Myst and the D'ni

[Trivun]

So yeah, I recently decided to get back into Myst, after selling the first three games (the only ones I owned) roughly three or four years ago - I'd gotten bored of the genre, and Riven was a mess anyway (the second of the five discs was scratched and had been for almost the whole decade I'd had the game - meaning it would always glitch and stop me from getting further than Jungle Island Part 2). But the other day I ordered the first five games, plus the three books, throug Amazon and will be picking them up from the Royal Mail later today.

So this thread is pretty much just to see if I am alone or if there are any other fans of the D'ni among the Escapist community. And if there are, what are your favourite memories of the series? For me, it would have to be exploring Book Assembly Island and trying to figure out how to reach Atrus' lab. One of my more intriguing puzzles, and it all starts with me getting covered in sawdust... well, I assume so. Given where the Maglev unceremoniously drops you...

 

[Ruzinus]

...this probably sounds a bit weird, but the only Myst game I've really played much of is Uru Online. I liked the sort of community of amateur archaeologists vibe it had going on.

I also liked how the "puzzles" worked... that it wasn't really things clearly designed as puzzles, but more about figuring out what everything in the environment was, was for, and then how you could instead use it to accomplish your goal (which was generally just to get around). I also liked that the primary reward for figuring it out was exactly that, that you'd learned something about these strange places, and the usual "game-y" elements were downplayed next to the value of that knowledge.

 

[Trivun]

...this probably sounds a bit weird, but the only Myst game I've really played much of is Uru Online. I liked the sort of community of amateur archaeologists vibe it had going on.

I also liked how the "puzzles" worked... that it wasn't really things clearly designed as puzzles, but more about figuring out what everything in the environment was, was for, and then how you could instead use it to accomplish your goal (which was generally just to get around). I also liked that the primary reward for figuring it out was exactly that, that you'd learned something about these strange places, and the usual "game-y" elements were downplayed next to the value of that knowledge.

That's pretty much what the Myst games have always been about . Riven, the second game, for example, basically has a massive number of different tasks that you have to figure out yourself in order to get to the five different islands featured in the Age of Riven, but the plot itself is hinted at more than anything until the final two islands very late in the game - it's only then that you start to really have to focus on moving the plot forward more than anything else. Uru Live is actually just a co-op version of the single-player game, as a matter of fact, set long after the other Myst games. The original game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was single-player and was basically almost exactly the same as the online version, it's just that the multiplayer component of the game never shipped (just doing the whole game normally with the option of co-op) and was cancelled, and got released later as an F2P MMO...

 

[Hikaru CF]

I bought the Cyan Worlds bundle on Steam during the summer sale so I'm playing Uru again at the moment. Always loved the Myst series but I haven't played any of them for a long time now except Uru.

Looking back at the games now it's incredible how good the graphics are for each game considering how long ago they were made, especially Myst 4 which is one of the prettiest games of all time.

Because I was quite young when I first played the Myst games, getting killed by Gehn in Riven and Saavedro in Exile was fucking terrifying, probably because getting killed by a live action actor is so much more real and convincing than getting killed in any other game at the time.

 

[scotth266]

I actually just fired up mist a few months ago and beat it for the first time. It was quite fun, and I'm happy that I managed to avoid the bad endings while not using any guides (except for that one pipe section, which doesn't give you any hints, that was a load of bs -_-). I started Riven but got distracted fairly early on.

 

[Trivun]

Because I was quite young when I first played the Myst games, getting killed by Gehn in Riven and Saavedro in Exile was fucking terrifying, probably because getting killed by a live action actor is so much more real and convincing than getting killed in any other game at the time.

Have to agree there . And Riven in general terrified me when I was little, particularly the eeriness of Temple Island... didn't stop me from loving the game though

 

[Trivun]

Quick question to anyone who actually cares about this thread or this game series. I have the Myst Masterpiece Edition, trying to run it on Windows 7, and to get it to run properly I had to uninstall Quicktime 9 and reinstall Quicktime 4 (otherwise I just had a black screen rather than the actual game). Now with this setup I'm able to run the game fine, however, there is still a problem. When I get to bits where there's a lot of sound (the elevator in the Mechanical Age, for example), the sound drags out and causes the game to lag. Everything else is fine and it's still playable (though I have no clue how I'll be able to do the music puzzle in the Selenetic Age later), but the lag means bits that should take ten seconds end up taking me two minutes to do while I wait for the sound to work properly again. Has anyone else had this problem, and has anyone been able to fix it?

(Note that when I finish the game I'll be uninstalling it and updating Quicktime again to the current version - when I come to play Riven then that's simply a new hurdle I'll have to deal with later...)