Notes on Myst (VR)

Achievement unlocked? I finally completed the classic that has inspired so many games over the past three decades.

To be honest, I never played Myst in the 90s. I didn’t have access to a computer until the early 2000s and by the time I got one, I never really used it for gaming. I spent a lot of time with consoles in that era, but I don’t recall ever seeing this available on one of them. Even if it was available, I was far too busy with the golden age of Final Fantasy games to be bothered with much else.

I was aware of the game. I had several friends who had it and they all had compiled their own detailed notebooks and theories about the Myst world. From outside, they all looked a bit nuts. The only attempt I made at playing this was on a Nintendo 2DS. I picked it up on sale and played it for an hour before bookmarking it for later–later in this case meaning never?

I purchased the game again in 2021, this time on Oculus Quest at the recommendation of a friend. Another false start and it sat in my Quest library until this week. I’ve been busy playing through my PC VR backlog over the past month or so and one of the games on my list is Obduction by the same developers. Before jumping back into Obduction^§§ I decided to finally play all the way through Myst. I’d like to see how their puzzle design and approach to game design has changed over the years.

I’m not going to go into details with any of the puzzles here. I’ll try to limit my thoughts to generalizations and notes on the world.

I enjoyed solving the puzzles in this game. There are a few that stood out to me as less than ideal though. For example, a few puzzles require listening closely for certain sounds. Not exactly accessible to everyone. I think puzzle games are more fun when they can be solved by anyone thinking about the puzzle rather than relying on physical characteristics. This is the reason I’ve never finished playing Portal. I can figure out the solutions to any puzzle I’ve come across, but I can’t make my hands physically perform the tasks that Portal demands of me. Audio puzzles aside, I enjoyed the rest of the game.

The world–or worlds really–looked and felt great. This was a VR world that was like a real place and time to me. There where a few times that I just sat down on the floor to relax and spend time in space. The Channelwood world was my favorite.

I played all the way through, and I think I solved every main puzzle and found everything there was to find, but I’m sure I Myst^§ a few things along the way. I certainly found an ending and one that I’m pleased with. After the ending, the world opened back up for me to explore. I spent a few minutes wandering around, but I haven’t found any clues about what to do next, if there is anything to do. I gather that there have been several iterations of Myst over the years and some of them have additional content and stories to uncover. It’s not clear to me if that is the same with the VR version, but it seems likely.

§ Look, it’s my website and if I want to make awful puns you’re just going to have to deal with it.

§§ I did eventually play Obduction but was generally unimpressed. It had a deeper story, but solving the puzzles was more frustrating than interesting. At one point I got to a series of puzzles based around shifting back and forth between worlds which involved a lot of slow loading time. I could see what the game wanted from me, but I wasn’t into the game enough to finish it.