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The virtual reality version of Myst is either the third or fourth remake of the original game, depending on how one chooses to define “remake.” The original point-and-click Myst was updated into a Masterpiece Edition in 2000, with upgraded graphics, sound effects, and music. It’s had a significant influence on video games as a medium, and arguably pop culture in general, to this day. Notably, Myst features no depictions of violence, time limits, failure conditions, or verbal storytelling to speak of, all of which was nearly unprecedented in 1993. This includes Myst veteran Chuck Carter’s interactive memoir ZED, and the forthcoming Area Man Lives. Cyan founded a new publishing arm of the company, Ventures, in 2018, to focus on bringing out independently-made VR projects. Cyan’s upcoming game Firmament is planned to ship with a VR version alongside a 2D edition at its launch. Miller and Cyan have been vocally bullish about virtual reality in the last couple of years.
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REALMYST WALKTHROUGH NO COMMENTARY TV
The success of Myst put Cyan on the map as an indie game developer, and created a franchise that includes four sequels, three novels (currently published in omnibus format as The Myst Reader), a yearly fan convention, and as of last summer, a film and TV deal with Village Roadshow. It’s an almost magical experience for me, after so many years, to wander around the Ages of Myst and truly feel transported! We hope it will be for you, too.” There's no way taking pictures can replace using a pen and paper to scribble down notes, something that would be exceptionally difficult to do while holding controllers and wearing a headset.“We’ve been waiting for the stars to align to create a VR version of Myst,” said Cyan CEO Rand Miller in a statement, “and I’m so excited to announce that alignment! Myst has always been about creating a world to lose yourself in, and VR takes the Myst experience to an entirely new level. But even with this modern facelift, the world of Myst remains mostly static, and even in 3D it still feels more like a painting of a place than an actual place.Īnd while a photomode has been added so you can take pictures of puzzle clues to use as reference, I still can't really imagine trying to solve the game in VR. In VR it's nice to see Myst from a new perspective, and even just on desktop it's a beautiful looking game: hypnotic ocean waves lapping at the shore, clouds rolling overhead, and a few nice details like a small green frog hopping along a bridge in the woods. Solving a puzzle, or even figuring out what the puzzle wants from you, results in plenty of happy eureka moments, not just from feeling smart but from having resisted the urge to cheat by looking up the answers. Sound often comes into play, which I really love, like a distant clunking sound while turning a wheel in a cabin, or the hum of a wire that lets you know a current is running through it, or an underground train puzzle where sounds play at the track intersections and combine with one another to give you directions. Sometimes simple observation can get you a long way toward solving a puzzle, like noticing a locked rocketship is connected to a brick bunker by an electrical wire. There's still a lot to enjoy, though, and plenty of clever puzzle design.
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There's a bit of story and lore told through books, notes, and holograms (originally they were cheesy FMV, now they're cheesy CG) but Myst is mostly built from puzzles, not stories.
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To gather the missing pages of the book and discover the story of the island and the family who once inhabited it, players need to solve elaborate puzzles that transport them to new islands, where they complete even more puzzles in order to return.
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In case you haven't had a chance to play one of the many versions of Myst in the past 28 years, the adventure game begins with you trapped on a strange island after reading a strange book. Myst, no matter how it looks in 2021, feels pretty outdated. Cyan Worlds say it's a "reimagined" Myst, but while it's far more modern-looking it's still almost exactly the same game. As a remake, Myst is a faithful one, but maybe a bit too faithful. And this new 3D Myst works on both desktop and in VR, so I got to spend time actually (virtually) walking around in it. Cyan Worlds has completely remade the game (again, following 2000's realMyst and 2014's realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, neither of which I played). It's a little weird to be back in Myst in 2021, after all this time.
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