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Myst was captivating. Visually so "immersive" with just enough graphics to really stimulate what "might" be around the corner. I truly could sense that I was so

Myst was captivating. Visually so "immersive" with just enough graphics to really stimulate what "might" be around the corner. I truly could sense that I was somewhere else, another planet or whatever, abandoned, with me to explore.

markdeloura 7y ago
That's exactly what hooked me - I worked in a VR research lab while an undergrad and then grad student, and Myst came out just as VR was fizzling out. It was the most immersive thing I'd ever experienced without a headset - I would turn off all the lights and crank up the audio, and lose myself for hours.
aidenn0 7y ago
I felt that way for about 10 minutes, after which it felt like visiting a Hollywood set; looks great but it's just a facade. The level of interactivity was just too little to be convincing. As TFA says, a lot of people blame Myst for the death of the adventure game, but it was already trending that way in '93 as graphics improved. Most of the random actions that you could take to interact with the world in the Sierra games resulted in a fairly generic animation and a wall of text. This meant anything the designer anticipated could be interacted with, because the cost of writing that text was low (particularly with Sierra's near lack of editing and playtesting). Once a generic animation and a wall of text was no longer acceptable from a production-value stance, these games were stripped of their charm, and all you were left with were charmless puzzle games with some window-dressing. Myst got there first and did it better than everyone else, so it gets the blame for something that was inevitable.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  More inexcusable is the aesthetic choice to do this now, when you can afford to have decent graphics and let players do whatever they want but designers often inexplicably decide to curate the experience to the point where you might as well just watch somebody else's play. I wouldn't have built Myst because to me it seems pointless, why not just make a movie about this? Or a picture book? But clearly lots of people enjoyed it. Still, back then I could safely assume anything that looked that good had nothing behind the facade, today it's harder to guess. It reminds me of a phenomenon which is broadly disliked in tabletop Role Playing. Some GMs like to plot out everything in great detail which necessarily means you can't go off piste, they need you to go into the tunnels under the castle with the torch because they've worked out exactly what will happen when you do. If their players try to instead simply leave the castle because it's boring, or divert a river into the tunnels and flood them to drive anything down there out the GM will either be angry and demand the players reconsider or will try to railroad the players into proceeding with the plan as they envisioned. Either way this is an unsatisfying experience for everybody.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    There wasn't enough story for a movie. It was pretty enough to be a picture book, but how big is the market for picture books? It was a puzzle game. The puzzles were pretty basic, but the market for basic puzzle games is significant. Especially if the puzzle is also attractive enough that the next batch of visuals feels like a decent reward for having solved the puzzle. Such a game won't attract people who want more interaction from their games -- though you do have to remember that at the time even a game like Doom was a huge advance in interactivity. Myst was relaxing rather than exciting, almost the way a game of solitaire or a crossword puzzle is.
- makapuf 7y ago
  I remembered Sierra games (loom, leisure suit Larry, monkey island) with mostly animations and only a bit of text for dialogues ? (Edit: clarify)
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    1. 2 out of 3 of those games are from Lucas Arts not Sierra 2. Many of the deaths had animations and a bit of text, but see all the non-death things you could do that KQ1 had[1] and it did not have anywhere near the most. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TB_IYQ-GJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TB_IYQ-GJ0
    - makapuf 7y ago
      My bad of course those are Lucasfilm. However, I was referring to late adventure point and clicks, unlike kq1 from 84: let's take lucasfilm games post 93, including grim fandango or full throttle, those do not seem to fit your description.
      - aidenn0 7y ago
        My point exactly, the genre was already trending in that direction, with higer production values.

markdeloura 7y ago

That's exactly what hooked me - I worked in a VR research lab while an undergrad and then grad student, and Myst came out just as VR was fizzling out. It was the most immersive thing I'd ever experienced without a headset - I would turn off all the lights and crank up the audio, and lose myself for hours.

aidenn0 7y ago

I felt that way for about 10 minutes, after which it felt like visiting a Hollywood set; looks great but it's just a facade. The level of interactivity was just too little to be convincing. As TFA says, a lot of people blame Myst for the death of the adventure game, but it was already trending that way in '93 as graphics improved. Most of the random actions that you could take to interact with the world in the Sierra games resulted in a fairly generic animation and a wall of text. This meant anything the designer anticipated could be interacted with, because the cost of writing that text was low (particularly with Sierra's near lack of editing and playtesting). Once a generic animation and a wall of text was no longer acceptable from a production-value stance, these games were stripped of their charm, and all you were left with were charmless puzzle games with some window-dressing. Myst got there first and did it better than everyone else, so it gets the blame for something that was inevitable.

tialaramex 7y ago
More inexcusable is the aesthetic choice to do this now, when you can afford to have decent graphics and let players do whatever they want but designers often inexplicably decide to curate the experience to the point where you might as well just watch somebody else's play. I wouldn't have built Myst because to me it seems pointless, why not just make a movie about this? Or a picture book? But clearly lots of people enjoyed it. Still, back then I could safely assume anything that looked that good had nothing behind the facade, today it's harder to guess. It reminds me of a phenomenon which is broadly disliked in tabletop Role Playing. Some GMs like to plot out everything in great detail which necessarily means you can't go off piste, they need you to go into the tunnels under the castle with the torch because they've worked out exactly what will happen when you do. If their players try to instead simply leave the castle because it's boring, or divert a river into the tunnels and flood them to drive anything down there out the GM will either be angry and demand the players reconsider or will try to railroad the players into proceeding with the plan as they envisioned. Either way this is an unsatisfying experience for everybody.
- jfengel 7y ago
  There wasn't enough story for a movie. It was pretty enough to be a picture book, but how big is the market for picture books? It was a puzzle game. The puzzles were pretty basic, but the market for basic puzzle games is significant. Especially if the puzzle is also attractive enough that the next batch of visuals feels like a decent reward for having solved the puzzle. Such a game won't attract people who want more interaction from their games -- though you do have to remember that at the time even a game like Doom was a huge advance in interactivity. Myst was relaxing rather than exciting, almost the way a game of solitaire or a crossword puzzle is.
makapuf 7y ago
I remembered Sierra games (loom, leisure suit Larry, monkey island) with mostly animations and only a bit of text for dialogues ? (Edit: clarify)
- aidenn0 7y ago
  1. 2 out of 3 of those games are from Lucas Arts not Sierra 2. Many of the deaths had animations and a bit of text, but see all the non-death things you could do that KQ1 had[1] and it did not have anywhere near the most. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TB_IYQ-GJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TB_IYQ-GJ0
  - makapuf 7y ago
    My bad of course those are Lucasfilm. However, I was referring to late adventure point and clicks, unlike kq1 from 84: let's take lucasfilm games post 93, including grim fandango or full throttle, those do not seem to fit your description.
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      My point exactly, the genre was already trending in that direction, with higer production values.