Myst (1993)

[WolfofWords]

The 1993 game came up in a trivia game tonight and I decided I wanted to write about it. This movie absolutely floored me when it came out as I was deep in PC gaming at the time thanks to my old friend Arthur.



Myst was a cutting-edge game that took full advantage of the technology of the day. A lot of the game is computer-generated imagery seen from a first-person perspective. The other fun part are the parts that utilized full motion video, a genre that has now mostly faded away. The player controls a character who opens a book called Myst. Flipping through the book they find a vivid image of the titular fantasy world. When they touch the picture they are transported and trapped in Myst. They first land on a fantastic but empty island. While there is no physical danger to the player character, I often lumped the game in with horror games when I was a kid. There is tension in the air caused by wandering alone in places where people once were.

The Ultimate Puzzle Game Progenitor

Paving the way for more recent games like The Witness, Myst was full of puzzles used to reach new areas in order to explore and find books and book pages. The initial Myst Island has at least a dozen puzzles of varying types. There is an observatory used to solve a constellation puzzle, a generator puzzle concerning voltage, a piano puzzle requiring listening and repeating the correct tones, and many more. Myst has so many puzzles some of which are simple and some of which are complicated. Some of the simple ones just take a long time because they require a lot of walking around and attention to detail. The world around you is full of buttons, valves, dials, cranks, switches, and so forth which require a lot of thought. I am not embarrassed to say that I looked up hints back in the day. The game is also mostly non-linear and the player can go in a lot of different directions to explore.


Fantasy Worlds



On Myst Island, the player finds out that a man named Atrus was a writer who learned a method to create “linking books”. These books allow a person to travel to the fantasy worlds written about by Atrus. These books are as magical as the one that transported the player character to Myst and they are called ‘ages’. Imagine touching an illustration in your favorite book and being sent to that world. Each world is strangely as empty as Myst.



Channelwood Age which is a flooded world where the remaining sentient creatures were forced to build treehouses to live in. Mechanical devices are powered by water pressure run through pipes.



The Mechanical Age which is a ruined fortress on a series of islands. The player solves a lot of puzzles by rotating parts of the fortress with great machines. The place is impressive and ominous.



Stoneship Age is a world that Atrus made a mistake in, accidentally merging a great wooden ship with the rocky island he had originally created. The ship and the caves of the island create a unique setting requiring the player to use water pumps to clear the paths to go deeper.



Selenitic Age is yet another island that was struck by a hot fissure that Atrus eventually used to power his technology. It was here that he created a lot of technology that was vaguely space-age-like including a rocket ship, a motorized mine cart, and audio technology.

Exposing the Lie of a Binary Choice



When the player first arrives on Myst, they can discover a library full of mostly destroyed books. Something happened here and the player is given very little backstory and must learn the story from context clues. There are two conspicuous books, one red and one blue. When the player opens those books they are met with very staticy communication from two brothers, Achenar and Sirrus. The brothers say that they have been imprisoned in their books and beg the player to recover pages missing from their prison books to release them.

The game starts with this binary choice of which brother are you going to save. Each brother declares that the other brother is evil. The player has to carefully observe communications with the brothers as communication becomes easier with each page returned to them. In the other ages, the player can also find places where the brothers once lived, learning more about their past and personalities. These two are not nice people.



Eventually, the brothers warn the player of another book that should not be touched as it is a prison the same as theirs. The brothers tell you that you will be trapped if you touch it. It turns out that they were not lying, at least not completely. The third book is a book in which their father Atrus is trapped. Atrus correctly tells you not to trust either brother. If the player decides to ignore Atrus’ warnings (or not discover Atrus altogether) and complete either Sirrus or Achenar’s books, they will release one of the brothers and be trapped themself. Finding a final page for Atrus releases him so he can bring his sons to justice. It turns out the brothers plundered the other ages and killed a lot of people. Atrus and his dead wife Catherine tried their best but could not reform their children. Rescuing Atrus leads him to talk about a bigger threat than his sons that is approaching, leading to the sequel.

This was the first major video game that I played that had multiple endings. That was an absolute revelation for me and I began to see it in a lot of other games afterward. The game gives an illusion that your choices are limited but there is always a way out. The ominous feeling of walking around with the illusion of running into somebody gave me chills. Additionally, there is the existential dread of being stuck forever in a book. If somebody closes the book, you are left alone with yourself forever. The game led to a bunch of really neat sequels. The next game Riven added actually characters you could interact with out in the worlds which added another layer of danger.