Today is the day I beat Myst! After completing the piano puzzle for the first time during a short play session, I decided that I would try to play the piano as few times as possible. To make that dream a reality I would need to beat the game in one try. With that goal in mind I quickly retraced my steps and cleared the Mechanical and “I guess I’ll park my boat in this boulder” Ages. All told the backtracking probably only took about 5-6 minutes total. I’ve gotten very good at clicking through those screens (fuck the clocktower). With that done I set my sights on the spaceship.

I successfully played the piano again and it jumped out to me that this game is really terrible for people with any auditory or visual disabilities. If you’re blind, there is no way to read the tons of books and visual cues the game throws at you. If you’re deaf, then all of the audio cues go out the window and the game does not provide any visual cues for a lot of its puzzles (like the rotating fortress in the Mechanical Age). Heck, if you’re red/blue color-blind, then the compass in the Pirate Age and the journals are really hard to decipher. Games still aren’t great at catering to people with disabilities, but Myst just jumped out to me because it is so great at times at communicating using both audio and video simultaneously. The game communicates which of the brother’s rooms you’re in based on sound and visuals; and if I just heard a clip or saw a piece of furniture, I could tell you which brother I’m dealing with. If my hearing was poor or my vision compromised, I don’t think I would have enjoyed this game nearly as much. Myst manages to provide you with auditory and visual clues for so many puzzles that it’s a shame when that redundancy isn’t there.

Speaking of puzzles that require accurate hearing, the Spaceship Age is nothing but one big sound puzzle! Giving each of the locations in this age a different sound was a really clever idea and it makes it stand out, despite its foggy, barren landscape. Figuring out the receiver puzzle wasn’t too hard and determining how to open the only locked door was natural as well. What wasn’t natural was the fucking labyrinth. This age has a trial-and-error labyrinth that leads to its exit. You can’t see where you’re going and the only inkling you have about where you are is a few sound effects that demark certain areas. Otherwise it is one gigantic case of fumbling around in the dark with the same gifs repeating over and over. I stumbled through this puzzle for about a half hour before I consulted with my unseen consigliore. The solution for the labyrinth is about ten steps and getting through it still took about five minutes of gifs. The labyrinth is probably my most hated puzzle in Myst (barring the clock tower that crashes your game). It is trial-and-error at its worst in a game whose biggest strength is figuring out a solution and quickly putting that knowledge into practice.

If you were paying close attention, you may have noticed that I didn’t mention picking up any journal pages in this age. That’s because I didn’t. I thought that, like in every other age, there would be two rooms to search. I expected that at the end of the labyrinth I would find Sirrus’s record collection and Agamemnon’s murder-harp. But no, at the end of the labyrinth is the end of the level. And so I left because I wasn’t in the mood to sit through those fucking gifs two more times.

Back on Myst Island I solved the puzzle to enter the Channelwood Age and I must say that I liked this age the most of all of the ones I’d seen. It has some actual vegetation and, unlike the other ages, I can actually imagine people living there. The water pipe puzzles were fairly simple although I had a hard time navigating the various walkways because of how jittery the transitions between screens can be. At the top of the village I found Sirrus and Abacus’s rooms. In Sirrus’s room I found the second half of a piece of paper that describes how to open a secret vault on Myst Island. That secret vault seemed to be the key to the good ending since the brothers tore the instructions in half and hid both of the halves. It is pretty clear that neither of these two is to be trusted and so them hiding some instructions for a secret vault sounds like a gigantic red flag. However, I went this far to collect the journal pieces so I grabbed both pages and returned to the library.

After restoring the red and blue journals I realized that I forgot to collect a page in the Spaceship Age so I backtracked one last time. By this point I resigned myself to picking one of the brothers and since I wasn’t going to play the piano and go through the labyrinth two more times I decided to roll with Sirrus. I figured if I was going to be stabbed in the back, I would choose the guy who literally keeps back stabbing daggers in his fancy shelves. So I went through another ten minutes of gifs and returned to the library. Sirrus was ecstatic that I found all of the journal pages and he provided me with some final, creepy, “I’m totally not going to stab you in the back” instructions. He told me to use a specific pattern in the fireplace of the library to get the final red page. He also told me to ignore the green book hidden with the final red and blue pages.

I decided to try to open the Myst vault before making a clearly terrible decision. It is amazing how much Myst hides in plain sight. I knew the marker switches were clearly important, but I had no idea that they would be the key to the good ending. I found the white page in the vault and at that point I decided that I would definitely go through with helping Sirrus first. Getting the white page only takes a few seconds if you know what you’re doing so I figured that I could beat the game a second time pretty quickly. With that thread untangled I returned to the library and sealed my fate. It turns out that Sirrus is a jerk after all! Once I used the final page, I found myself trapped in the red book looking out at Sirrus. I was then treated to some awesome FMV of Sirrus taunting me and tearing out the pages of the red book to lock me in. So don’t trust that guy!

I reloaded the game for one final time, but this time I immediately collected the white page and opened the green book behind the fireplace. I found Sirrus and Agrippa’s dad, Atrus, trapped in the green book. He explained how his sons grew corrupt during their time exploring the ages without his supervision and he explained how they used his wife, Catherine, as bait to trap him in the green book. Once he was locked away, they each opened the red and blue books and found themselves trapped since the books were intended to trap greedy adventurers pillaging Myst Island (since the brothers and Atrus were trapped in books, who hid all of the journal pages? I guess I'll never know). I ventured into the green book with the white page in hand and I provided Atrus with the exit he had been seeking. He promptly returned to Myst and destroyed the books containing both of his sons. What a happy ending!

I did it. I beat Myst. After starting from scratch about ten times, I did it. I won’t have to listen to that weird teleporting noise anymore. I won’t have to read any more e-books. I won’t have to find any more journal pages. It’s over. Now I just have to sit and wait as @zombiepie finishes FFVIII… wait… what’s that ZP? I’m not done? I thought we agreed that I would play Myst and you would… What, what do you mean it’s not fair? I couldn’t save! I had to go to that fucking clock tower like 20 times! Come on! …ok …ok. … Yes Selphie is a nightmare person as is Zell. …Yes Squall is the worst. …The game is only 12 hours long if you play it right. … Alright, you know what, fine I’ll play another Myst game. If it makes you happy, I’ll do it. Riven here I come!

Oh boy Riven is said to be the most inaccessible and esoteric one of the entire series. It's also the only one I haven't played.

Oh yes! Looking forward to Riven!

@humanity: Well that's just great. From screenshots it looks like it has more FMV than Myst. So that's great.

@thatpinguino: It originally came on like 5 CD's which was insane at the time.

@humanity: I don't know that inaccessible is the right word. It's just flat out the hardest one by a vast margin. I had between 20 - 30 pages of notes when I finished it for the first time. Now since you can get it on a dvd/ digitally and avoid the disk switching it feels a lot more like one big world and not so broken up.

Riven remains my favorite game in the series by far. I still have the solution to one of the biggest puzzles commited to memory. Hope you end up enjoying it!

I own at least six copies of Myst on CD-ROM, in addition to Steam and GOG.

One day, I should try to play more than two minutes.

You definitely got the better end of the bet, given that good ZP was yelling at me on steam about dog cannons and "WHO IS THIS LAGUNA GUY???" yesterday.

I'm impressed that you managed to finish Myst without a guide though. It's always seemed utterly inpenetrable to me from the outside; the culmination of everything I don't like about adventure games. Have fun with Riven!

@cronus42: Personally I think Revelations is the absolute best but I never played Riven so I can't speak to much on it. At the time of release I was intrigued by Myst 3 so I bought it on a whim and ended up really loving it. From there I decided to go back and play Myst 1 which I thought was an enlightening, if not entirely pleasant experience. I'm not sure why I never got into Riven at the time - probably because it wasn't easily accessible apart from the original retail version, but I eagerly anticipated Myst 4 and it did not disappoint. Apart from that I dabbled with Uru for a bit which was interesting but ultimately a very watered down experience. Myst 5: End of Ages was very disappointing to me mainly because they drew away from the beautifully pre-rendered backgrounds and instead decided to make it an actual free-roam experience with polygonal levels. Instead of innovating and ironically moving Myst into the modern age, the shift to in-engine graphics actually ended up diluting that delightful quirkiness of moving from screen to screen. The puzzles were also sub-par.

@arbitrarywater:I would say Myst games encapsulate the best, purest part of adventure games - logical puzzle solving. The fat is cut out and what you have left is an overarching narrative and no-nonsense straight up puzzles that actually make sense as opposed to a lot of adventure games that devolve into clicking onto everything hoping for the best.

@arbitrarywater: I got ZP to the point where he has str +60% on every character and some strong junctions. I think his experience has turned a corner. Also now he has a dog cannon and that's pretty great.

Holy crap that's a lot of discs!

I had 3 and a half pages of notes for Myst and I'm using a tiny-ass notebook. That sounds like a lot of notes.

@thatpinguino: I always tend to take more than I need to. I just write down anything that could even possibly be important or useful. I even sketched out an entire puzzle to ponder it while I was in class one day. So yea normal people would probably be about half of what I did, but it's still probably the most notes you will end up taking through all of the games.

I wondered if you'd find the Atrus ending @thatpinguino, I should have known you would. Geez you demolished this game. Congrats man!

But man Riven, I wouldn't ever wish that on someone who doesn't love the genre. That game requires a ton of patience and careful thought.

I'm sure it will be a lot less trouble for you than it was for me since you seem to be considerably better puzzle solving than I am. That game is incredibly obtuse though. I'd be very surprised if you enjoy it. The game was mammoth in size for its day, and perhaps far too overly ambitious in many respects. I don't think the series ever really recovered after that, it went from a being a Heralded mainstream franchise to a niche one with Myst III.

I don't disagree that the Myst series is pure distilled Puzzle solving mostly in a good way (like you I especially appreciate the puzzles feel integral to the plot) but I do think for a lot of folks (myself included) that the story and dialogue can be the main draw of the genre. Which is why things like Heavy Rain and TWD also feel like a natural evolution of the Adventure game genre.

Totally agree that pixel hunting is a terrible problem in the genre. I know Vinny likes the spacebar "show the hot spots" option most modern P&C adventure games have, but I can't help but feel that's a bad solution for the problem of poor puzzle design.

@slag: Yah I don't know, I think there is a time and place for everything. Modern adventure games haven't really evolved at all except for that whole highlighting objects thing which almost in turn feels like cheating. Technically I would want a regular game with logical Myst-like puzzles thrown in - technically but in reality I'm not sure if that would work out either. Action games have a flow to them that would be interrupted by a sudden need to sketch 5 symbols and note down frequencies for the crystals that you need to tune.. I'm currently playing Arkham Knight and there were several places where I groaned in my head "you're not going to make me actually solve this are you?" and thankfully it never does, you just highlight and Batman does all the rest which in this case is perfectly fine because I want to get on with it.

It's rough and there is a reason why these games fell off the map. I wouldn't say Riven was the main reason as much as the fact that technology evolved and we got better, flashier games that drew our attention away.

@humanity:

Completely agree and I think many Open World games have the same problematic solution for collectibles (essentially handing you the answer by just showing the locations on the minimap). That takes the fun out of it and turns it into a chore or task to complete. I imagine puzzle design is one of the very toughest aspects of game design to get right for designers.

Oh for sure, the rise and fall of Myst the franchise correlates strongly with the rise and fall of the Adventure game genre itself. Myst and Riven were released near the zenith of the genre in terms of being cutting edge experiences and cultural cachet.

I do think by the time Myst III rolled around, as experiences in other genres radically improved, Myst III felt like a "more of the same" type experience instead a massive leap forward that both Myst and Riven felt like. And for the mainstream player, who had grown accustomed to big leaps in production values, there is no way for that to not feel like a letdown. Whether's that fair or not. So in that way Riven kind of set a bar that could never be eclipsed.

Totally agree with you that puzzles usually break the flow of action games, and the importance of maintaining that flow I think is also partly why Action Adventure games are easier today. One reason I think the Puzzles worked so well in the Portal games was their reliance on physics and acrobatic nature. The Player is constantly moving, so even if you aren't getting anywhere per say if you're stuck, it still feels like you are doing something dynamic.

Maybe you could convince ZombiePie to let you wait 4 or 5 years until the guys over at The Starry Expanse Project have finished converting Riven into a modern 3D game.

Or you could just listen to the wisdom of Humanity and skip straight to Myst IV:The Best One.

@spottymaurice: Preach it brother!

Myst 2, 3 and 4 have good stories and more brain-melting puzzles. As much as I tried solving the puzzles myself, I just had to look up a few answers in the end. At least by 4 they give you hints. 5 is ok, but I think they swung too hard for the 3D aspect and couldn't match the atmosphere of the previous games.

I'm also super excited for their new kickstarted reboot called Obduction.

@humanity: @spottymaurice: I've already gotten too far into Riven to turn back now. The world has opened up and I am not sure where to go anymore. I'm in some kind of underwater mine-cart.

@thatpinguino: Theres always an island, a lighthouse and a minecart

I fucking love the world and atmosphere of Riven. Never could solve it without UHS though.