Retrospective: Myst

By John Walker Published 20 November, 2010

The dark ages.

I absolutely blame Myst. I blame it for everything. Everything bad about gaming, every hateful puzzle, every stupid cut-scene, every dreadful piece of writing. I don't care if any of it is Myst's fault, I still blame Myst. I blame it for the recession, I blame it for X Factor, I blame it for the war in Iraq.

Released in 1993, it became the non-gamers' game. "Oh, I don't really like videogames, but I did like Myst." It sold more copies than Kinkos - well over six million. Everyone with a PC in the nineties had a copy, you'll be told. And you know why? Because it was given away with absolutely everything. If you bought a PC, you got given Myst. New printer? Myst. Upgrading your RAM, here, have a copy of Myst. Vast piles of Myst were causing terrible landslides, killing hundreds of children, all around the world.

You had to have Myst. It was the law. Anyone found owning a PC without a copy would be imprisoned, beaten, and left to die. Its hegemony reigned until the turn of the century, six million victims, and never an apology.

1

Oh it looks so boring I want to die.

Good grief, I hate stinking Myst. And I hate anyone who likes it. I hate you, and your ghastly taste. If this was good enough - if this was what you wanted from gaming - then I hope the litany of miserable clone games that destroyed the joy of adventuring has made you very happy. Every time I receive a game to review that requires me to read its entire plot from a digital pile of horribly written "books", I turn and look at you with such piteous contempt that your mothers want to disown you.

Seriously, this is the game that made it okay for developers to think, "Nah, screw telling a story, let's just make the player pick it all up from our handwriting-font-printed virtual novels. It'll be much easier to excuse a collection of meaningless, unconnected puzzles if there's a book about flying cats or something. And a diary. No, wait, 18 diaries. 18 diaries filled with pages and pages of our purplest prose, in which one paragraph of information somewhat relates to a puzzle 15 locations away. That's narrative."

Here's a choice moment from one of Myst's 'books': "Climbing the ladder led to their village which is about 10 metres above the water and can only be reached by rope ladders that stretch from the lower paths to the village level approximately half way up the grand trees."

2

It never even looked that good! Not compared to Lost Eden. That was also rubbish.

There should be a Booker Prize for games. Can I read an entire tome like this? (Well, yes I can, as the creators of the game published three novels based on the games. But I have yet to have the pleasure.) And every lazy, rubbish adventure game since has employed the same lazy, rubbish device, and it's entirely Myst to blame.

Seedy ROM

1993 was a dark year for gaming. Sure, it may have given us Day of the Tentacle, Sim City 2000 and Doom, but it was also the year that saw the CD-ROM become the dominant means for distributing PC games. Clearly something was needed. Games coming on 15 1.44MB floppy discs had become silly, and we required more room.

But it should have been added gradually. Jumping from a maximum of around 20MB to 600 was simply not safe. Developers looked at how much room they now had, and concluded that they had to fill it somehow. With the bulkiest things they could find. Pre-rendered graphics and full-motion video. And guess what encouraged this more than anything else? That's right: Myst. Along with its cousin 7th Guest, Myst bamboozled everyone's eyes by creating a world of luscious pre-rendered worlds.

"Look!" people would cry, calling over relatives. "Look at this!" And their relatives would look at the graphics on the desktop PC and their jaws would hang slack. "I... I had no idea! So, go on, move around!"

Click.

At the point where gaming had finally advanced enough to allow 3D worlds through which you could move with speed, Myst grabbed that by the throat and throttled it until it squirmed dying on the floor. Once again we were back to clicking on the screen and finding ourselves teleported forward. But unlike the corridors of, say, Dungeon Master, not in an understandable direction, but at whichever angle it saw fit, leaving you disorientated, and unable to usefully turn around to figure out where you were. Will it be a quarter turn, or a full turn?!

Fight the machine

3

Oh take your mechanisms and stick them up your pre-rendered hole.

Myst is also the game I hold responsible for f***ing mechanism puzzles. Oh look, here in the middle of this wood is a metal platform with a collection of buttons and switches. I guess if I go back three miles I'll find a book that alludes to there being something which requires a dial to be rotated 38 degrees to the right, and there was that sign on the wall in that dungeon that had some arrows that vaguely suggested that there might be a switch somewhere that needed to be pushed up and down seven times.

So if I do those, only in the right order, absolutely nothing visible or audible will happen but another utterly disconnected location 15 minutes away will now have a new pixel that I can click on. THANKS MYST.

I mean, sure, adventure games up until that point were asking you to make logical choices, or solve inventory puzzles with lateral thinking, but who needed that? Not when you could have acres and acres of machines and signs and books to twat around with in the name of progress.

And I'm a Mac

4

If I wanted to read a book, I'd - oh, I don't know - READ A BOOK.

Oh, and Myst is responsible for levels of smugness beyond any other, generated by - brrrrrrrrr - Mac gamers in the nineties. Oh, has the universe ever witnessed a more loathsome collection of turtle-necked smug-goblins? "Yes, I play computer games. But I play them on my [imaginary internal fanfare] Mac." "Oh, so you play Myst and Civilisation then. And NOTHING ELSE."

Those one-mouse-buttoned buckets of self-importance, explaining to you how their Apple Macintosh is so much better for gaming than your PC, like a group of pompous weeds with dustbin lids for shields going to war with the armies of Sparta, and yet somehow the absolute certainty that they'd already won the battle. And then when trounced - smashed into the ground - looking up through their spindly glasses and saying, "And it's far better for desktop publishing."

A time to die

When I'm asked what I'd do if given a time machine, I don't say, "Go to the dawn of the millennium to meet Christ," or, "Travel forward to next week and get the lottery numbers!" I say, "I would travel back to 1992, to Cyan's Washington studio, and I would smash everything to smithereens, then get the developers, stick them in the time machine, and send them four hundred million years into the past. And then I'd stay in that time and ensure that no one else attempt to revive the project. Anything, anything at all, to stop Myst.

Picture of John.

About John Walker

Read more articles from John by visiting the John Walker archive page.

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Comments (61) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • metamorphic #1 2 years ago

    Myst was one of the best games of its generation; it was always a journey, really, the entire game, and no doubt it's influenced too many games to mention. Adventure games (the real kind) will always be the best!

  • aesthetis #2 2 years ago

    Myst was too basic to be much fun, you're right. However, its sequel was a remarkable game at the time - I remember getting hugely obsessed with the intricate backstory and immersive sunny island of Riven as a teenager, hours of nerdy fun with my best mate drawing maps and diagrams in a notebook to find solutions to the puzzles.
    Myst III: Exile was also quite fantastic - particularly one of the 'Ages', Amateria, which drew design influences from Chinese architecture and the hexagonal rock formations of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. The addition of 360' turning views made the 'click forward to advance a few steps' a lot easier to understand where you were in the landscape. And the pre-rendered animated rides on the transportation systems were fun if you moved close to the screen.
    Myst IV and V (and Uru, and anything else they may have farted out since) should be erased from existence I think - a trilogy it should remain, because once they handed it over it lost all its magic. By the way - I have all three novels too.

  • mika1h #3 2 years ago

    I played the whole Myst series through a few years back and Myst 1 definitely doesn't hold up. One of worst adventure games I have experienced. But I really like some of the sequels like Riven, Myst 4 and Myst 5. Myst 3 and Uru are just mediocre. The atmosphere and mythology in those better installments is excellent.

  • botherer #4 2 years ago

    I cannot tolerate any suggestion that Myst III: Exile is "fantastic". I am sending trained assassins to prevent your spreading these lies any further.

  • Ror1984 #5 2 years ago

    I remember my friend had this on Saturn, and absolutely loved it. So I borrowed it off him, and I just could not see what he was getting out of it. Maybe I'll remind him of it and see how he remembers it now.

  • Cordite #6 2 years ago

    Heh, great read.

  • barnard666 #7 2 years ago

    While I did spend many hours playing that game, I can't deny the article amused me....it feels like you are just throwing out the wood for a flame war! now burger time that's a game I hate, or uncharted and gears of war, because while both great games on their own, they have lead to copycat gaming that has lead the industry in to a spiral of repetition. while uncharted was copying gears and tomb raider lite, now games like enslaved and many others have platforming bits where you can't fail...games are slowly all turning in to dragons lair, but without the option of failing.

    anyway...yeah I liked myst.

  • barnard666 #8 2 years ago

    While I did spend many hours playing that game, I can't deny the article amused me....it feels like you are just throwing out the wood for a flame war! now burger time that's a game I hate, or uncharted and gears of war, because while both great games on their own, they have lead to copycat gaming that has lead the industry in to a spiral of repetition. while uncharted was copying gears and tomb raider lite, now games like enslaved and many others have platforming bits where you can't fail...games are slowly all turning in to dragons lair, but without the option of failing.

    anyway...yeah I liked myst.

  • Gunstar #9 2 years ago

    Myst was never a game. It was a fancy looking powerpoint presentation.
    Edited by Gunstar at 21/11/10 @ 02:22

  • MisterHands #10 2 years ago

    So.... 8/10?

  • Barbellion #11 2 years ago

    Myst and Riven are wonderful, story based experiences - the Myst world is rich, both in character and audio-visual grandeur. RealMyst is well worth checking out for those put off by the slideshow nature of the game, and Riven is one of the most atmospheric, cerebral and brilliant gameworlds ever created. I feel as if its a real place, and it is that, not Wipeout or Ridge Racer, that sold me a PlayStation.

    Take your reverse-snobbery and stick it.

    +100 internets to aesthitis for perception.

  • Lemming81 #12 2 years ago

    Agree 100% with the article. Also, bloody funny.

  • Headless_Monkey_Boy #13 2 years ago

    I LOVED and still LOVE myst.

    I loved reading the Journals, that provided a back story to the ages, but then i can read and enjoy it.
    I loved the mechanical logic puzzles.
    I loved the relaxed atmosphere, the with a basis of exploration and experimentation along with the first person perspective.
    I loved figuring out how the game worked and what was going on for myself, and not having a clue at the beginning but then i also liked Lost (TV, not the game obviously)

    I'm also the only person i physicaly know who does like myst (and Lost come to think of it)
    Myst offered an experience i hadn't had before, and i loved it. Sorry (meh-i'm not).

    I think this ones a Marmite, most people hate it and don't get it but some people love it and personally i love a developer willing to induldge my esoteric taste.

    And while i HATE Marmite i dont resent or hold a grudge for it taking up shelf space, i've not cut myself over companies producing competing brands such as vegimite. I don't wish to travel back in time and release anthrax into the beer dregs some random drunk decided to spread on his toast just to avoid the inane ads on telly. Nor have i stabed someone in the eye with a kebab skewer for eating it in front of me (though i have pulled a face).

    Live and let live i say.

  • aesthetis #14 2 years ago

    @ botherer: Myst III: Exile *was* fantastic, the last of the Myst games with the invested interest of Robyn and Rand Miller. Yeah, they handed it over to Presto Studios and Ubisoft at the time, but they still had their hands in. After the third instalment it all went to shit - unrecognisable as Myst games were IV: Revelation and whatever abomination stood for V: End of Ages! Besides, Exile had Brad Douriff playing Saavedro (also Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) who was, frankly, acting his tits off in that part so much you have to give the man some respect. Loved it, the black boxed collectors edition holds a proud place on my bookshelf.

  • Headless_Monkey_Boy #15 2 years ago

    @aesthetis

    Sorry to geek out at you, but Myst 3 exile was handed over to presto studios, while cyan worked on "mudpie" later to become Uru live (then dead, then uru offline, then live again and dead and can now be enjoyed live for free [while it goes open source] at [link url=http://www.mystonline.com)]http://www.mystonline.com)[/link]

    Cyan did however make Myst 5 which tied up the plot unable to be fulfilled in uru live (but made it complicated when it went live again)

    Its all very simple :-S

    God damn it you posted while i was posting!!! (and i like 5 sniff)
    Edited by Headless_Monkey_Boy at 21/11/10 @ 04:05

  • persus-9 #16 2 years ago

    Wow, I never knew I was living so dangerously. I somehow managed to get through the 90s without getting a copy of Myst. I guess because I only ever upgraded my PC with OEM hardware or something. I always sort of wanted a copy just because I'd heard how huge it was and always sort of didn't because it sounded like style over substance crap. Now I sit and look at it on gog.com and wonder if I'm going to shell out $5.99 to satisfy a spot of 16 year old curiosity in the knowledge that I'd almost certainly hate it and now it wouldn't even look prettier than most games. So far I've resisted the mistake but I wonder for how long...

  • orborborb #17 2 years ago

    Myst was the first videogame with good taste, and there haven't been many since.

  • Daikon #18 2 years ago

    Fantastic piece!
    Couldn't agree more with all of the sentiments expressed.

  • ToAks #19 2 years ago

    i belived the hype for so many years, pc and mac people screaming about how good it looked and was...
    I was (and still is) an Amiga guy so i could only drool over the pictures....until i got hold of PYST (the parody of Myst) for 68k Mac which i ran on the Amiga via shapeshifter... it was funny as hell and i thought...damn i need MYST too.

    ClickBoom ported Myst to the Amiga a few years later, i bought it day one....and i drooled over the box...tried the game and went.. wtf is this shit??????... hated it... played it for a few hours, havent played it since. (Btw ClickBoom's port was a quality one)

    great article btw...oh and Day Of The Tentacle is one of the best games i have ever played even though it took me over a decade to finally try. (I love ScummVM!!!).
    Edited by ToAks at 21/11/10 @ 07:26

  • AHiFi #20 2 years ago

    "Myst is out now on PC." \o/

  • TheEnforcer000 #21 2 years ago

    I loved Myst and all of it's sequels.

  • robg #22 2 years ago

    “Go to the dawn of the millennium to meet Christ,”

    How long ago was this written?

  • SuperBas #23 2 years ago

    I like the sense of mystery, and the exploring, but for the rest agree with the article. Bring on The Witness by Jonathan Blow!

  • Jonny5Alive7 #24 2 years ago

    Haha great article, agree 100%

  • Sorbicol #25 2 years ago

    Bet you loved Secret of Monkey Island though. Is not really that different a game is it?

  • taurus82 #26 2 years ago

    The entire Myst series re-worked using the multi-platform game engine known as CryEngine3, would definitely make my year.
    I will forever love Myst, unfortunately I've only ever played the PS editions (minus PSP).

  • botherer #27 2 years ago

    @Barbellion - There's nothing reversed about MY snobbery.

    @robg - Oh, sure, that other millennium. I'm not sweating the linear details.

    @Sorbical - I've said quite a few times in these retros that I don't think that much of SOMI. But no - it bears almost nothing in common with Myst.

  • jellyBelly #28 2 years ago

    Although i did play and finish Myst as others have already pointed out Riven is a much better game and the highpoint of the series imho. It had stunning audiovisual presentation and the world felt more coherent with puzzles that somehow made more sense. If they remade it in HD, perhaps in a portable format or as a digital download on console, id buy it in an instant.

  • Torkin #29 2 years ago

    I played the sequel Riven first, and I absolutely loved it. My father loved it too. I found myself writing on the desk to solve the brilliant puzzles (well, most of them), when I was supposed to take lecture notes. No other game had made me think like that. I don't know about the PC version, but the Playstation one had five discs if I remember correctly, one for each of the islands, and you had to change the disc when moving from one island to another, which sucked, but I loved it anyway.

    Then I played Myst, the PS version too, and while it was a good game, the PS port was horrendous and somewhat diminished my enjoyment of the game. Man, how it hurt my eyes, reading those books on the TV screen...

    Myst III Exile was a good game too, but when I played it, it was the GameFAQs era already and I couldn't resist to take a look, which ruined most of the game for me.

    The Myst novels are a good read if you are the type who gets excited discovering new and strage worlds, they're a lot of fun, though the third one is the worst of them imho.
    Edited by Torkin at 21/11/10 @ 10:23

  • RodHull #30 2 years ago

    Id say use an apostrophe. Oh darn.

  • The_Ty #31 2 years ago

    What?

    It's easy to break down a game and say "oh you have to get some information that relates to something else miles away". That's like breaking down Shadow of the Colossus, "you fight 16 bosses".

    Sometimes a game is more than the sum of it's parts. Myst had a good atmosphere and I liked the puzzles. And just because it doesn't have conventional narrative doesn't make it wrong.

  • 43n1m4 #32 2 years ago

    Please, John. It's time to take your pills.

  • f3r613 #33 2 years ago

    Awkening on a mysterious island filled with strange contraptions hidden bunkers you become a pawn as Two brothers compete for your help in order to secure their release, sounds awfully familiar.
    At the time i absolutely hated Myst when it originally came out i found it obtuse and annoying but on a recent play through i found it rather a pleasant experience it felt like a breath of fresh air to explore a mysterious island without having to put up with the constant whining of the survivors of oceanic 815, Riven however is a far more polished and enjoyable experience and while Myst somewhat misses the mark for being a truly great game, with riven by its side there is more enjoyment to be had solving some these nightmare puzzles than there is to be had from working out some of Losts No answer at all "Puzzles"

  • jkerr91 #34 2 years ago

    "Myst is out now on PC" That made me LOL!

  • dagas #35 2 years ago

    I think pre-rendered games can still be great. Syberia 2 came out a decade after pre-rendered graphics were popular, but still managed to be a great game. The only down side really is that you can't change the resolution.

  • Shinetop #36 2 years ago

    God, I thought the entire world loved Myst and that I was the only one who loathed every aspect of it. The lack of movement (at least the 7th Guest had smooth animated transitions between screens), the horrible, horrible writing in endless amounts of endless books (no, this had nothing to do with literature or good storytelling. Putting a lot of text in a book and requiring people to read it onscreen is not the same thing as storytelling), the terrible, terrible game mechanic of "flounder about for a while and see if you can make sense of it" with the goddamned machine puzzles.

    And what's worse, it's the sole reason why it's considered 'acceptable' by some to call a collection of machine puzzles an "adventure game".

    Like metamorphic here:

    Adventure games (the real kind) will always be the best!

    Myst has nothing to do with adventure games. At best, it's a very distant cousin. A distant, retarded cousin that you don't like to mention to people.

  • mrpsb #37 2 years ago

    There are few things more amusing than two pages of rage and hatred, still chuckling now.

  • Kaminari #38 2 years ago

    "The Death of Adventure Games", by Al Lowe:

    http://bit.ly/aSlUZi

  • Wis #39 2 years ago

    So that was Myst?!

    You guys get them pitchforks!

    I'm gonna call The Docter!

  • Half-assed #40 2 years ago

    Best selling slide show of all time.

  • Kerome #41 2 years ago

    Open? It was a slideshow, in terms of open-ness a big step back from the likes of Ultima Underworld 2.

    But it had a certain quality, captured by music and art style and puzzles, which was captivating and kept you engrossed even though the only real meat to the game was how long it took to work out the (sometimes obscure) puzzles. For me that "feel" is what I remember most about Myst, and what made it good (that and unravelling the story).

  • Shinetop #42 2 years ago

    The 7th Guest, which came out at the same time was of the same level of fidelity, but without being a slideshow.

  • dsmky117 #43 2 years ago

    I never played Myst (I was 3 at the time), but I can pretty much just substitute Myst with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Amnesia subscribes to almost everything described in this article

  • Kluff #44 2 years ago

    Did you forget to take your pills, grumpy? ;)

    I wonder how much of this article I should take seriously, or if I can take it seriously at all and has therefore much worth to me.
    Blaming Myst for all the sins that it inspired other designers to implement is like faulting Monkey Island for all the games that terribly tried to imitate it (Bud Tucker in Double Trouble is an obvious example, since it copied straight the whole SCUMM interface; others are Trick or Treat, Mutation of J.B, or the more recent Ankh and Jack Keane).
    Not to forget, Cyan chose prerendered graphics at the time because realtime 3D wasn't able back then to render enough details. Later on they remade Myst in realtime 3D and allowed the player free movement, which shows that they would've made the original this way at the time if they could.
    The later Myst games by Cyan, Myst V and Uru, are in realtime 3D, too. It's just that the designers that imitate Myst don't seem to understand that Cyan used prerendered 3D not by choice, but because of restrictions.
    Maybe a small budget forces Kheops Studios, for example, to still use prerendered 3D, but then I look at Amnesia and wonder how it would be so hard to pull something off in that manner.

    Also, don't forget the positive things Myst inspired: without it, Benoit Sokal may have never become a game designer and we may have never got the wonderful Syberia, which seemed to inspire another sin, though: the smart cursor.
    Edited by Kluff at 22/11/10 @ 00:21

  • TheTrueSpin #45 2 years ago

    Funny to read, but Myst wasn't that bad. It was one of the few games at that time that had a real atmosphere, although I accept the puzzles were a little bit silly.

  • WillyWanka #46 2 years ago

    disoriented, not disorientated

  • cristoflanga #47 2 years ago

    So true.

  • SuperNashwan #48 2 years ago

    Indifferent to Myst to be honest, just not my thing, however +1 to Kluff for that Syberia comment.

  • obscured021 #49 2 years ago

    I took one look at Myst and got back to playing doom and Xwing

  • LiamK #50 2 years ago

    I had to review Myst IV for PC Format a few years ago. I think I managed to trick my brain into thinking it was a good game, as I genuinly didn't think it was too bad. I tried to play it a few months later, and loathed every aspect of it.

    The human brain is an odd thing.

  • Kami #51 2 years ago

    Ahh, Myst... and that's all I have to say on that subject.

    Brilliant article though. Such bile... such anger... genuine laugh all the way through... I assume you didn't like Myst then?

  • Stoatboy #52 2 years ago

    @WillyWanka

    From the Oxford English Dictionary:

    Disorientate - cause someone to lose their sense of direction or feel confused.

    Disorient- chiefly N. American - another term for disorientate.

    This is Eurogamer. It plays UK rules.

  • oupe #53 2 years ago

    Myst. The game that only old geezers, your neighbor and non-friends used to play. The rest of us (apparently) played Doom.

  • StooMonster #54 2 years ago

    I bought launch day Myst, to utilise CD-ROM capabilities of my Mac.

    It was boring, and floppy disk Doom (and WinNT4 dual booted with Win95) led to me switching to Windows for a decade.

    I think I gave the Myst disc away, I agree with this article.

  • koopa #55 2 years ago

    I've been a PC gamer since 1990 and I've never even seen any of the Myst games in action, though I remember lots of buzz about them. Looks like I haven't missed much...

  • Quint2020 #56 2 years ago

    Baaaahahahahaaa, I genuinely enjoyed this, I remember getting Myst with our first "family computer" (remember those?) I put it in the drive played it for 5 minutes, promptly ejected the disc, put it in it's crappy paper sleeve and threw it back on the shelf, where it stayed, forever.... while I played Monkey Island.

  • Khab #57 2 years ago

    ...and here it is, finished in under two minutes.
    Edited by Khab at 22/11/10 @ 14:18

  • Snaggletooth #58 2 years ago

    Ha haaa....I loved Myst! It made me so much commission. I was working in a retail store (anyone remember Byte?) and it was at the dawn of multimedia PC's. People used to come in to buy a computer but 90% had absolutely no clue about computers, all they knew is that they should get one. There were quite a few people who weren't convinced about buying a PC at the time, as they didn't know how to use one, and they were extremely expensive compared to now. But, with a quick demo of Myst and MS Encarta .......they we're totally sold, along with a warranty, printer, desk, cable etc :)

    Ahh memories, but the best bit was kitting out the display PC's with network cards, Mystiques & Voodoo cards and half the staff staying in the shop each night until midnight playing Quake!

  • Rorsch #59 2 years ago

    Never met anyone who didn't like Myst.

  • andromeda #60 2 years ago

    1..You mock it Walker, but you clearly played it a fair bit.
    2...Myst had a unique atmosphere, no wonder it captured the imagination of so many.
    3...We wouldn't have Eternal Darkness without it
    4...I'd rather play this than any fucking guitar/rock/sing wankfest bollocks

  • Sarge #61 2 years ago

    So, did Walker actually like Myst then? I can't really tell from the re-review...