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Myst IV: Revelation There are rare moments in gaming when you find a title of absolutely flawless production. A work of art where nothing has been overlooked, nothing left to chance, nothing completed in a rush and not a single corner cut. This is the case with Myst IV, the latest installment in the Myst series. This series has enjoyed rich and vibrant heritage over the past eleven years; spawning five or so titles and the odd expansion set, this series isn't about adrenaline and action, it's about culture, really, and it's about learning. The games have a very loyal fan base, the series has spawned its own in-game language, the developers have lovingly mastered an aesthetic spin on that small but descriptive niche called steam-punk and they've stuck to a storyline that's based around a family and their journeys.
I first came across the original Myst in an early issue of Computer Arts. At the time it was one of the only truly commercial PC games you could buy for the Mac, and, targeting that audience rather well, the game looked absolutely stunning. Well, maybe not the game, but the screenshots. Myst and its progeny are adventure games, point and click adventures to be precise. I wouldn't actually go as far as calling Myst IV a game, I'd prefer to call it an experience. For me, games are fun, this isn't fun exactly, its hideously infuriating, complex and more often than not outstandingly difficult to understand (as a newcomer) and progress with. But it is lovely. Truthfully—audio-visually speaking—it's more than lovely, it's astonishingly lovely.
In an ideal world I'd sit with its creators and have them sail me through the title from start to finish and treat the whole thing like a movie. In fact maybe that's what it is: an interactive movie. It works well in this way, it's got a start and a finish, and a plot and a lot of stuff happens in the middle but unlike most games you're likely to come across there's no path between start and finish laid out for you. Its like waking up in Oz without the yellow brick road to guide you. Packed full of clues and intepretations the only thing that's going to get you from A to B is keen eyes and memory, a heck of a logical brain and some sort of inclination as to what A and B might actually be.
Your play a nameless, faceless character. Fading from black to a beautiful vista your first-person viewpoint moves through a little rollercoaster ride across a coastal environment of beautiful tropical seas, weathered rock formations and victorian-esque wood and brass contraptions to your destination. The scene is set. Unlike modern three-dimensional environments you're not free to wander, you're pivoting around pre-rendered scenes. Your field of view is full, the scenes being reminiscent of Quicktime VR, but taken to a whole new level. Each scene (of which the game is comprised) is an animated, plush affair with several layers of pre-rendered animation or stills and often overlaid video or hardware rendered assets. Its tricky to work out how it's done, suffice to say it's done well.
Within each of these scenes are entry points to the next scene; whether you're pointing and clicking your way across a bridge or jungle path, or from areas inside a room. In these scenes are also interactive elements, things like drawers of a cupboard, machines or instruments to control, creatures or fauna to interact with or objects to manipulate. Control is via a mouse cursor that reacts to your view, whether it be to move to another scene, investigate or control interactive objects. In all things the quality is so high that the first time you try and find you're way around you'll miss most of the things you can use. Unlike so many titles out there where you can see a difference in the rendering of usable and unusable assets, this is much more subtle. You will, if you like, learn to use your environment and distinguish what is usable from what is scenery. If this were perfectly executed the gameplay would be a little smoother, on the whole it's good, not perfect.
The Myst series follows a family of D'ni. In particular the lives of Atrus, his wife Catherine, and their three children; two brothers in their early thirties; Sirrus and Achenar, and their kid sister; Yeesha. To cut a very long story short Atrus is capable of creating small worlds; think of them as islands, and uses a process called "Linking" to travel between them. His sons, marvelling at the power their father wields, eventually achieve access to the "Art", and end up abusing it to the eventual destruction of some of these worlds, called "Ages" in the series. As damage limitation Atrus creates two bleak and desolate worlds and tricks his sons into linking there, imprisoning one on each.
You arrive in the age of Tomanha, where the family have made their home and through the process of the game travel to both the prison worlds of Haven and Spire on the path of clues which I won't spoil here and then to a stunningly attractive age of the elders called Serenia. And serene it is too, or at least would be if the meddlesome brothers had left it alone. Each age has different rules that go with their very differing scenarios and progress is effectively about exploration and puzzle-solving. As you explore and move through the scenes that comprise the four ages you'll uncover lots of storyline in the shape of journals and flashbacks. The game features about an hour's worth of full motion video, with blue-screened actors, not sprites, which brings pretty much all of the characters in the game to life. I might add at this point that Peter Gabriel is amongst the voice talents, and the game features an absolutely beautiful dream sequence to one of his tracks.
The game is big and its not something you can accomplish in the normal 20 to 30 hours of gameplay most titles demand. In fact I think it's fair to say you could spend at least that in any one or other of the three main ages trying to rack your brains figuring out the logic puzzles. The game itself actually features a couple of aids in this respect; firstly an in-game camera for you to capture things of note and importance you think you'll need later on, or just to snap the gorgeous waterfalls or creatures you come across in your travels, and a comprehensive three-stage help guide which ranges from riddles to step-by-step solutions, depending on what you request. Nicely added to this is a little warning that the solutions therein will dull your gameplay. Personally I can't see that many people actually finishing the game unless they're die-hard fans of the series, so I guess dulled is better than nothing. I'll let you into a secret here, after completing about half the game I used a walkthrough to complete it, and this leads onto my earlier point about being led around the game rather than bouncing your way around it aimlessly. I have a BSc Honours degree and I don't like trying to wire up logic circuits enough that I'd actually enjoy doing so in a game.
Myst IV then is a massive title. Shipping on two DVD's the install will deprive you of over 7Gb of your hard drive and a considerable chunk of your time. With that much animation running you're also going to be requiring a very recent machine and, although you don't need the processing capacity that a First Person Shooter requires, all that technology gets used. Three years of production have resulted in an impressive experience. This particular title (developed by Ubisoft and not by Cyan for the first time) holds true to, and enhances, the very definitive and crafted styling the series has come to be recognised for and even fleshes out the worlds and storylines of its proceeding releases.
This is a dying breed in game genres. The adventure game seems to be out of synch with todays adrenalin-hungry gaming generation. As far as its genre is concerned no other title, or series, comes close. This is a game of invention, of subtlety and of intelligence. Often it pushes the boundaries of patience but in hindsight its worth the effort. At its worst it's a set of dastardly crafted chores, at best its a journey of such captivating beauty and elegance that its just total pleasure to engage in.
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