Myst

Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan (now Cyan Worlds), a Spokane, Washington-based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in 1991 and released it for the Macintosh computer on September 24, 1993; it was developer Cyan's largest project to date. Remakes and ports of the game have been released for Saturn, Microsoft Windows, Jaguar CD, 3DO, CD-i, PlayStation, AmigaOS, PSP, Nintendo DS, and iOS by publishers Midway Games, Sunsoft, and Mean Hamster Software.

Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as "Ages". Clues found in each of these Ages help to reveal the back-story of the game's characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.

Upon release, Myst was a surprise hit, with critics lauding the ability of the game to immerse players in the fictional world. The game was the best-selling PC game of all time, until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002. Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM format. Myst's success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels.

Plot

The game's instruction manual explains that an unnamed person known as the Stranger stumbles across an unusual book titled "Myst". The Stranger reads the book and discovers a detailed description of an island world called Myst. Placing his hand on the last page, the Stranger is whisked away to the world described, and is left with no choice but to explore the island. Myst contains a library where two additional books can be found, colored red and blue. These books are traps which hold Sirrus and Achenar, the sons of Atrus, who lives on Myst island with his wife Catherine. Atrus writes special "linking books" that transport people to the worlds, or "Ages", that the books describe. From the panels of their books, Sirrus and Achenar tell the Stranger that Atrus is dead, each claiming that the other brother murdered him, and plead for the Stranger to help them escape. However, the books are missing several pages, so the sons' messages are at first unclear, and riddled with static.

As the Stranger continues to explore the island, more books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The Stranger must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the Stranger adds more pages to these books, the brothers can speak more and more clearly. Each brother maintains that the other brother cannot be trusted. After collecting four pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the Stranger where the fifth page is hidden. If the Stranger gives either brother their fifth page, they will be free. The Stranger is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them. To assist in rapidly crossing areas already explored, Myst has an optional "Zip" feature. When a lightning bolt cursor appears, players can click and skip several frames to another location. While this provides a rapid method of travel, it can also cause players to miss important items and clues. Some items can be carried by the player and read, including journal pages which provide backstory. Players can only carry a single page at a time, and pages return to their original locations when dropped.

To complete the game, the player must explore the seemingly deserted island of Myst. There the player discovers and follows clues to be transported via "linking books" to several "Ages", each of which is a self-contained mini-world. Each Age—named Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood—requires the user to solve a series of logical, interrelated puzzles to complete its exploration. Objects and information discovered in one Age may be required to solve puzzles in another Age, or to complete the game's primary puzzle on Myst. For example, in order to activate a switch, players must first open a safe and use the matches found within to start a boiler.

Development

"We started our design work and realized that we would need to have even more story and history than would be revealed in the game itself. It seemed having that depth was just as important as what the explorer would actually see."

—Rand Miller, on developing Myst's fictional history

The Myst creative team consisted of the brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, with help from sound designer Chris Brandkamp, 3D artist and animator, Chuck Carter, Richard Watson, Bonnie McDowall, and Ryan Miller, who together made up Cyan, Inc. The company had previously only made children's games. Myst was conceived by the brothers as a challenging but aesthetically simple game that would appeal to adults;[9] Myst was not only the largest collaboration Cyan had attempted at the time, but also took the longest to develop. According to Rand Miller, the brothers spent months solely designing the look and puzzles of the Ages, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" made for children. According to the creators, the game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

At first, the developers had no idea how they would actually create the physical terrain for the Ages.Eventually, they created grayscale heightmaps, extruding them to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap which was wrapped over the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design. Rand noted that attention to detail allowed Myst to deal with the limitations of CD-ROM drives and graphics, stating "A lot can be done with texture…Like finding an interesting texture you can map into the tapestry on the wall, spending a little extra time to actually put the bumps on the tapestry, putting screws in things. These are the things you don't necessarily notice, but if they weren't there, would flag to your subconscious that this is fake.

The game was created on Macintosh computers, principally Macintosh Quadras. The graphics were individual shots of fully rendered rooms. Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore. Each scene was modeled and rendered in StrataVision 3D, with some additional modeling in Macromedia MacroModel. The images were then edited and enhanced using Photoshop 1.0.

Legacy

In addition to the numerous remakes and ports of the game, Myst's success led to several sequels. Riven was released on October 29, 1997, in which Atrus asks the Stranger to return to help him rescue his wife from Gehn. Myst III: Exile was released simultaneously for Macintosh and Windows systems in North America on May 7, 2001, and was later ported to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. Exile was not developed by Cyan; Presto Studios developed the title and Ubisoft published it. Taking place 10 years after the events of Riven, Exile reveals the reasons for Atrus' sons being imprisoned and the disastrous effects their greed caused. The fourth entry in the series, Myst IV: Revelation, was released on September 10, 2004, and was developed and published entirely by Ubisoft. The music was composed by Jack Wall with assistance from Peter Gabriel. The final game in the Myst saga was Myst V: End of Ages, developed by Cyan Worlds and released on September 19, 2005.

In addition to the main Myst saga, Cyan developed Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which was released on November 14, 2003. Uru allows players to customize their avatars, and renders graphics in real-time. The multiplayer component of Uru was initially cancelled, but GameTap eventually revived it as Myst Online: Uru Live on February 15, 2007. On February 4, 2008, GameTap Creative Director Ricardo Sanchez announced that the game was cancelled, and that the servers would be shut down 60 days after the announcement. The game has since been brought back up again and is free to play. The Miller brothers collaborated with David Wingrove and wrote several novels based on the Myst universe, which were published by Hyperion. The novels, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni, fill in the games' backstory and were packaged together as The Myst Reader.

PC remakes

Myst: Masterpiece Edition was an updated version of the original Myst, released in May 2000. It featured several improvements over the original game, with the images re-rendered in 24-bit truecolor instead of the original Myst's 8-bit color. The score was re-mastered and sound effects were enhanced, and some cinematics were redone.

realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a remake of Myst released in November 2000 for Windows PCs, and in January 2002 for Mac. Unlike Myst and the Masterpiece Edition, realMyst featured free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics instead of pre-rendered stills.Weather effects like thunderstorms, sunsets, and sunrises were added to the Ages, and minor additions were made to keep the game in sync with the story of the Myst novels and sequels. The game also added a new Age called Rime, which is featured in an extended ending.realMyst was developed by Cyan, Inc. and Sunsoft, and published by Ubisoft. While the new interactivity of the game was praised, realMyst ran extremely slowly on most computers of the time.

Handhelds

In November 2005, Midway Games announced that they would be developing a remake of Myst for the PlayStation Portable. The remake would include additional content that was not featured in the original Myst, including the Rime age that was earlier seen in realMyst. The game was released in Japan and Europe in 2006, and the US version was released in 2008.

A version of Myst for the Nintendo DS was also released in December 2007. The version features re-mastered video and audio, using source code specifically re-written for the Nintendo DS. The remake features Rime as a playable Age, with an all new graphic set. Myst DS was released in North America on May 13, 2008, and later reissued by Storm City Games. The title was heavily panned by the gaming press, with an aggregate score of 43/100 on Metacritic.

In February 2005, Cyan and Mean Hamster Software released Myst for the Microsoft Pocket PC platform; Riven was ported shortly after. In August 2008, Cyan announced that the company was developing a version of Myst for Apple's iOS. Cyan confirmed that the project was near completion in April 2009,submitting the title to Apple on April 22. The game was made available to download from the iTunes App Store on May 2, 2009. The original download size was 727 MB, which was considered very large by iPhone standards.