ESCAPATORIA

Upon finishing the updated Myst remake (now with Rime!), I decided it was time to restart and finish the 2024 Riven remake.

I had tried to play the new Riven last year but didn’t finish it. The heat of the summer mixed with the heat of my laptop and my motion sickness issues all combined into a physical clusterfuck. I got stuck, didn’t know where to go or what I might have missed, and I could not endure feeling that shitty while trying to concentrate on where might this mystery thing might be. I decided to come back later, when it was cold.

I, instead, serendipitously heard about the Myst remake first, and my curiosity about Rime was primary. Finishing the game, though, I was pushed to then finally finish the Riven remake.

Most of my excitement about the new Riven took place last year. It’s been my all-time favorite game since the start. I quite fondly remember playing it on my first PC in the summer of 1998, in part with my nephew. I tried my best then but ultimately ended up having to use a walkthrough to be able to see how the game ends – the marble puzzle (the thing at the top of the big golden dome) got me. I understood the basic logic after some thought but still could not figure out which color went exactly where. Being able to see the game interpreted with new, updated graphics alone was an easy excuse to replay it. In fact, I had replayed the original version in the previous couple of years. I had no idea they had changed and added puzzles, too, which would make for a different experience. Just the new graphics alone, having bought but not fully played the new Myst remake before this year, was worth it for me.

I had not expected, going into the new Riven, the depth of the game that wasn’t present in the original. I hesitate to say exactly what I mean in the slim chance someone is reading these words who likes the Myst universe but hasn’t yet managed the Riven remake or never played any Riven at all. I’ve hinted at it in the last year, but the thing that wowed me was how the original marble puzzle had been altered so the logic was clarified, including tying in how the island world of Riven is unstable so the tail end of the game doesn’t feel so empty or borderline non-sequitur. If you’ve played Riven a bunch of times, you remember the discussion of the world, but on first play, it’s like… what? Why?? In the remake, it’s a lot more obvious.

Replaying the remake this year, I noticed the island’s attempts to keep its instability at bay again, this time with fresh eyes: holy shit, the domes are points of instability!!! The structure used to quarantine a stray unwanted view into space mirrors the structures that the domes sit on. Was this visual necessary to play the game? Nope. But boy did it remind me of the depth of story-telling in a game like Skyrim, where you can randomly come across an old, broken ship in the ocean with dead floating rats nearby, all just because it can exist and therefore does. But the visual – the rats or the break in space-time – takes a dry, 2D experience and makes it a full one.

But good god, those domes. I wanted to live in there. That was so fucking cool. That hit every sci-fi nerdity I have about this damn franchise going back to day one. What a beautiful surprise. I could have cried. I remember 12 year old me getting derailed playing Myst, sitting in the digital observatory just looking at random stars, daydreaming of how wonderful that would be in real life. 15 year old me reading Ti’ana, reading about all these wonderful books and potential worlds once kept safe in D’ni, sealed the deal. You’re telling me 42 year old me is going to THAT fucking space?! YOU BETTER SIGN ME UP FOR THAT RIGHT NOW. Loved it. More please. I probably can’t do another 30 years wait for the nature of human existence but I’ll take a well-funded theme park sooner… or you could let me just fuck around breaking shit at a real observatory, that’d be cool.

The depth also traveled the way of the Wahrk, which I have misspelled as Whark most of my life. His (her?) debut showed up at an unexpected location, but showed up all the same, and of course I had a fine time pestering towards unnecessary results. Color me surprised when the Wahrk punk’d me later. I could have jumped out of my skin and tip-toe ran off punctuated with an “eeee!” for the actual worry I had that I was about to lose a foot. I am also unable to play Skyrim add-on worlds because of the god damn jumping spiders. Fuck no. Is that a cave? No thanks, I’m out, not worth it. “I SEE YOU, DOME BITCH!” My toes! No wonder the Moiety would scare their kids with this monster.

The puzzles: Well, they’re different. Some are just a matter of slightly different gameplay due to the updated graphics and intent for VR play. But there are new puzzles, and new ways to solve things, and new places (omfg the fire marble cave), and it collectively lands on quite a different puzzle experience versus the original Riven. In a sense, I found the remake easier because I was able to arrive at conclusions sooner, but someone unfamiliar with the franchise would probably struggle for a while before key things clicked just the same as a new player to any of these Myst games.

That said, even for the different way of going about the marble puzzle, it was still a challenge. I was standing there a good while and had to come back later to make sure I didn’t fuck up some logic somewhere. I literally left that part of that game to go look in-game to make sure the notes I’d taken weren’t fucked up or missing something. My notes went awry a couple of times, especially on the slider puzzle, and my instinct of what to do was sooner correct, so, even though I still needed the notes, ugh. That’s what I get for trying to interpret what I saw before I found how it linked up with what I needed to do.

Gehn being a dick was, also, more obvious. That added touch of the burned book…

…and seeing Ti’ana and Aitrus. Surprise, we tied in the books! Neither were as I imagined in my head, fueled by the visual of Rand Miller before I ever read a single book.

On my second play, too, I was surprised to notice the security cameras around the island can and do follow you around, particularly the one at the daytime Moiety village where everyone’s hiding out from the crazy button-pushing stranger. Similarly, going inside the egg-tree village thing (the thing on the cover of Riven)? Fucking neato! A gothy dream come true. Bunch of silent weirdos just chilling in there, it seems.

Overall, while very similar to the original, the remake landed on a different, welcome experience. The graphics were lovely, the new puzzles were interesting without being tedious, the reworked marble puzzle made it actually possible for me to finish the game this century, and omfg space place yes pls. Where do I sign up for the marble mines?

I finished Riven and was just like, well, that was very cool and good, but I have still not finished either Obduction or Firmament. With all these pretty 2020s graphics, maybe I should?

The reason I did not finish Obduction was because I couldn’t get my motion sickness under control. I got pretty far in, got lost, realized I’d have to walk back a while – a key issue in setting off the sick – and just couldn’t do it. I kept thinking maybe there’d be a time when I felt better or could endure spurts of 10-15 minutes of game and 1-2 hour nausea breaks… but, ugh.

I tried. I loaded up a fresh Obduction game. I immediately felt sick, quit. I came back. I got through a puzzle, felt sick, quit. Then I had to walk a while… and nope, stop, can’t do this today.

The logic here would have been to play Myst, Riven (Myst 2), and then Myst III: Exile… and I own Exile, soooo…. Let’s do that instead. It, like the original Myst and Riven, is based in point-and-click even if they did add near-360 views for Exile, and it takes more particular circumstances to set off my motion sickness versus how quickly modern games do.

So.

I played Exile for the first and previously only completed time in very late 2003/very early 2004. I had bought a new computer tower on sale on boxing day and my first order of business was Exile.

That year I was with a guy who was, in a word, insecure, who had had a series of odd statements and emotional meltdowns because he didn’t like that he couldn’t easily control or manipulate me (or any woman). My empathy for and understanding of his situation had grown thin. A few weeks before christmas, he had another “moment” and I told him I was over this persistent accusation of cheating when I was doing no such thing and barely so much as spoke – online or off – to anyone but him. He was my world, my eggs were fully in this basket, and yet he was constantly moping and making shit up about it because I didn’t perfectly read his mind at every step. How’s about a therapist? Retrospectively, he was uptight, and even for my depression and lack of certainty about anything, I still needed for a creative variety he never had and didn’t meaningfully support (as far as it applied to me) for clinging so hard to typical middle class “supposed to” and “what will the neighbors/other men/my parents/god think” ideas. Eventually we likely would have broken up. But it didn’t have to be like that, treating me like I was his personal devil. He spent December pissed off at me for telling him pointedly that I wouldn’t put up with this any longer. There was a brief period of quiet during the time I played Exile, overlapping into January, at which point The Real Fighting began. I no longer remember anything about it beyond themes of him being angry he couldn’t control me and a sudden switch point when intense anger turned into intense love before floating off into the ether of nope, nevermind, love is not enough, when we finally broke up in April after he shut down because I mildly disagreed with him. I swear Pink Floyd has a song about this. Unfortunately, 20 years later, I still find men my age, on whole, to be pouty children who don’t know the first thing about communication if the vaguest hint of an emotion might be involved.

In short, when I was playing Exile for the first time, there was a bit of tension in the air. That I don’t have strong memories of playing it – beyond that I played it – seems quite fitting. I was running on a good moment (yay Myst! yay new computer!) but the background noise overwrote any fond memories I might have been able to hold on to otherwise.

I don’t remember when, but I did try to play Exile a second time. I ended up lost, turned around in a jungle tree, feeling motion sick, and I guess I just didn’t want to bother with it any further.

This time, with my motion sickness issues at play, I decided that I wouldn’t make this experience too difficult for myself. If I hit a snag, I would use a walkthrough. I’ve played and beaten Exile before, so, no big deal. Just make it a smooth, fun, light experience and get that ex noise out of the forefront of my memory of playing this thing.

As it seems 24 year old games don’t play on modern computers, I ended up using my own physical discs loaded through ScummVM, and I had no issues getting it to play, save, or load (though I had to learn the hard way that my independent install was no good and I had to use the data files instead). My computer also really appreciated not having to heat up to play this.

I remembered the beginning of the game just fine. You arrive to a story of a task to go do – as with all these games – and in your wandering you meet the game’s villain who sends you on a wild goose chase. I didn’t specifically remember how to play the first major puzzle of how to make certain things function so you can visit another book world, but I had a sense of it and was able to fairly quickly figure out how to get to Voltaic (book one for me). Edanna and Amateria took a bit more thought and forcing myself to remember to look around and not just directly ahead, but those similarly came together without a ton of struggle.

Right away, the graphics struck me as old, lacking in clarity, and low-res. In 2001 (when this game was released) 800×600 resolution was the standard, everyday norm for computer screens. Checking my screenshots, it appears that the upper resolution of the game is around 1280×720. My current screen is 1920×1080… So, of course, that’s going to look grainy at full display and weirdly small at its natural size. My computer monitor in 2004 was made (or sold to me, anyway) in 1998, so, safe to say, I didn’t notice the resolution problem back-when. I don’t believe I would have thought the graphics were state-of-the-art then, but I probably wasn’t put off beyond being annoyed that it was hard to tell where certain things were.

In time, I forgot about the graphics unless I was specifically taking a screenshot, leaving me feeling like nothing I took would ever do the experience of the game justice. The sound and atmosphere of this game is, even for today’s standards, worth the price of admission. Arriving on Voltaic and conquering its larger puzzle still had a wow factor. Like, wow, imagine if that really existed. Wow, imagine actually going to a place like this. Wow, how the fuck did they squeeze these huge machines into that tiny book screen – or, wow, were these machines written into this world? Wow. Very cool. I like.

I didn’t want to go to Edanna next because I can still remember being stuck in the tree, but it was next.

And what do you know, it wasn’t long before I was turned around, frustrated, uncertain, feeling sick, stuck in the fucking jungle-ass tree. Is it even a tree? It feels like a big tree, even if it isn’t.

I tell ya, though, the aesthetics of Edanna are something else. I knew I found mushrooms and borderline sentient plants compelling before 2004 as kid me loved me some FernGully, but I can’t help but wonder if me digitally crawling through a bioluminescent mushroom-peppered log reinforced a later need to put giant mushrooms on my living room walls years out. Alas, those mushrooms were specifically from Blackreach in Skyrim. It seems my interests are consistent, at least. Mushrooms! Space! Books! The same video game franchises for decades! Horror movies! Buying unnecessary scented candles at the grocery store! When’s the last time I bought a new band shirt!

Anyway, I ended up needed pointed in the right direction because I could not figure out the sunlit flowers. I was SO close but had failed to notice something retrospectively obvious. At least I didn’t completely just quit the game like last time. After that it was all only once-traveled territory, and I totally forgot about the lotus but, at the same time, it felt like I’d entered some old dream I’d had once.

All I remembered about Amateria is that there was a point where I would be making a ball smash into a million pieces, leading to 21 year old me laughing and pulling the lever just to hear the sound, over and over. I remember telling my boyfriend about it because of how amused I was. Big surprise that a couple of years later I would fill with absolute glee anytime a piece of glass cracked at the kitchen I worked so I could throw it hard into the broken glass bucket with that amazing, terrible, jarring sound. Why this, of all things? We may never know.

What I didn’t remember is how to solve a single fucking thing in this world. I understood the basic logic quickly, but, uhhhh… how? The first puzzle, okay, fine (teehee, the noise). The sound puzzle, well, I don’t know what the fuck crack anyone here was smoking but fuck you. I was burnt out by the third. Just give me the answer, let me be done… Alas, there was a fourth. Great, cool, I’m a pinball now. Roller coaster ride! And I’m fucking sick again. I appreciate the ride, I appreciate the subtle call-back to Riven’s marble puzzle, but god damn that was tedious. Why’s everything gotta be broke? Stupid jerk leaving his damn papers everywhere… Pick up your shit.

I rather enjoyed meeting Exile’s villain in the digital flesh. I mentally wandered, thinking about this actor playing to a green screen so convincingly, followed by a fallout of thinking about how in this game he’s just older than I am now. But the final puzzle, good god, what the fuck? Does anyone ever look at these puzzles for the first time and just know what to do, because even having a sense of the thing I still get tripped up. I had a near-flashback of poking the wires 21 years ago. I must have been staring at them a while. This time, though, I wasn’t feeling up to a multi-day experience of staring at the same screen wondering how I’m somehow still fucking this up, and referred to my walkthrough. Solving that eventually led to a multi-dimensional universe of potential conclusions, and I saved just in time to witness them all before leaving at the final, kindest choice. Bye, Wormtongue!

As an aside, is Atrus just oblivious or what? How does he end up in these situations, with these people?

Finishing Exile, it seems next on track is Myst IV: Revelation, which I also own a hard copy of. My memories of this game are centered on the aggravating horrors of the light soul puzzle. Fuck that thing. It’s harder than the marble puzzle for sure, and I don’t wanna. I also remember the graphics are different and motion sickness issues were a problem for me when I played it, so, I believe I may need to take a break before I get around to it. Maybe watch a TV season or some movies or write or whatever, just to give myself a moment free of head pain paranoia.

In the meantime, it sure is nice to play these games and toy around with the ideas of this franchise and universe. Quite a reminder of why I enjoyed and continue to enjoy it so much. It’ll be interesting to get through Revelation and, perhaps, maybe finally play Uru and End of Ages… and, of course, Obduction and Firmament. Hope there’s mushrooms and space whales. I already know there’s going to be some really big, out of place trees. What’s a Mysty game without a giant alien tree?