Written by Vetinari
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| Welcome back to Myst. |
Interestingly, when loading a saved game, Myst presents you with the image of an open book with the picture taken from whatever world you saved your game into, which is a nice thematic consonance with the fact that you are effectively being transported in the world described inside that book. The entrance in the new world is completed with a sinister sound effect which represents you getting whisked inside the world represented inside the book pages.
Problem is, the first time that I loaded my game, I was presented with the above picture, and I had no idea what I was looking at, and where I would end up when entering this book.
Problem is, I am an idiot.
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| The ceiling of Myst island's library. |
The fact is that the library on Myst island had also the possibility to look up, and the above was no other than the decorated ceiling inside the library.
This particular method of saving the game by letting you restore only in one particular place and not wherever you happened to be when last saving your game has obviously some advantages for the programmers, i.e. that the only thing that they need to record in the savegame is the status of the various dynamic points inside the game (such as if a puzzle was solved or not, etc.) and not everything else, which could be then just loaded from default when restoring a game.
Having solved this particular conundrum, we can resume exploring Myst island, and for our next stop, we switch from the neoclassical architecture of 1790-1830 to 1950s sci-fi.
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| This seems like something straight out of Forbidden Planet. |
On a series of platforms jutting out onto the sea there is a spaceship, towards which some electrical cables run. The spaceship hatch is currently unopenable, but there is another marker switch nearby. This allows me to confirm my theory that the switches modify the map in the library, since by throwing the switch at the spaceship, its depiction also appears on the map diagram.
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| Spot the difference. |
While I'm examining the map, I click on the tower icon at the right of the library and something unexpected happens.
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| Whoa! |
A line pointing out from the tower appears and begins to spin, while the flashing words “Tower Rotation” show up. (Also, rumbling noises from above). By experimenting with this feature, it seems that when the line stops on the spaceship, submerged ship and cogwheels, it changes colour, which obviously highlights that these settings are somehow important.
Getting back to the tower when it has rotated to one of these spots, I find something interesting when climbing the two ladders.
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| Nice view. |
The “book” ladder catwalk now features a small slit opening from which you can see the part of the island towards which the tower is pointing. The key ladder still opens to a wall, but instead of being blank, it instead displays a plate with some etched writing.
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| I expect this will be “key” to solve one of the puzzles. (get it?) |
If I rotate the tower to the other two points of interest, I get different keys, which will most probably be useful for the related puzzles. For the submerged ships, they are some dates.
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| I think I know where these will have to be inputted. |
For the spaceship, it is something not so out of place on a wall sign.
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| Not a standard electrical voltage. |
Exiting the library again, I commit to finishing the exploration of the island before doing anything else, so I enter the fir copse and find a couple of interesting buildings as well as another two marker switches.
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| This seems to be a power supply sub-station. |
The first is a building from which electrical cables come out, running on some pillars towards the spaceship. The second one is a simple log cabin.
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| American frontier-style. |
Then at the far end of the island there is a clocktower on a small islet, which is however unreachable from the mainland. I also see another marker switch there.
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| Myst is apparently also a brand of clock manufacturers. |
The two wheels in the device on the near side are used to change the time on the clock. Lo and behold, I have just discovered some clue pointing to 2:40 being an interesting combination of hours and minutes, so I set the clock to that time and I am rewarded by a bridge of cogs leading to the previously out of reach building.
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| Is this a stealth pun on 4:20? I wouldn't put it past the designers. |
After throwing the marker switch on the outside, I enter the clocktower and find a contraption with cogwheels, some levers to be pulled and three numbered wheels. Since the second part of the hint with 2:40 pointed at 2,2,1 being the correct combination, it is just a matter of pulling the levers until all three numbers are correct.
In practice, if you pull the left lever, the two upper number wheels turn, but then if you keep it pulled without releasing, just the middle one rotates further. The same goes for the right lever and the two bottom wheels.
After inputting the correct numbers, one of the cogwheels open and inside there is...
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| Nothing. |
A little disappointed at not having found anything at all inside the clocktower, I get back to the library to check if there have been some other changes now that I have activated all the marker switches. The only difference is that all of the island landmarks are now lighted up, and that the tower can rotate to a fourth point, which is the cabin in the woods.
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| Actually, that's not exactly the cabin, it is slightly lower. |
In fact, when I get to the tower, I can see that it is pointing to a big fir tree.
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| That giant tree should have been the first thing I noticed while on this island! |
There is also a related hint on the “key” wall.
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| As far as clues go, this is pretty disappointing. |
While exploring to check if my exploit with the clocktower puzzle did something at all, I notice something which in retrospect should have been extremely obvious. The cogs near the docks have opened up.
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| Exactly as the one inside the clocktower. |
Inside the opened cog, there is a book, which, since I already know/remember where this is going, I don't want to touch until I have finished exploring all of Myst island.
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| The most fearful sight of all: a book. |
Then, while I explore the island to check if there are any other obvious things that I missed, I notice that right at one side of the starting dock there is a door carved into the hill.
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| In my defense, it was not that conspicuous while it was closed. |
I enter the doorway and proceed down some stairs to a subterranean chamber with a water pool in the middle.
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| Okay, so this is the forechamber. Makes sense. |
There is a button on the bottom of the pool, and when I click on it, the water disappears. It would seem that it was simply an holographic projection. I would guess that this is the imager that Atrus was talking about in his letter.
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| The imager in all of its glory. |
Checking the room, I notice a sheet of paper with some settings, sitting right on top of a wall panel with two rotating wheels with ten digits to be changed accordingly.
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| All of these are useless. |
“Topographical extrusion test” is just a 3D depiction of some mountain range, “marker switch diagram” is a picture of what we already deduced was a marker switch, and “water-turbulent pool” is just what we had at the beginning when we entered this room.
Having found all of the marker switches on the island I just input “08” and press the button on the imager.
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| Somehow I expected a 3D hologram of his head, not something like this. |
And there it is: Atrus' message which was referred to in the letter. Atrus tells Catherine that something terrible has happened, and that one of his sons has destroyed all of his books. He retrieved the only undamaged books and put them into places of protection. To find them, he says that we must use the tower rotation.
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| Thanks, buddy, we already figured that out. |
So, it would seem that the two guys trapped inside the red and blue books are not exactly on the up and up. Which is not a great shock, since one of them is basically a shiftier version of Jafar and the other one can only be described as positively deranged.
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| Really? But this guy seemed so trustworthy! |
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| The less said about this guy here, the better. |
Anyway, we still have nothing else to go on other than trying to find these further books by solving the remaining puzzles on Myst, so next time we'll try to finish the exploration of the other parts of the island, and see if we can find any additional red or blue pages to make further contact with the two trapped brothers. I can't wait.
Session Time: 1 hour 00 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours 40 minutes
Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!
This particular method of saving the game by letting you restore only in one particular place and not wherever you happened to be when last saving your game has obviously some advantages for the programmers, i.e. that the only thing that they need to record in the savegame is the status of the various dynamic points inside the game (such as if a puzzle was solved or not, etc.) and not everything else, which could be then just loaded from default when restoring a game.
ReplyDeleteBut in the case of this game, it feels like pure laziness. There's no NPCs to keep track of, which would be the only other thing besides the player's position that needs to be stored. It feels like making the game artificially longer or harder.
In some games, it makes a lot of sense. For example, in the GTA games, you need to go to a certain garage or apartment to save, but it's more for the sake of not letting you cheat past missions by save-scumming through them.
Eh, there's not really anything you need to be next to, so memorizing position in general as opposed to which age the player is in doesn't really add much for however difficult it is to add position saving in a Hypercard game.
DeleteI've played further ahead and can confirm the Mac bug described here is not an issue in my copy (version 1.01).
ReplyDeleteIn an oddity compared to e.g. LucasArts and Sierra games, the game prompts for a save name & file location only when first saving during a playthrough. I freaked out when I tried to make a second save and the file dialogue didn't appear (the cursor only disappeared very briefly), until I realised it wrote to the old file. I've forgotten how the Windows 3.1 version works, is it the same?
>I notice something which in retrospect should have been extremely obvious.
>The cogs near the docks have opened up.
The game also begins playing the music from the cogs as a hint when you open the miniature ones.
You didn't mention it, but note the last thing Atrus says in the recorded message you just viewed - telling Catherine to delete the message after viewing it, just to be safe. That, combined with the letter you found, makes it clear Catherine has in fact not been to the island since Atrus' last visit. While you obviously don't know how long ago it's been since the letter was left behind, it's an indication that things didn't go as planned, and something to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that lever puzzle in the clock... you just kind of skimmed over it, so you clearly figured out how to solve it right away, and will probably be surprised to hear that THIS is the "that one puzzle" in Myst. It's laughably easy to solve, of course, you have almost complete control over the digits by just holding down the levers, but it's not at ALL well communicated that holding down the levers will allow you to alter the digits in a different way than just pulling them repeatedly will, and it's quite impossible to set the digits to the correct combination without doing that.
Almost everyone gets stuck on this puzzle for a while, and at least me and Morpheus mentioned in rot13'd comments to previous posts that we expected you to be as well. Impressive.
I actually just fudged with the levers a bit and then found out that by keeping them down the digits would just change differently. Didn't think it would stump that many people, but maybe I was just lucky.
DeleteI'm pretty sure I didn't personally get stuck there the first time I played it either, but when I replayed it years later and had forgotten certain details, it took me quite a while to figure out what you're actually supposed to do. Not great design.
DeleteI mentioned the puzzle to a different age entrance, but not this one. Frankly, I never saw the difficulty of it myself, I think it took me a bit to figure it out, but it wasn't impossible or anything at all.
DeleteIn defense of the puzzle, once you analyze it you should realise that it's impossible with the initial assumption of how the levers work and that there's more to it.
Delete@Morpheus Really? My mistake then.
DeleteYeah, there's two puzzles in the game that stick out in... WAYS, I mentioned both of them in that early comment. We'll see what the reception to the second one is.
I was looking something up in the past of the blog, and came across an interesting conversation in the comments from long ago. About Myst, and the death of adventures, kind of like the conversation on the first post in this game.
ReplyDeletehttps://advgamer.blogspot.com/2012/02/game-10-leisure-suit-larry-i-skanks-for.html#comment-form
There's a few comments that didn't age well, in part because the industry (especially adventures) changed in ways 2012 commenters couldn't envision, but otherwise a worthwhile read.
Reading people from a decade ago is always a fun read.
DeleteI remember the roof thing being annoying at first, because it definitely isn't clear what's going on and you have no reason to find it until you load a game. It's also what happens whenever you return from an age, not really spoilers. It's not that difficult when you look at it, but it does seem unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what you think might be a reference is probably not. It's doubtful some random people would know of that thirty years ago.
I also decided to solve all the puzzles on Myst for this playthrough before venturing elsewhere. They are far more logical than I remembered, but I can still recall how frustrated I got back when I first tried the game.
ReplyDeleteMyst does, in general, pride itself on logical puzzles that need to be understood and solved as opposed to just trying things at random until you stumble upon the solution. Later games have more complex and tricky puzzles, but the original is quite easy and logical. The lever puzzle in the clock is as bad as it gets.
Delete