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!