If you know me at all, you know I fucking love Myst. I have extremely fond memories of playing it for the first time on 3DO back in 1995, which carried to my first play of Riven in 1998 and falling in love with The Book of Ti’ana in between. The whole franchise appealed to my teenage aesthetic, sense of wonder, and adherence to the scientific method. You mean you can write strange new worlds into existence and then go visit them?! And then write about how the weird alien place works?!! OMFG YES!
Adult me, however, can’t control her motion sickness and comes with mysterious hand pain. Playing these games is a recipe for headaches at best, especially the updated ones which are no longer point-and-click static screens. When the latest rework of Myst came out in 2021, I didn’t last five minutes before I felt sick. I tried looking around the empty island hoping something would strike me enough to endure, but I just couldn’t do it. I figured I’d come back when I felt better but who knows when.
A week ago Cyan & Myst surprised us with an update to the game, including a lesser-known Age (read: world of new puzzles to solve) that hadn’t been in the 2021 update, that I’d never played before. What better time than now to actually try to finish Myst?
And so, soon, a new Myst journey was upon me.
Turns out when you’re compelled to find out how Rime ties into Myst, you’re compelled to actually finish Myst, even if you can only play in 15 minute bursts.
And so I did it (read more below the separator, including possible spoilers). I finished the 2021 Myst, and I found Rime, and I solved the Rime puzzle, and now… I am pleased I did it, but also a bit frustrated. Why you no my real life? I wanna hang out with the whales and write in a journal and sit on a breezy Channelwood walkway thinkin’ ’bout the frogs. Skyrim, certain movies and books, have had this sort of impact, but Myst’s early influence seems tied into my general psyche. I just want to keep playing and exploring and picking through new books. What else is there to solve?
Alas, that’s where me finishing the Riven remake comes into play. I also never finished Obduction (got too sick). So there’s my answer. Indeed, I could also replay the other Myst games or re-read the books.
For now, I’ll take a break, do some other things with my time, let my hand heal a bit, and create a bit of longing for another game featuring a very large tree for some reason.
Speaking of, here’s a totally not dirty nope haiku I just wrote.
Myst, goggles pulled up,
squinting at the giant tree
powered on for me.
Alright, here’s the original thing I wrote after I finished the game. Mild spoilers ahead.
Finally finishing the updated Myst (now with Rime!):
Still love this game to bits. Getting my motion sickness under control was an issue but not as bad as the first several times I tried to play the new Myst. Rime coming along was a motivator as I’d never played it before.
A lot of the awesome magic of this game in the 90s has faded to a charm today, but the updated graphics help (and remind me that I need to finish Obduction and Riven). The digital characters aren’t great to look at but the scenery, atmosphere, and overall aesthetic is lovely.
I had some issues with remembering the original way to play and thus not taking the “new” game as-is, but I figured things out. I still have the guide book from 1995, which I pulled out for the underground maze to check if I was on the literal right track after I got turned around which step I was on in my notes, and was amused to see I was one step away from solving it from the point I got turned around at (a problem with my notes and not the game). Writing everything down and not taking anything you see for granted is still key.
I appreciated that the keyboard puzzle had markers so I didn’t absolutely have to be able to hear it. The very first time I played the game I was with a deaf person and got thrown the controller for Selentic, so seeing a way to solve puzzles without sound was nice just from that standpoint.
Selentic: Not too hard on land. Underground, still requires good notation or a fair amount of patience. A lot of people seem annoyed at the maze but teenage me and 40-some me both found it tedious but simple. Loved the crystals and the little pond area.
Mechanical: I couldn’t figure out the count/spacing between the islands and did a lot of walking back and forth, but otherwise an easy Age. The initial clock lock made me yell “I hate slide puzzles”.
Stoneship: Not too difficult once I remembered to turn around and actually look to see there were two doors, not one, which kicked my ass when this was point-and-click. Still love the vibes of the undersea place and wish I could sit on the steps & watch the ocean.
Channelwood: Oh my sweet love, how I heart thee. The visual cues made it easier not to get turned around. The frogs were a nice touch. I would love to live here and was sad to leave.
It’s fairly obvious as a grown adult that these boys can’t be trusted so I was easily able to do the perhaps right thing and hang out alone in D’ni for a minute. Seeing Rime waiting for me, I went to go figure out how to get there… and it took a while. I thought I was missing a panel or button somewhere and it turned out I needed to leave the room. It seemed obvious once I realized what I’d been looking at.
Rime itself is beautiful. Loved the auroras. I initially missed a button so I was struggling at first, but once I saw it, solving the puzzle was mostly a matter of solving unknowns for the knowns. My initial notes were wrong, which tripped me up and made me approach the color puzzle incorrectly, so it took a while, but it would have been simpler if I’d seen the puzzle before I took notes knowing a puzzle was coming.
I like how Rime added D’ni lore to my brain. It was odd reading the boys’ notebooks, though, trying to balance the who-they-were with the who-they-became. Also makes me wonder if Atrus’ entire lineage is poisoned or if there’s something about the D’ni where they intrinsically view non-D’ni as subhuman. Perhaps an appropriate thought for this time in history. In fact, I internally joked that Achenar was Elon, so perhaps Sirrus is RFK. Unfortunately, there is no Atrus to trap these guys in a book in our present timeline, and whether there’s ever a Stranger, well, they’re probably still stuck downstairs on the dock poking in “69” to see what happens with the water and Beavis-laughing about it.
Anyway, I’m super biased as Myst was my favorite game until Riven came along and the Myst franchise generally is a favorite thing, but it was nice to play the 2021 update in full finally. Perhaps I’ll get back to the new Riven (which, by the way, the new way to solve the old marble puzzle made my DAY last year, SO COOL) and eventually get around to finishing Obduction. For the moment, the motion sickness and my hand pain need a damn break.
