Myst

September 1993

Mac OS , Windows , Amiga , Playstation , PlayStation 3 , PlayStation Portable , Sega Saturn , 3DO , Atari Jaguar , CD-i , Nintendo DS , Nintendo 3DS , iOS , Windows Mobile , Android

Adventure - first person

Game mode

Single player

control

Mouse (computer) , gamepad

medium

CD-ROM , download , memory card

German

The first part was developed by the brothers Rand and Robyn C. Miller at Cyan and was released in 1993 by the US software company Brøderbund . With over six million copies, it was the best-selling computer game in the world at the time. As one of the first computer games to use the compact disc (CD), it ushered in the era of a new generation of entertainment. Later, the life simulation game The Sims surpassed sales .

action

The player ends up on the island of Myst through a randomly found connection book. There he meets the brothers Sirrus and Achenar in a library, trapped in two books that they cannot leave until the torn pages have been reinserted. The player has to decide which of the two to believe and which to free. The player discovers the hidden clues that each of the brothers has committed atrocities. The right decision finally frees the father Atrus, who was also locked in a prison book.

A connection book from the game

In addition to the instructions, a diary with blank pages and a sealed envelope with three suggestions for a solution, which can only be opened “in an extreme emergency”, were included.

Concept & technology

The work on Myst began in 1991. The concept of the game was influenced significantly by the novel The Mysterious Island (Engl .: The Mysterious Iceland ) by the French writer Jules Verne . Both the name and the atmosphere of the game are derived from it. When the game was first published, the game world was pre-modeled in 3D, then pre-rendered as high-resolution 2D images with a color depth of 8 bits and then reworked with Adobe Photoshop .

reception

Myst turned out to be a great sales success. By 2001, more than six million copies of the game had been sold. Until the release of The Sims , it was considered the best-selling computer game in the world. In addition to The 7th Guest and Star Wars: Rebel Assault , Myst is considered to be one of the killer applications that helped the CD-ROM break through as a data carrier in the computer sector. At the same time, critics accused the game of being partly responsible for the decline of the adventure genre because it had shifted the focus from an entertaining storyline to - on its own - boring game mechanics and high-resolution renderings.

The world of D'ni was originally called Dunny. However, it is also an Australian slang term for a toilet. The name was therefore changed later in the series. In the Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror VI (Season 7, Episode 6), the library building from Myst was used as a picture quote.

On November 29, 2012, the Museum of Modern Art announced the purchase of 14 computer games, including Myst , for a new permanent design exhibition in the Philip Johnson Galleries from March 2013. The announcement identified the titles as outstanding representatives in the field of interaction design. In addition to the visual quality and the aesthetic experience, criteria were therefore all aspects that contribute to the design of the interaction, such as the elegance of the program code or the design of the player behavior.

Other versions

Myst Masterpiece Edition

The Masterpiece Edition later published by Ubisoft offers improved image quality with higher-resolution screenshots in 24-bit color depth, newly rendered animation sequences and higher-resolution video sequences. The soundtrack has also been digitally reworked and a help function for solving the puzzles has been added.

realMyst

realMyst does without the rendering process, instead the game world was recreated with the help of a 3D graphics engine. The plot and the gameplay remained unchanged, except that the player can now move freely in a real 3D environment , similar to a first-person shooter , which can now also reproduce different weather effects and times of day. In terms of content, the scope was expanded by an additional hidden world called Rime.

realMyst Masterpiece Edition

realMyst Masterpiece Edition is a further development of realMyst on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the series. By transferring it to the newer Unity engine, the texture quality has been significantly increased again, the detailed displays such as water reflections and movements have been improved, and smaller comfort functions have been incorporated that enable rapid movement, for example. Like the previous realMyst version, it contains the hidden world of Rime. There are also extended options, e.g. B. whether, as an alternative to the 3D movement, you want to move again as in the classic render versions using point-and-click.

Riven - The Sequel to Myst

Cyan Worlds

Publisher

Red Orb Entertainment

October 1997

Mac OS , Windows , Playstation , Sega Saturn , iOS

Adventure - first person

Game mode

Single player

control

Mouse (computer) , gamepad

medium

5 CD-ROM , download

language

German

Current version

1.02

information

later released on DVD and part of the 10th Anniversary Collection DVD

Riven , developed by Cyan, is the official successor to the computer game Myst and was released in 1997 by RedOrb . Like the first part, it was developed by the brothers Rand and Robyn C. Miller.

The dramaturgy of the game is enhanced by video passages in which real actors are shown in the pre-rendered rooms.

A special feature of Riven is the representation of a number mysticism based on the number 5. In the title and the delivery of the game the first hint is given: Riven has five letters, the middle one is V, the Roman numeral 5 (is emphasized in the logo), and the game is published on five CDs, but one was released later DVD version. In addition to the advantage that the CD does not have to be changed, the DVD version also has the following improvements:

Picture and sound quality have been improved.
Some images that are not on the CD-ROM version have been added.

The five is so important because this age was created by Gehn, the father of Atrus. He also baptized it his "Fifth Age ". However, the five is also an important number of the D'ni in general (read: “there never”) ; this name means something like "new beginning". Your entire number system is based on the five.

Synopsis:
The storyline of Riven follows on from the ending of Myst . Here Atrus asks the player for help in finding his wife Katharina, who is trapped in another world. On the other hand, he is supposed to catch Atrus' father, Gehn, in a prison book (see Myst ). At the beginning of the game, the player is brought into the world of Riven, which consists of a group of five interconnected islands. From the beginning, four of the five islands are accessible by the player, which offers many opportunities to explore, but at the same time makes it difficult to get an overview of the interrelationships, which is why the game Riven was described by critics as the most difficult game in the Myst series. Over time, the player realizes that Gehn has submitted to the world of Riven and is worshiped there as a god. But the "Moitié rebels" resist him. The player gets to know her in her own world, which was written by Katharina. She is their leader and he finds her on the fifth island of Riven, where he frees her. She then initiates the evacuation of the Riven residents to the Moitiés. In age number 233, the player can also seduce Gehn into using the prison book and thus catching himself. The world of Riven is being destroyed by a mechanism. Atrus and Katharina thank the player briefly before he falls into the star shaft that leads back to earth. It is the same path that the Myst book took at the beginning of Myst .

Myst III: Exile

Myst III - Exile

May 2001

Mac OS , Windows , Playstation 2 , Xbox

Adventure - first person

Game mode

mouse

4 CD-ROM

German English

Current version

1.22

PEGI

information

later released on DVD and part of the 10th Anniversary Collection DVD

While Cyan were working on URU and wanting to bring the D'ni culture to the fore, they lacked the capacity to continue the series. Myst III and IV were released by Ubisoft, who are also responsible for the content-related focus on Atrus' family history. Exile is the third installment in the Myst series, developed by Presto Studios and released by Ubisoft in 2001 , which continues the storyline of Myst and Riven in a complex story of revenge and betrayal.

In the play worlds of Exile it is possible for the first time to explore the surroundings with a 360 ° all-round view.

action

In the world of Tomahna, the player meets Catherine and Atrus from Riven again. At the beginning of Atrus an important book called "Releeshahn" is stolen from a stranger who suddenly appears. Releeshahn connects a world written by Atrus, which is to become a new home for the surviving inhabitants of the destroyed kingdom of D'ni. The player is the only one who succeeds in following the unknown through a connection book. The thief turns out to be Saavedro (played by Brad Dourif ) from the world of Narayan, which was once bullied by Atrus' sons Sirrus and Achenar. The aim of the game is to find the book "Releeshahn" in five fantastic worlds by uncovering mysteries and solving puzzles and to bring it back to Atrus on Tomahna. There are several ways to end the game, each of which has different moral qualities.

reception

The trade magazine Adventure Gamers placed Myst III: Exile 2011 in its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games at number 59.

Uru - Ages Beyond Myst

Uru

Cyan Worlds

Publisher

Ubisoft

November 2003

Windows

Adventure - first person, third person

Game mode

Mouse keyboard

1 CD-ROM

German

Uru , developed by Cyan , was published by Ubisoft .

It occupies an exposed position in the Myst series, the plot of Uru, in contrast to the other parts, takes place in the present.

Plot:
As in all Myst parts, the plot revolves around the people of the D'ni, who are said to have inhabited the earth in underground caves long before humans. But this high culture once went under. Uru offers the player the opportunity to explore the legacies of that civilization. Here, too, he can travel to the different worlds of the D'ni with the help of so-called connection books. It is important to understand how old equipment works and to solve puzzles in order to get to other areas of the world.

Myst as MUD

After Cyan had developed two extremely successful adventure games with Myst and Riven as the cornerstone of the Myst series, they sold the rights to the original story to Ubisoft to work on a project called "Mudpie" themselves. It should transfer the Myst worlds from pre-rendered graphics into a real-time rendered 3D world. However, since the Myst worlds have very detailed textures, the graphics engine had to be largely redeveloped. After a long delay, URU appeared in Germany in November 2003.

In addition to URU, a paid online version called URU Live was planned, which should continue the story of URU and offer the opportunity to travel the worlds with several players as a research group and to solve the puzzles together. The online mode was not very successful, so the servers were taken offline in February 2004. To compensate for this, a small extension called “To D'ni” was put on the Internet free of charge in March 2004 . In July 2004, another paid add-on called "The Path of the Shell" was released. Uru with both expansion packs is available as "Complete Chronicles".

Later, with "Until Uru" an online version was published in which the fans provide the server capacities themselves and Cyan only operates an authentication server - with the reservation that it can be switched off at any time, which was shortly after the start of Myst Online: URU Live also happened in February 2007. However, petitions from fans have allowed Cyan to restart URU Live (see below).

Myst IV: Revelation

Myst IV - Revelation

Ubisoft's Montreal Studio

Publisher

Ubisoft

September 2004

Mac OS , Windows

Adventure

Game mode

Single player - first person

control

mouse

medium

2 DVD-ROM

language

German, French, English, Dutch, Italian, Spanish

PEGI

Released on September 30, 2004 on two DVDs. The full installation takes up 8 GB on the hard drive.

As in URU, it is possible to use a camera to take in-game images so that you no longer have to record hints by hand. Furthermore, a complete journal can be written and completed with these images.

Synopsis : In Myst IV you get to know the two brothers Sirrus and Achenar better; in addition the third child of Atrus and Catherine: "Yeesha" (which means something like "laugh out"). Atrus contacts his exiled sons Sirrus and Achenar from the world of Tomahna, but an accident happens in the laboratory while you want to see the two brothers' two prison ages. Shortly afterwards, Yeesha disappears and the two brothers escape. Thus, the player must clarify the circumstances, get to know Tomahna and go to the worlds of Spire, Haven and Serenia to solve the mystery. A magical amulet that Yeesha lost when she disappeared helps . Whenever you come to a place where someone has had very intense experiences, you can look at them again through the memory amulet. Both one's own memories and the memories of the other protagonists in the form of video and sound sequences of past events contribute to the disclosure of the “family secret”. The CD already says: "Only those who understand the psychology of the two brothers are able to unravel the secret."

So that's the whole point of the game; Revelation advertises in the trailer: "Every family has a secret - this family has two!"

Myst V: End of Ages

Myst V - End of Ages

Cyan Worlds

September 2005

Mac OS , Windows

Adventure - first person

Game mode

Mouse keyboard

1 DVD

German

Released on September 22, 2005 on DVD.

Synopsis:
Myst V has two main characters: an older D'ni archivist named Esher and Yeesha, Atrus' daughter.

The last chapter starts exactly where the original Myst ends. The player faces the challenge and responsibility of rebuilding the lost empire of the D'ni - an ancient civilization that developed deep beneath the earth's surface for thousands of years and then fell victim to a major catastrophe. Like the previous parts of the series, Myst V with the title "End of Ages" once again increases the graphic and acoustic quality and the richness of detail of its worlds in a haunting 3D environment. However, people are no longer represented by filmed actors, but by computer-animated characters.

The player is supported for the first time by mystical beings, the Bahro, to whom he can communicate through signs what he asks of them. The player "engraves" these characters on an accompanying stone slab. After he has placed it on the floor and taken a few steps back, the beings can read it. If you have entered an executable command graphically correctly, it is read and executed; for example, you can let it rain.

Towards the end of the game, the player is faced with a difficult choice between the three parties, Esher, Yeesha and the Bahro, which will affect the ending of Myst V.

The locations are:

The desert (= descent into the world of the D'ni)
Direbo (distributor / turntable)
K''veer (World of Vaults)
Noloben (island world with the big white stone)
Taghira (Ice World)
Todelmer (telescope)
Laki'ahn (another island world)

Myst Online

Myst Online - Uru Live

2007

Mac OS , Windows

Adventure - first person, third person

Game mode

Mouse keyboard

no medium, download

English, German in planning