Myst

This article is about the first computer game titled "Myst". For the entire series, see Myst franchise.

Myst (or MYST) is a graphic adventure computer game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan, Inc., a Spokane, Washington-based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in 1991 and released it on September 24, 1993.

Myst was so successful that it helped to spark a new genre of computer game, the first-person adventure-puzzle game. Many games that followed in this genre are often referred to by both fans and non-fans as "Myst clones".

Accomplishments

Myst has sold over 6 million copies and held the title of best-selling computer game of all time throughout much of the 1990s before being overtaken by The Sims. Its popularity led to the following:
* Four sequels: Riven, Myst III: Exile, Myst IV: Revelation, and Myst V: End of Ages
* Two remakes: Myst Masterpiece Edition, and realMYST
* , and its expansion packs Uru: To D'ni and Uru: The Path of the Shell, are hybrid single-player games set in the Myst universe but in the modern day. They were later released in a single compilation called Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles. An online version of these games somewhat similar to a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) called Uru Live was planned and developed, but it was cancelled a short time after it went live, after a short-lived online beta. It was brought back in a limited capacity under the name Untìl Uru, and is set to be brought back in full during the 2006 holiday season.
* Three derivative novels, written by the Miller brothers together with David Wingrove and published by Hyperion, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni (with two more releases coming up, one of which will be Myst: The Book of Marrim).
* Two comic books published by Dark Horse called Myst: The Book of Black Ships. A series of four was originally planned, but Cyan cancelled the series after issue #1 due to disputes over artistic license taken by Dark Horse.

Development

The Myst creative team consisted of the brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, with sound designer Chris Brandkamp and graphical artist Chuck Carter. Robyn Miller designed the Ages of Myst Island, Stoneship and Channelwood, while Carter was responsible for the Selenitic and Mechanical Ages, as well as D'ni (K'veer).

The game was created on Apple Macintosh computers, principally Macintosh Quadras. Each scene was modelled and rendered in StrataVision 3D, with some additional modelling in Macromedia MacroModel. Each image was edited and enhanced using Photoshop V1.0. ILM's John Knoll released a Photoshop Plugin to lead artist Chuck Carter so as to read PICS animation format files in filmstrip form which helped with some of the animation editing and color correction. Video editing, compression and compositing were performed in Adobe Premiere.

The original Macintosh version was constructed in Hypercard. Each "Age" was a unique Hypercard stack. Navigation was handled by the internal button system and HyperTalk scripts, with image and QuickTime movie display passed off to various plugins (XCMDs and XFCNs in HyperCard terminology), mainly Simplex HyperTint and Apple's QuickTime XCMD. Images were stored as 8-bit PICT resources with custom color palettes and QuickTime still image compression. Animated elements were QuickTime movies with Cinepak compression. This careful processing made the finished graphics look remarkable despite their low bit depth; in an 8-bit era, Myst was so visually appealing that it quickly set the standard for its contemporaries.

The game was ported to Microsoft Windows in 1994.

Gameplay

Myst Island seen from above

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking at the outside border of the game display and can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them. Unlike many computer games, there are no enemies or any threat of "dying", although you can lose the game at the end. The only competition is the player versus the puzzles presented in the game.

To complete the game, the player must discover and follow clues to be transported via books to several Ages, each of which is a self-contained mini-world. After traveling through each of the Ages of Myst, Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood, the player would return to the starting point of the game, Myst Island, with all the information necessary to complete the game.

According to the creators, the game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Also said to have been an inspiration is The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, a novel which deals with an anonymous traveller entering a surrealistic island created by a brilliant but deranged scientist.

Story

Under obscure circumstances, a mysterious person known as the Stranger (the player) finds an unusual book titled 'Myst'. Opening the book, the Stranger discovers that the first page is occupied by a single moving image or Linking panel. The picture shows a flyby of an island. Touching this panel, the Stranger is transported to that island and is left with no choice but to explore.

Myst Island contains a library where two books can be found: a red book and a blue book. These books are traps for Sirrus and Achenar, two men who claim to be the sons of Atrus. Atrus is the mysterious and powerful owner of Myst Island who could write special books ("linking books") by an ancient practice known as The Art, which would transport the user to the worlds, or "Ages", that they described. From the linking panels of their books, Sirrus and Achenar plead to the Stranger to let them escape. However, the books are missing several pages, so their messages at first are faint and unclear.

As the Stranger further explores the island, more books are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. There are four books in total, each linking to a different world or Age. The Stranger must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden in that age, and then return to Myst.

Those pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. Sirrus is trapped by the red book, and in the blue book is Achenar. As the Stranger adds more pages to these books, the brothers can speak more and more clearly. Throughout this process, each brother maintains that the other brother cannot be trusted. After collecting five pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the Stranger where the sixth page is hidden. If the Stranger gives either brother their sixth page, they will be free. The Stranger is left with a choice. Should she or he help Sirrus or Achenar? Or neither?

The brothers plead to be liberated and, above all, that the player not access a green book. They claim that it is a book like their own and, if opened, will trap the Stranger. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where their father Atrus is imprisoned. He asks the player to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island. Atrus cannot bring justice to his sons on Myst without the final page. The note explaining how to reach the page has been ripped and brought to two of the ages by the brothers. This is the only way that leads to victory; entering D'ni without the page leads to eternal imprisonment, and freeing one of the brothers leaves the player trapped inside a book.

Ages

As the player explores the game, he or she discovers four linking books, books that allow a person to link to the worlds that the books describe. The Art of Writing was practiced by the D'ni, an ancient civilization who lived in a large underground cavern.

The game includes the following 'Ages':

Stoneship Age

*Myst Island, the starting Age. This island remains the central 'hub' Age throughout the plot.
*Channelwood Age, a small, swamp-like Age with boardwalks covering most of the ground.
*Stoneship Age, a somewhat small Age consisting of a few large rocky islands and a broken ship.
*Selenitic Age, a very large Age consisting of rocky towers, a small forest, and massive underground caverns, among other things.
*Mechanical Age, a rotating fortress mounted between three islands.
*Rime Age, found only as a special bonus at the end of realMYST
*D'ni, later revealed to be only a small part of D'ni proper.

See Ages of Myst for full descriptions.

The Windows version

In 1994, the Windows version for IBM PCs was released. When porting from the original Macintosh version to Windows, a few technical problems occurred and as a result the following changes were necessary:
*Sound effects were no longer subtle, for example, instead of a gentle breeze in one area on Myst Island, there was gusting wind. Another example, sounds of running machinery would not fade out as the player leaves that area.
*The soundtrack was shortened in several areas.
*Transitions between the different images became less smooth.Myst: Masterpiece Edition (below) for Windows does not correct these changes. The Masterpiece Edition for Macintosh computers is a port of the Windows Masterpiece Edition and features the edits.

Remakes

Myst: Masterpiece Edition

Myst: Masterpiece Edition was an updated version of the original Myst. Due to the hint system's bugs and some shortening in the soundtrack, the updated edition was not well received by audiences. Updates included:
*Re-rendered images in truecolor (24-bit) instead of 8-bit color
*Additional point-of-view images
*Enhanced audio effects and music
** Shortened version of the Pool Imager theme
*In-game maps and hint system

Slight further enhancements, and a restore of the original soundtrack, were made to the MME release as part of the Myst DVD 10th Anniversary Edition which bundled DVD versions of MME, Riven, and Exile.

realMYST

realMyst box cover

realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a re-make of the Myst computer game featuring various changes over the original:
* Graphics were rendered by the real-time 3D Plasma 1.0 engine also later used in ' (2.0) and Myst V: End of Ages (2.1)
* Navigation provided vastly more freedom due to the above
* Weather effects like thunderstorms and sunsets/sunrises were added
* Some minor changes to the main Age (Myst Island), like the addition of a gravestone for Ti'ana, adjusted the gameplay to the Myst novels and sequels
* All of Rand Miller's scenes as Atrus, as well as the opening narration, were redone
* Several minor alterations in the scenery (eg. different lamp models) and more realistic textures.
* Rime as a new Age was added and loosely tied into the storyline

realMyst'' was developed by Cyan, Inc. and Sunsoft, and published by Ubisoft. It is regarded by some as a test project for the then-in development '.

PSP Remake

In November 2005, Sega announced that they would be developing a remake of Myst for the Playstation Portable. The remake would include additional content that was not featured in the original Myst. Myst Set for PSP ign.com (accessed 29 March, 2006) The remake was released in Japan on March 30th, 2006, and will be released in North America and Europe some time in 2006.[1]

Parodies and fan games

* Pyst is a satirized version of the Myst universe, where everything appeared to be trashed and vandalized by disgruntled gamers unable to solve Myst's puzzles. It was notable for featuring a performance by John Goodman. Although nothing more than slideshow of desecrated Myst screenshots, it was popular enough to spawn "Pyst: Special Edition," which included a preview of "Driven: The Sequel to Pyst," which never saw the light of day, as creator Parroty Interactive went bankrupt.
* Missed is a text-based online game in which you must help Ascii, who is lost on the web, find the six keys of the internet. The game involves spoofs of various buildings, characters and Ages in Myst.
* Mylk, produced by Bart Gold (PC version by Wayne Twitchell), is a parody based on dairy products and other foodstuffs.
* Missed Island, a recreation of Myst as a map for Marathon Infinity. It can be downloaded from Bungie.Org's Marathon archives.

Criticism

Though Myst was an extremely popular and commercially successful game it was also intensively criticised, mostly around the lack of "action" in the game, leading some to claim the game is boring (a typical review of this type describes the game as a "slide-show"). These reviews often complain about the difficulty of the puzzles, which those who like the game would claim is the main point. The Myst page of Mobygames has several reviews putting forth both views.

Trivia

*In Germany, the game's title was subject to a number of jokes - while the title clearly alludes to both mist and "Mysterious" in the English language, the word Mist in German means "manure".
*After the Myst back story was further revealed, it was fixed that the events in Myst occurred in the early 1800s. However the last game in the series, Myst 5, is set some 200 years later. Myst 5 in fact continues the story of Uru, which is set in the present day.
*Myst 3 was done by Presto and Myst 4 was produced by Ubisoft (with a tiny bit of input from Cyan) instead of the original Cyan team who made Myst, Riven and Myst 5. Because of this, there are differences in the style of the games. Myst 4 may seem to flatly contradict a major aspect of the prison books, central to the plot of both Myst and Riven, although Richard A. Watson stated[2] RAWA answers questions regarding "game history" vs. "D'ni history" (accessed 7 June, 2006) as early as 2000 that prison/trap books were actually regular Ages, but weren't portrayed as such due to storyline limitations and because a "bad player" should not be rewarded with another set of Ages to explore.
*The mosaic in D'ni, taken by many to be a representation of Ri'neref, is actually the face of Chuck Carter, one of the modelers who worked on the original Myst game.
* A Sega CD edition of the game was produced, but never released Sega CD & Mega CD Reviews SegaBase (accessed 29 March, 2006). However, versions were released for the 3DO, CD-i, Atari Jaguar , PlayStation, and the Sega Saturn. Thirteen years after its original release new ports are still being considered, including one to the PSP.
* At the time, this game was one of the reasons why many people would purchase a computer with a CD-ROM drive included and in fact, this game and The 7th Guest were both responsible for the sudden boom in the popularity of the drives.Gamespy credits Myst with making CD-ROMs ubiquous on desktops (accessed 12 June, 2006)
* The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror VI included a segment Homer³ where a 3-D version of Homer Simpson encounters, among other notable objects, the library from Myst.
* On August 2nd, 2006, Robyn Miller announced (via his Tinselman blogRobyn Miller announces the online publication of the "Persistent Disparate Interchange" music video (accessed 8 August, 2006)) the online publication of a music video for "Catherine's Freedom" (from the Riven soundtrack) called "Persistent Disparate Interchange". The film consists of old, uncopyrighted documentary footage which was compiled and edited by Justin Norman and Wesley Norman of the Shrieking Tree Web Factory.

References

External links

Myst: Encyclopedia BETA

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