

 

[Ghost from Spelunker]

My Packard Bell came with The Journeyman Project...Turbo
Considering how it's the world's very first photorealistic game ever, it sold millions of copies, it was packaged with computers, it got several sequels and a remake on Playstation, it seems to have been lost to the sands of time.

So you play as Victor Vector with no glasses in a slightly different skintight suit, and you travel through time to stop some killer robots who were sent to change the course of history. That's the concept anyway, you spend most of the time walking down empty hallways (time travel forbids interactions with others you know) and clicking on doors and then waiting 10 seconds for it open while they play every public domain SFX possible. And then after you successfully walk through the door you freeze and hear the door close behind you. Once in a while you play a minigame like finding cities on a globe. It's so devoid of gameplay that these days you might as well watch a Youtube longplay and get the same experience.

The best part is probably the part where you are playing that globe game and one killer robot is trash talking you the entire time. And when you win, the robot ragequits and leaves his office to walk over and kill you. And if there are any doors in the way, by gum he going to punch them down.

 

[John]

JP Turbo was remade as Pegasus Prime, and is available digitally everywhere. The other two games are only available on GoG in the original versions.

My first Journeyman Project was 2, and I think was the second adventure game I played that had "deaths" and a point system, after King's Quest 5. I had to mail off for a copy of Turbo, but I remember either downloading a demo or having a shareware version of it before I got the full version. I was excited for JP3, and entered into a contest from I think Red Orb's website for a free copy of the game. I ended up winning it, and was shipped not just the game, but one that was pressed on actual gold CDs. I remember seeing a newsgroup post sometime afterwards that those were given to Presto Studios employees after the game went gold, and they just had a few left over for a contest. Sadly, I no longer have that copy, though I look around every time I'm back at my parent's house.

 

[Falselogic]

I can remember watching as my Dad and older Brother played through Myst for the first time. I tried to help with the puzzles where possible. Myst and Riven were two of the small handful of video games that my Dad was interested in while I was growing up. I always saw it as a big deal when he was interested in one.

I mostly just remember the puzzles being not great though. When The Room games came out for Ipad I bought him the first for his Ipad though because I figured it was more of Myst. I never followed up I wondered if he played through it? (I ended up playing through all 4 of them.)

Thanks for the thread John it has been great reading.

 

[John]

Today I only spent a little time in Uru. I don’t know if I’m stuck in some ages, or if there’s some cross pollination of puzzles, but I’m hopping around. The atmosphere of exploring dead ruins is top notch, it feels like these locations had people interacting with them right up to whatever catastrophes caused them to expire. The music is really good as well, need to add that to a playlist.

I was able to get this sweet suit today though! Time to join Ant-Man fight off some baddies!

 

[Mr. Sensible]

I somehow completely missed this 2021 remake of Myst. Thanks for the heads-up!

Myst definitely captured my imagination as a young nerd. It felt so unlike every other video game I'd played up to that point, with its beautifully desolate prerendered scenes and flowery travel journals penned by an enigmatic author with the power to literally write entire worlds into existence. Riven was also huge for me, and I spent many hours bashing my dumb teenaged head against some incredibly challenging puzzles (it also has the best boxart in the series).

I also highly recommend watching The Making of Myst and The Making of Riven for some choice behind-the-scenes footage of Cyan in their heyday:

 

[Paul le Fou]

I never did play Myst (or Riven) and I've always been curious about them and some of the newer similar games that have come out, just never found the opportunity. Except for now, of course, that it seems quite easy to find a recent rerelease of Myst. Maybe......it's finally time

 

[Falselogic]

I never did play Myst (or Riven) and I've always been curious about them and some of the newer similar games that have come out, just never found the opportunity. Except for now, of course, that it seems quite easy to find a recent rerelease of Myst. Maybe......it's finally time

Do it!

 

[MetManMas]

My Packard Bell came with The Journeyman Project...Turbo
Considering how it's the world's very first photorealistic game ever, it sold millions of copies, it was packaged with computers, it got several sequels and a remake on Playstation, it seems to have been lost to the sands of time.

So you play as Victor Vector with no glasses in a slightly different skintight suit, and you travel through time to stop some killer robots who were sent to change the course of history. That's the concept anyway, you spend most of the time walking down empty hallways (time travel forbids interactions with others you know) and clicking on doors and then waiting 10 seconds for it open while they play every public domain SFX possible. And then after you successfully walk through the door you freeze and hear the door close behind you. Once in a while you play a minigame like finding cities on a globe. It's so devoid of gameplay that these days you might as well watch a Youtube longplay and get the same experience.

The best part is probably the part where you are playing that globe game and one killer robot is trash talking you the entire time. And when you win, the robot ragequits and leaves his office to walk over and kill you. And if there are any doors in the way, by gum he going to punch them down.

I watched an LP of this in PlayStation remake form a while back, after realizing that's the neat-looking sci-fi game I saw on a neighbor's computer decades ago.

Ultimately I found myself liking the opening where you can mess around in your future apartment and go to your future job far more than the pile of failstate-filled mazes it was attached to.

 

[Exposition Owl]

I never did play Myst (or Riven) and I've always been curious about them and some of the newer similar games that have come out, just never found the opportunity. Except for now, of course, that it seems quite easy to find a recent rerelease of Myst. Maybe......it's finally time

Do it!

I agree with False. It seems to me that what you have here is a … Myst opportunity.

 

[conchobhar]

I played Myst (specifically realMyst: Masterpiece Edition) for the first time a couple of years ago. I found it fascinating. In a lot of ways, it feels like a forerunner to the walking simulator genre, since it's got a similar atmosphere and storytelling style: sparse and minimal, with little told directly to the player, and uncovered instead by making observations about the environment or reading documents. But the frequency of puzzles (and that they're real headscratchers) clearly sets it apart. From a modern perspective, it sits in a unique space, reminiscent of both a traditional adventure game and a modern walking sim, yet belonging to neither.

I ended up playing it sort of like a detective game: with a notepad in hand, jotting down anything that seemed important. But I also really liked how many of the puzzles are experimentation and observation— push this button and see what happens, or follow this wire and see where it goes, and then draw conclusions about what needs to be done. Myst gives little feedback on its puzzles, but because they all feel like they conform to an underlying logic, it never feels arbitrary.

Shortly after, I played Riven, though to be honest I didn't like it half as much. It's much more complex and I think to its detriment. Where Myst used the five Ages to break itself into discrete chunks, and thus implicitly provided a series of objectives; Riven is set in a single Age and has no immediately obvious objective beyond "explore more". In fact it's essentially a game-long, interlocking puzzle, which can be fun to untangle, but it also means that so much of the game feels aimless— as it's not particularly clear what you're actually working towards. The puzzles themselves are quite clever, and I felt like a genius for figuring out the marbles, but my main memory of the game is of aimless wandering.

More recently, I played Obduction, and it might actually be my favourite of the three. It's structured is like a combination of the other two: it's got multiple worlds like Myst, but because there's multiple entry points to them, there's often a macro-level navigation aspect to it that reminds of Riven. So it manages to up the complexity of navigation without making the objective opaque. It's also carries forward that poke-and-prod mentality to a greater degree. I thought it was brilliant all the way through.

I'm interested in the new Myst remake, though since the realMyst is still pretty fresh in my mind, I'm in no hurry. Perhaps after Cyan finishes Firmament…

 

[Voncaster]

I think my favorite of the first person adventure games that I've played is the 7th Guest. I love the setting and the primitive but charming FMV. 7th Guest is way too hard, but I until I hit a brick wall, the story and puzzles were quite fun. I don't own a PC, so I haven't played the more recent spiritual successor to 7th Guest / 11th hour. But if I ever own a PC again that is a game I want to try.

My Packard Bell also came with a Journey Man project turbo. I don't remember which one, but I think the CDs had the nuclear symbol as the disc art. I don't own or like Duke Nuke Em...so I don't think I'm remembering the disc art wrong but I could be!

 

[John]

I'm still plugging away at URU, more of a curiosity than trying to actually beat the game, or any of the ages for that matter. It seems to harken back to Myst's style of disconnected ages, compared to Riven's giant interconnected puzzle. As you see in the intro (set in the modern day Earth, whatever that is) there's seven different tapestries across an age, and if you find and touch all of them, then you beat that age? Maybe? I've only found a handful in each Main Age I've gone to, and haven't looked at the expansion ages yet. You have your time based puzzles, your switch pulls, your setting of machines with inconclusive results. There's also some light physics puzzles, like running into rocks/weights and pushing them onto switches, which doesn't work as well as if they let you pick things up and drop them.

I was thinking about just dropping URU entirely and trying Myst V, which is another that I didn't get far into, but the intro was extremely reminiscent of URU's D'ni portions. I'll probably wait until I've gotten stuck on every URU age though.

 

[John]

The new MYST 2021 remake is available on Game Pass, so I recommend going that route if you have a relatively modern computer, or an Xbox. The only thing that version doesn't have is VR capabilities, but that shouldn't be a factor for 99% of people.

 

[John]

I'm dropping URU for now. I did everything that I could see to do in the main ages, and looked at some UHS Hints for a puzzle involving a light source. After I saw the solution, I just said nope, this is bad design. Details below.

So, there's two interconnected ages, a garden one and a desert one. In the desert one, there's a super dark cave that you need some type of light to get through. This game doesn't have an inventory system, so you can't just pick up these torches that are laying around. Back in the Garden age, there's one area where little fireflies are buzzing around. They like you, but hate a few things: water, running, jumping. If you stand still around them, they will glom onto you, and follow unless you touch water, start running, or jump more than once. If you're playing this game, you're going to be running everywhere, so odds are the fireflies won't ever attach to you to begin with. Then, if you do happen to take them with you to the other world, you have to jump over water twice to get into the cave area, so they'll fly away.

The answer was to nudge a little basket thing out of the cave and over to the water area, so you can walk across and only use one jump to get to the cave. The physics of this is really wonky, and there's no real cluing to tell you this is a thing you can do in the first place. A better game would've had at least one earlier area that needed physical objects moved, and needing to walk in the first place was counterintuitive from actually playing the game, because the best control scheme is first person with caps lock on to run everywhere.

Instead, I'm going to move on to a MYST-Like: RHEM. The RHEM games are very odd, made by a single guy, and definitely follow his vision throughout. He originally made four of these between 2003-2010, and they look straight out of the 1993 Hypercard Stack Myst playbook, complete with postage stamp FMV but much worse graphics. I've only played a bit of the first one here and there, and it's definitely got an aesthetic. The creator Knut Müller's from Germany, but it has a feel of Eastern Bloc architecture. Sterile, concrete, rust, cold, with puzzles to match. He's been releasing "Special Editions" of them, and just dropped an SE of the third game early last year, but the only thing I've noticed Special about them is they work on modern hardware. It's still 800x600 resolution, dithered, ugly, but there's a certain charm to them. Think The Witness without the gross commentary.

 

[FelixSH]

I beat Myst and Myst III, but couldn't get anywhere in RHEM. Just really, really hard.

Also, the guy lives in Sachsen, which was, as far as I know, part of the DDR, and therefore part of the Eastern Block. Might explain the look.

 

[Voncaster]

I'm dropping URU for now. I did everything that I could see to do in the main ages, and looked at some UHS Hints for a puzzle involving a light source. After I saw the solution, I just said nope, this is bad design.

This is pretty much what I did with Dark Souls. Substitute light source puzzle with Bed of Chaos.

I think this is the basic problem with first person adventure games and adventure games in general: puzzles that stop progress cold.

I think modern adventure games need either a) built in hint system or b) optional ways to progress. Having a puzzle that stops progress cold and then there is nothing else to do does not feel great.

I think that is why visual novels (which feel very adventure game like to me) or Telltale games are more appealing to me than traditional adventure games. I may not be able to get the ideal ending, but at least the game is progressing.

 

[John]

I beat Myst and Myst III, but couldn't get anywhere in RHEM. Just really, really hard.

Also, the guy lives in Sachsen, which was, as far as I know, part of the DDR, and therefore part of the Eastern Block. Might explain the look.

I played for an hour this morning, and made more notes than in my entire run of URU. I'm not stuck anywhere yet, and can see where the puzzle threads are going. It's in the Riven level of difficulty, minus the gorgeous renderings, and more abstract. The first actual "puzzle" in both Riven and RHEM is identical, so I wonder if that was an intentional nod or just happenstance. Knut said in an interview back in the day that Riven was is favorite adventure game, so I'd say it's intentional. Riven definitely integrates its puzzles into its world much better than RHEM, though.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Is it recommended/required to play with a notebook onhand? I should probably just assume I'll need to and do it regardless.

 

[FelixSH]

Is it recommended/required to play with a notebook onhand? I should probably just assume I'll need to and do it regardless.

Totally recommendet. I think you can beat Myst without notes, but sometimes that means you have to remember quite a bit (not text info, but symbols). Something to draw and write info down is definitely useful.

 

[Paul le Fou]

So I don't own Myst but I do already own Quern: Undying Thoughts so I'm going to split the difference and play that instead of skipping over my infinity backlog and buying a new game. Here we goooooo

 

[JBear]

Quern is very good. Criminally obscure. I'd easily put it up there with the better of the actual Myst games and Obduction.

 

[John]

Oh yeah, I liked Quern a ton, on par with Obduction. Like most games, I never finished it, just got to a stuck point and moved on. That helps for replays years down the line when you've got some deep muscle memory that makes you feel smarter in the moment.

Notebooks are helpful for these games, especially when you have to draw symbols. The later Myst games added in-game notepads and camera tools, but I've found that physical notebooks and a phone camera work better for me.

I use one of these notebooks for thematic reasons, but also that it's graph paper, which helps. The only downside is I wish it was spiral bound, because taking notes on the left pages and close to the spine is a pain.

 

[John]

I read an old interview with Knut Müller, who said that an obscure adventure game called Das Tor der Minerva was an inspiration for him. It's a German Macintosh exclusive, released for PowerPC platforms in 1997. The only information I've found about it online was three screenshots on the Abandonware site that was hosting a CD image, and I felt that I could do better.

I saw that ScummVM was updated to support Macromedia Director games like this, but I'd have to get the data to begin with. The CD image on those sites was in a .toast format, an old Mac format that isn't easily converted to .iso or something else that Windows can mount. So, I look into installing/configuring Sheepshaver, a PPC emulator. I'm able to see the .toast file, but can't open it because I don't have the Roxio Toast app loaded. I can't install one I found because it's encoded in Stuffit, and in order to install Stuffit you need a version of Stuffit loaded. Eventually I figure out that the emulator itself can mount .toast files, no need for the OS to do it, and away we go.

It's actually prettier than RHEM is IMO, clean renderings. Very much a Bryce 3D renderer, reminds me of when I tried to render a stock image on our Mac Performa, which took 4 hours to complete. It's also reminiscent of a less complex Obsidian. More pictures in the spoiler break.

Spoiler: Das Tor der Minerva

Also amusingly, this CD Image included some bonuses! You've got some great demos from the era, and the full version of the Ultima III port! I really love the render of the EXODUS logo mixed with the bitmaps, and even the light shading on the blue grid. The early PowerMac era when they were slowly transitioning away from the hand drawn into All Renders is soothing to me.

Spoiler: Mac OS 9 is better than OS X

I still haven't been able to extract the Minerva files to run in ScummVM, but I've satisfied my curiosity. I'll jump back to RHEM when I get game time again, I'm liking it a lot this time around.

 

[JBear]

This is some A+ content. Good work!

 

[Paul le Fou]

Turns out my handwriting and drawing is absolute garbage so it's the in-game notebook and screenshots for me!

I didn't make it very far into Quern:

Spoiler: Progress-ish

• I examined the first key item, saw the door, but it took me a while to realize I could interact with the item within my inventory. Good to know, I'm sure that will come in handy again. (SURE HASN'T YET THOOOOUGH)
• Got the letter's radial-block clues to open a door to get a crank handle, then eventually realized what the sliding-block puzzle was asking me to do (I'd actually gotten the block down to the right corner, assuming it was the answer, then rearranged it since nothing had happened - Took me a bit to realize I had to then slide it out, duhr.
• In the crystal lab I opened some gates; could put my torch in a charger that didn't charge it up enough or do anything (maybe I expend charge later and that recharges it? Or I need another component(s) to make it work?); learned about blue dust glowing; found some symbols with numbers, or tallies; found a grid of buttons with different but very similar symbols that I couldn't get anything out of yet. Wandered around; found a lens and brought it back to put in the frame there, which brought me back to square 0.
• Feels like I'm stuck; I've circled every area I've found access to, tried all the few items I have on everything I can think of that lets me interact with it.

Items I have:

1. Torch
2. bowl of powdered pinecones

Things I've encountered:

1. The torch charger
2. The grid of stone buttons with symbols
3. Shuttered lens above one of those spheres; opened it but can't do anything with it or any of the spheres.
4. A scale with two little orange cones pointing at each other and some random items next to it; I can put something on the scale but nothing happens, and I can't interact with anything else yet. Seems like the scale reacts differently to different weights, not that I have a lot to work with here.
5. A big white crystal blocking/freezing a cabinet or somesuch shut.
6. Two more radial-chunk puzzle hints, one shaped like a dock and one on a flag; no idea what puzzle that may be. Maybe one is the puzzle? I didn't seem to be able to interact with either of them though.
7. A hook I can put my torch in with a small lens. It looks like it points into a windowed room below the crystal lab; feels similar to the lens above focusing on the blue crystal to make stuff glow. Too bad I can't get into the room to confirm any of that yet.
8. A small locked box on a table next to...
9. ...a reel crank that lowers a rope with a hook down to the water beneath. Feels like a good place for a bucket, not that I have one.
10. A telescope; can't see anything of note or appear to be able to interact with it in any significant way.
11. like a jagillion doors with mysterious symbols or in need of some item (a pentagonal crank and/or a wall panel, a stick to use as a lever, who knows what else).

So far so good, I guess!

I'd welcome any vague hints or clues, especially if there's something necessary I'm missing or overlooking (e.g. "You actually can interact with that one thing"). Or if there's like a clue to a single step that's holding me back, or something. I like working through puzzles, but I'm also not very patient with them (i.e. myself) sadly. Maybe more games like this will help sharpen this dull, rusty mind back up!