Myst
Thomas Philip
and have been assigned to write a short blurb about Myst to go in our
online catalog. You know, the kind of thing that would talk about the
theme of the game and the outstanding features and that sort of thing.
The problem is... I have never played the game in my life! Help! Would
any of you out there please e-mail (or post, if you have to, but this
doesn't seem to be a general information type of thing) your knowledge
about the game? What is the purpose? Who are you in the game? Where are
you? What opposes you? Thanks for all your help.
Tom
MasonG7
accidentaly put your hand on a picture, and you found yourself onn the
island the book described. You have to explore to find a way home, and
read about an injustice that you must correct. It has stunning rendered
graphics, and there's no action whatsoever; strictly puzzle.
Mas...@aol.com
Mason Gup
Teri Pettit
tph...@acpub.duke.edu (Thomas Philip) wrote:
I am posting because: (1) This _is_ a "general information type of thing".
Game overviews are about as general as you can get. Much more so than most
of the questions and comments on this group. (2) But one response can only
be one person's opinion. By my posting and then your reading any replies
to my post, I'm hoping you'll get feedback to enable you to discriminate
idiosyncratic opinion from generally held opinion.
MYST is an "exploration" game with a quiet but at times eery mood. You
fall through a portal in a mysterious book, and find yourself on a dock
of a deserted island filled with strange contrivances. The purpose is
partly to figure out what you're supposed to do there, but it is probably
not too much of a spoiler to say that you travel through other books to
other weird worlds, collecting a number of pages as you go. You have to
solve puzzles to get to the other places and find the pages.
You never see yourself, just the world from your point of view. You are
given no background, so you are just you. Nobody opposes you actively.
You never "die", there are no time constraints, and nothing irreversible
happens. So saving a game is only necessary to avoid having to travel
back to your position and restore the state of the world.
Depending on what you do with the pages, you get one of four final scenes.
One of them is defined as "winning", but two of the losing scenes are
more fun, and most people play all four endings just to see them all.
The worlds were modelled using 3-D programming, but they are not rendered
in real time. Instead there are thousands of still scenes captured. This
allows scenes to be much more detailed than is currently possible when the
scenes are rendered on the fly from an arbitrary POV as in virtual reality
games.
Most players find the puzzles relatively easy as adventure/puzzle games
go. They are exceptionally well integrated into the game story. They
never feel arbitrary like most adventure game puzzles do. For me, the
only glitches came from missing hot click spots and thinking that an
idea was a dead end when really the idea was right and I just had missed
the right place to click by one or two pixels. (This is my major peeve
with point and click game interfaces.)
The strong point of the game is the imagination that went into creating
the surreal worlds that you visit. They are extraordinarily detailed and
unusual and the artwork is fantastic. The sound quality is also very good,
at least on the Mac version (I can't testify about the PC version.)
The weak points of the game are that it is not hard, and it is emotionally
very "low key." It is not for those who like "exciting" games. Many players
have complained that the ending, especially the one which is considered
winning, is "lame". Basically, you just finish and are told "thanks, you
were a big help and I'll see you in the sequel." No fireworks. This didn't
bother me, because I don't play a game to see a big finale. I play it to
enjoy what I'm doing along the way. But it bothers a lot of players who
are accustomed to getting a big payoff at the end.
Since you work in a library, it should be easy for you to find the Aug 94
issue of Wired, which has a long interview with the game designers.
Hope this helps.
Teri Pettit || home: 1048 Almanor Ave.
Adobe Systems Inc. || Menlo Park, CA 94025
P.O. Box 7900 || photo: p. 129 Sep 1990 MacWorld
Mountain View, CA 94039-7900
pet...@adobe.com (Adobe Illustrator users: ask me about easter eggs)
Charlie Poag
>
> All you Myst players out there... I work in a library at Duke University
> and have been assigned to write a short blurb about Myst to go in our
> online catalog. You know, the kind of thing that would talk about the
> theme of the game and the outstanding features and that sort of thing.
> The problem is... I have never played the game in my life! Help! Would
> any of you out there please e-mail (or post, if you have to, but this
> doesn't seem to be a general information type of thing) your knowledge
> about the game? What is the purpose? Who are you in the game? Where are
> you? What opposes you? Thanks for all your help.
>
>
>
>
Tom,
My name is Charlie Poag and I'm a programmer at the Medical University
of South Carolina. Someone gave me Myst as a gift over a year ago and
I just finished playing it a few months ago. There were times that I
got so frustrated with it (with myself really), that I put it aside
for a month at a time.
Myst is not at all a fast paced shoot 'em up type game. It is a
mystery and the interface involves nothing more than pointing and
clicking which can be very tedious. However, there are some features
built in that allow you to speed up the movement from image to image.
The graphics and sound are top notch. The puzzles are challenging and
the plot is intriguing. I had a great time playing it and would never
consider selling it even though I've finished it.
As far as the plot's concerned, I'm not going to tell you much because
the documentation that comes with the game doesn't tell you anything.
At first, this frustrated me, but I think it was intentional. I think
that figuring out what you're supposed to do is half the point. When
you first start the game, a Quicktime movie gives you a little bit of
info. All it really tells you is that you found this book called MYST.
When you click on the book, you are transported to this unusual island.
From there, you're on your own. You can get clues pretty quickly, if
you have a good imagination. Some of the first things you find include
a note from the author of MYST that points you to some clues and library
full of his diaries. That's about all I'm willing to give up because I
wouldn't want to be responsible for ruining the game for anyone else.
Good luck with the review!
Charlie
poa...@musc.edu
Alex of OMSK
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From: Charlie Poag <poa...@musc.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games.misc,comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: [News] Re: Myst
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 95 01:01:26 GMT
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