Responding to comments on my video about Myst

[@BlackSun404]

Oh hi new video. I'll leave this here too, then. What the original had that I'm missing more on each iteration of Myst, is the eery, dark, creepy, ominous feeling of being somewhere I'm not SUPPOSED to be. Liminal space like. While it never was a horror game, many locations gave me the shivers down the spine. THAT is what I'm missing the most today. I do like the remakes for the 3D aspect of them, other than the poorly animated characters breaking my immersion whenever they come on screen. Greatly prefer the FMV modes, which isn't a thing for the otherwise pretty good Riven remake I'm playing rn.

[@cubicinfinity2]

All of this heavy analysis of a single game and its series is not just for its own sake. This is work that can expand and deepen our understanding of fiction and world-building -not in every way, but in many.

[@theSlimJim]

I liked the comment about liminal spaces. That seems like an accurate summary of what the original Myst was supposed to be like. It combined Atrus's ambition with Catherine's dream, rationalism meeting its opposite. Riven was something else entirely.

[@goofmuffin]

One comment brought up the size of the things on the island, and yeah, watching my partner play through realMyst everything felt way too small - not just the buildings but also the island itself. The tight framing and nodal movement probably made everything feel bigger in the original, and when you're free to move about and look at everything, even though the literal dimensions may be the same, it feels wrong.

[@AnodyneFaust]

Your voice and deliberate commentary are a huge strength of your videos. It's refreshing to hear KZbinrs communicate a message clearly, and shouldn't that be the point of a video essay? Keep up the erudition! Do you have any influences that have shaped your delivery style?

[@NYKevin100]

21:15 - The room with the spider chair has had its door changed to sliding. It is reasonable to infer that this will be the case with at least some other doors as well. They also moved it, to force players to solve the rotating room puzzle before being able to embark the maglev for the first time. Personally, I could never get excited one way or the other about the whole sliding door thing, but I'm of two minds about the second change. On the one hand, I really liked Riven's nonlinear structure. I think it's unfortunate that players are now forced to solve a real puzzle just to leave Temple Island (in the original, all you really had to do was play with the spider chair for a few minutes, which I suppose is technically a "puzzle" of sorts, but not very much of one). But on the other hand, the new location makes far more logical sense than the old location, because the in-universe purpose of the rotating room was to discourage the Rivenese from approaching the Golden Dome, so it would make logical sense to extend that protection to the spider chair.

[@Dreamprism]

Your Mark comparison is perfection. 🫡

[@trapez77]

People need to understand that just because something hasn’t been explained doesn’t make it magic. I wish cyan would go back to making pre-rendered games. They were the kings of that genre

[@rgerber]

i never experienced Myst or Riven as anything magical but mysterious and elevated states of existences

[@shadyparadox]

But just because you can think of an explanation, that doesn't mean that's what happened either. @rgerber Perhaps that's all the magic we need. Metallic, mirrored water sounds pretty magical to me.

[@TheExileFox]

Yes, the deforestation is annoying but otherwise RealMyst is a nice way to explore the world in 3d. It's really sad how they changed the Channelwood water switches to accommodate VR. The problem with RealMyst is down to the scale of the island, which is why there's less trees. It would be hard to make the forest just as dense as it was in the original. If they had scaled the island up a little bit, I think it would have looked better (say 50% larger). Similarly Channelwood has an issue with the scale of the switches in Myst VR - or rather their height. The metal levers do not fit the age and I think a good compromise would have been to raise up the switch so that they sit at a comfortable height without changing the age too much (see for example the bridge you have to extend to reach the other platform inside the big dome in Riven which is placed at a decent height but might control something below the player) I really like the effort you're putting into this and; I think you could learn something from watching the more recent videos of Dilandau3000 as they generally have a very good narrative and if it was possible, I would love to see a video of you two just discussing the Myst series and maybe other Cyan games too. And here's a last little nugget: Rime is just a play on the word "prime" as it would "prime" you for visiting Riven. (this is my interpretation, not a fact)

[@DarkSamus100]

Thanks for the video Shady. Really interesting all those various comments, and the responses you gave.I do like your touch of humour and wittiness, while responding. I prefer Riven over Myst, but I still like Myst. I like Myst being Myst, and Riven being Riven. They have their own different strengths, and they don't need to be the same, for me, at least. Have a good day and one, Shady. The same to everyone. P.S: Also poor poor Marc and Myst. : ^( .

[@vektheartist]

You’re doing great Shady, no need to be paranoid.😂 It all makes sense to me. You have great commentary and great points.

[@doltBmB]

Myst does have a fair amount of mist, it's part of what makes for example the mountain look bigger than it actually is, mist is one the key non-stereoscopic cues humans use to determine scale and distance.

[@shadyparadox]

You're right. I was thinking more of a cloud effect, which I find distracting. Myst has a much more subtle and continuous drapery, for purposes like you said but also other things like giving Channelwood a dewy atmosphere.

[@LaukkuPaukku]

The effect of more distant objects appearing fainter BTW is known as "aerial perspective" or "atmospheric perspective".

[@doltBmB]

@@LaukkuPaukku ahh, thank you. I knew it had a specific name but I couldn't remember what it was.

[@Dreamprism]

The comment about how players tend to like more control (3D movement in that example) regardless what the devs want (players not being able to see certain things early) reminds me also of when the game asks you to set the light/darkness slider to where the thing in the middle is barely visible; I always choose to make it a little brighter than that so I can more easily see stuff in the darkness. (Rarely is anything so bright to cause a problem.)

[@doltBmB]

realmyst basically ruined stoneship by making certain things way too visible, even with the correct gamma set

[@trapez77]

If you read the book of atrus, one of the ages he goes to, has a mist wall in the ocean that the inhabitants weren’t allowed to cross. I think atrus added that mist wall to all the ages of myst

[@nomoresaul]

4:30 The third misinterpretation is to take the sentence to mean she “saw,” that is, “met with” or “went on a date with” the man. Which, yes, brings up multiple more possible misinterpretations, but you see the point.

[@shadyparadox]

Ah!

[@rgerber]

they really should ultimately do a Myst realtime that looks 99% like the original renderings. The water barely moving and looking more like a reflective metallic surface, also most things looked more metallic, cold and rocky which gave it that super surreal feel.

[@trapez77]

I always thought the water looks still but vibrating

[@J43rv1]

So what's wrong with RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition? Rand will never make Myst with the same design/aesthetics but in interactive 3D so RM:ME is the closest we're ever going to get and it deserves a bit more credit.

[@trapez77]

They did kind of try to make linking more logical. That don’t outright explain it but it has something to do with the tablet and the bahro. I think when we gave the tablet back to the bahro, the linking books ceased to work. But I’m not sure. I wonder if they will hint at the nature of the star fissure in the riven remake

[@francoisleveille409]

Just like me - perhaps the same as George Lucas was with his first 3 Star Wars movies - Rand Miller is a bit obsessed with his early creation Myst and feels the need to modernize his vision of Myst every time technology has changed enough to justify it. This being said since he is the CEO of Cyan I assume this is his way of getting closer to his true vision of the game and perhaps update the vision itself. Since I have NEVER played Myst then I'm ok for taking the ride directly to the most recent incarnation.

[@tomysshadow]

I don't really have a strong opinion on the matter and was mostly fine with the latest Myst remake, but I do find the emphasis on realism in the discussion ironic, considering Myst's surrealism was a selling point to the extent the original tagline was "the _surrealistic_ adventure that will become your world"

[@Shark-pj8in]

But I think you could argue that was due to the limited tech of the 90s like in his previous video, aka not their vision, but what they had to do. In that case, I think it's the simplicity, nostalgia, and how you interpret games like these. It's usually a mix of those 3 things.

[@theendofit]

How in gods name would you make a fully 3d game look identical to a 2d game. That is an impossible standard

[@Rhodochrone]

great stuff, I've been checking your channel periodically for that next part. it's been great fun thinking about all this.

[@Shark-pj8in]

I get that the remake of Myst went for more realism, and honestly, I think that’s how it should be. The original games had this magical vibe, but a lot of that was because the tech back then was too primitive to make things more believable. Now that we’ve got the tools to do this, it feels weird when stuff happens without any logic or explanation, especially in a game world that’s meant to be immersive. This is a puzzle game, too, so that means it needs to be logical to a good degree. Sure, the linking books and the ages should still have that magical feel... but everything else? It should follow real-world rules if it can. Realism doesn’t kill the magic, but it just makes the world make sense. I think yall can complain, but tbh they don't have time to do this, and its not worth it financially to keep making games. Not everyone is going to like the remake, but a LOT of people did and still do. The top part was my opinion on the matter and a lot of others probably, too. This topic is all preference and all my opinion and it really doesn't matter.

[@djgamer5546]

I have a feeling you might not like my own idea for a MYST remake. I'd want to redesign nearly all of it from the ground up, trying to capture elements of the story and unvierse that just weren't technically feasible in the original. It'd still retain just enough "iconic" visual elements to be recognizable, but expand and rework a great deal of it to make it feel like a proper update/upgrade. For one, I'd want to make MYST island feel like a place where people actually lived, so I think the main building with the library would be greatly expanded upon. I'd also want to add the monkey-like creatures described in the Channelwood journal in some capacity, maybe making interacting with them into some kind of puzzle in its own right. I'd also want to play around with changing the trap books into prison ages where you collect "keys" rather than "pages" to try and free the brothers-that leans more to realism, but it could also make the interactions with the brothers just a little more interesting. It also kind of resolves the biggest plot whole at least within the game itself which is how the pages seemed to just "teleport" into the different ages after they used the trap books.

[@doltBmB]

For a 3D character in live action there are several approaches apart from what is mentioned at 17:00, first is to simply extrapolate the depth from an existing 2D video, and project the resulting points into 3D, AI could be very useful for this, although you would need to fill in the blanks since only the side that was visible in the 2D video will be reconstructed in 3D. The best approach would be something like the lightstage/cinema 2.0 stuff, which is like motion capture, except it captures a 3D point cloud of the actor with real light that can be interpolated almost like a video but in 3D. The capture process itself is non-trivial, but once it has been captured it can run in realtime on decade old PC's. The technique was first demonstrated on the AMD "dragon" platform, which was a phenom 2 processor and HD 4870 GPU. This is in my opinion the best approach to capture a live human in 3D. Look up AMD cinema 2.0 on youtube, it's very impressive.

[@XTrumpet63X]

Oh hey, my comment was featured. Yeah, I kind of feel like a jerk to comment on someone's voice, but also if the part I dislike is something you can practice then maybe it's worth pointing out? But then if I'm the only one who has that opinion maybe it's just subjective and doesn't matter after all. Anyways, I did end up listening to the whole of episode one. Loved it. Love long-form video game analyses. I've also listened to all of Patrician's stuff on the elder scrolls - if you haven't heard of his channel, I personally put his stuff in the same category of your episode one video. Not sure if you'd agree his is the same density as yours but I'll say a multi-hour video is no problem for me as a viewer.

[@Dreamprism]

Overly rehearsed (or rather, rehearsed to the point that you can properly make your case) is a good thing, not a bad thing. 👍 And I'm sure if AI made a case it would string together a bunch of facts and things that sound like facts with words that sound like a logical argument to someone who can't follow a logical argument. 😂

[@SpriteGuard]

I think you hamstrung yourself by not laying out both ideas at the start. People can only react to the antithesis without really having a good idea of what the thesis will be. As a fan of video essays, I will say that a two hour video is always a treat. I don't watch them all at a stretch, I switch between watching, listening, and taking breaks. Not exhausting at all.

[@trapez77]

I don’t like how in the myst remake they make it obvious that you get the book from the desert ground. Even if that’s where the book landed canonically, I prefer to come up with my own backstory to how I got my hands on it. I’ve never been to New Mexico or any desert so it takes me out of the character

[@Pippystix]

In the original official strategy guide, it's written like a journal from the perspective of the player character, and starts with a description of them finding the book in a New York library and accidentally touching the linking image while trying to smooth out the page--really highlighted for me at the time just how much cyan allowed us to come up with our own ideas of how we got here.

[@DavidRay39]

I literally live in a desert, though not in New Mexico.

[@vektheartist]

@@Pippystix Hahaha, I thought it was San Fransisco, but I could be wrong. It's been awhile if we're referring to that Prima Strategy Guide with the Myst Journal. I read that hundred of times in 3rd & 4th Grade...pissed my teachers off. But I ain't care. 🤣

[@Pippystix]

@@vektheartist oh dang you're absolutely correct! I was reaching wayyyyy back into my memory (also read it a hundred times in late elementary school ahaha) and got that detail wrong, thanks for catchin that!

[@micahbush5397]

Like I said in the previous video, Cyan itself doesn’t seem to know what they should be going after in the pursuit of "realism." Riven felt real because it had a functional (if greatly deteriorated) ecosystem, and you could see how people survived on that world. The Ages of Myst just don’t have those elements, and the buildings on the latest versions of Myst don’t have that level of finish and care that we would expect from Atrus.

[@TKFTGuillotine]

17:19 The cartoon sound effect is probably appropriate for my 5am ramblings haha. I've just had a lot of thoughts about this game for a little while that were bubbling up again in the wake of the new Riven news and your video presented an opportunity to spit them out somewhere. Glad to hear it was a "fine read" though. I definitely understood what you were getting at, that "hey, this thing is different from the others and that should be okay!" And to clarify, I kind of agree with that. A more surrealistic take on Myst can definitely fit within the universe, and even if it couldn't, it would be perfectly reasonable to remake the game as such anyways because that's definitely what the game was designed to be. I just happen to *also* not be super attached to those elements, and find a more mechanical Myst (the age) to be a more expected product from someone like Anna. That combined with my tendency to really *really* gravitate toward consistency in a series has me preferring the realism approach, even if I absolutely do think that the surrealistic elements were intentional design decisions. I get how you feel though. I would definitely be upset if they remade Portal to be super sterile and animated like the second game opposed to the weird, vaguely horror-adjacent decay we originally got, even if that *would* satisfy my obsession with consistency that makes me hurt a little bit whenever I think too hard about Portal 2. It's also a little silly that I'm concerned with consistency in a series that decided by the fourth game to say "screw it, let's retcon the first two games just for fun," but that's a can of worms I do not want to open haha.

[@trapez77]

It’s easy to get around that retcon with a good head-cannon

[@graizur]

The longer this video goes on the weirder it is that I don't get mentioned in it since all these other commenters are getting mentioned it's like the pictures of Bloombergville that I'm not in-

[@shadyparadox]

If I skipped you, it's nothing personal. But I'm replying to you now!

[@graizur]

@@shadyparadox You're doing the Lord's work.brb kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJ_KY6iDrc-baa8

[@graizur]

What's missing from mist is Aslan. The game itself has scratched the edge of _______ highlighted by the communities adage of "the stranger." Myst could save itself the magical aspects of the original game that had survived through three novels did continue surviving into future cyan games and some of the novel based game elements there's some mark of the original miss game. Somewhat tangential but even the two Ubisoft games could theoretically be reintegrated into a narrative that makes sense to both uru and their own continuity. The shortest way that I can communicate what I think is missing from continuing cyan games, the most valuable moment in the myst franchise in my opinion so far was that cyan decided to start Riven directly from within K'veer in front of Atrus but decided to not give the player control and brought the cutscene directly into link through into gameplay the way Riven did.

[@rgerber]

what

[@graizur]

Sorry.what's missing from MYST is Aslan. The Bahro were suppose to fulfill some sort of spiritual ecological philosophy. ​@rgerber

[@SleepyBear_SB]

I just hope if Cyan remakes MYST again they make it look more realistic, but not need to explain every minute detail just to remove the charm of the original MYST game. (e.g. I think you said that Rand miller said that the ship on MYST island that raises from the water to get to Stoneship uses hydraulics or something to lift instead of letting the player think of other ways it could be lifted such as magnets, propellers, or just plain magic.) Or I hope Cyan makes it so the ages look lived in (I think you said this in the first video but it was long and I can't fully remember.) as in add bedrooms, kitchens, communal areas, etc. not only for the two brothers, Atrus, and Catherine but also for any people that may have lived in each age. 41:40 Also I personally grew up with the mobile edition of MYST when I was younger, so i'm glad someone else shares the same opinion. Can't wait for part 2 and 3!

[@shadyparadox]

I did not mention liveable areas, but the issue that opens up is that the puzzle structure does not currently use it. So you would first have to identify what goal the remake is trying to accomplish. Seasoned players would be fine with new areas that didn't add anything, but they could possibly confuse new players. So either the point is to appeal to seasoned players only, or you would have to change some elements at the risk of upsetting them. I'm not saying any answer is right or wrong, just stuff you have to consider.

[@SleepyBear_SB]

@@shadyparadox What I meant with the first comment was to bring a new perspective toward MYST. With adding new areas that make sense with lore and how people/creatures/animals would live in that age. And with those new areas Cyan could add new puzzles (nothing major like the submarine puzzle in the selenitic age. But something smaller that could give those new areas some worth.) I also hope that Cyan adds some of the burnt books (as I believe only the linking books got burned and the descriptive books didn't.) Again nothing major but something like the rime age would be nice as the last time we got any “new” content from the MYST remakes was I think in realMYST which released in 2000. (Or just add new ages that aren't from the burned books, if descriptive books got burned as well.) Either way I just want Cyan to do something a bit different (like adding new content) instead of just updating graphics for the 5th time. EDIT: Cyan could also add new content by having puzzles to get to the red and blue pages, so you don't have to play the age again and not get any more puzzles.

[@davidmonroe6930]

Have you played Physicus? If not, it's a German edutainment thing, and I feel like it captures the magical subtly toy-like feeling of the first Myst very well.

[@TheExileFox]

Backpacker 1 and 2 (and 3 but we don't talk about games for dumb dvd-players) is a set of games where you just travel the world and try to make money while doing bartering, quizzes and etc relating to real jobs. It is a good edutainment title that is only available in Swedish. It's more reality based but it has the same sense of exploration as Myst has for me.

[@davidmonroe6930]

@@TheExileFox I love how ominous the interiors look! Nothing like edutainment games to prepare us for grim reality :D

[@trapez77]

Someone recreated myst island in dreams on ps4 that looks way closer to the original but none of the puzzles work

[@Welther47]

4:36 She looked at a man through binoculars, the man had the binoculars, she used the binoculars as a saw(should be sawed). I found it difficult to find a sentence with more than two interpretations. "She threaten to kill me in public".

[@F14Squall]

Even though I am fairly certain I disagree with your idea of what a Myst remake should be like, I wouldn’t dare insult you, or dislike the video. That’s just rude lol. However! I am fairly certain whatever ideas you’re saving for that next video which haven’t been revealed yet are summed up by the response at 26:18 As much as I want to, I very probably can’t criticize your take until you propose that full vision and how it would work today. I will say I am skeptical because most remakes and remasters tend to inherently fall short of originals by their very nature. It will take a lot of convincing for me to even believe a remake with your proposed vision won’t miss some aspect of the original that can’t be reproduced as every individual experienced at the time. Will it be too magical? Will it be not realistic enough? It’s a very challenging target to hit, even with the more straightforward remastering of video games, let alone remakes. I’m sorry if I sound mean, I am still looking forward to that next video!

[@robot797]

HE LIVES!!

[@aarontrupiano9328]

360p club. do agree with what was said in that first video

[@Welther47]

I like how Riven feels more believable. I think that's the right word; not realistic. Riven is a fantasy universe and there is nothing realistic about it. I think, those who want Myst to feel like a dream-scape, is in a very small minority. The only thing I truly dislike about the canon universe is that worlds are not created/written, but just handpicked from existing worlds based on the description book.

[@Welther47]

18:43 that happens all the time. It's called Retconning. It's understandable because they were shooting in the dark when they made Myst in '93. Things change as they build the univers up. At least we don't have a "starwars" on our hands :D 19:52 I have to disagree with your argument, because Myst 1 is a pretty isolated "episode" within the Myst series. Is D'ni even mentioned by name? It's only natural that the expanded universe feel different, but since it didn't exist at the time they couldn't have aligned them. Basically, Myst might as well just have been a one off - is that what you prefer? And the rest of the series were Riven 1, 2, 3, etc.?

[@beinggreenandunseen3171]

I think you could rationalize how the original world of Myst worked without changing anything. For example, maybe there are wires that go underground from the marker switches to the map that turn on LED outlines that glow through the painting and there is a button that is behind the painting so that when you press that spot on the painting, you also press the button through the painting, which causes the line and tower to spin clockwise. However, I don’t know if that is how it works and that is the beauty of it, it’s like a magic trick; There is a perfectly logical explanation for why the magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, but you don’t know what it is, and once you know how the trick works, it doesn’t give you the same feeling anymore. This is the mistake that Cyan made with their most recent Myst remake, they explained their magic tricks which made them less entertaining. It also doesn’t help that I would go so far as to say that the changes in Myst VR make it seem less high tech, which seems to be the opposite of what Cyan is trying to do, the rationale being that as technology advances, it becomes smaller and more efficient, take the attic in the mechanical age for example, in Myst VR it is a lot more cramped and seems very inefficient. If they want to go for high tech, it should probably look closer to the original Myst, clean and efficient.

[@trapez77]

Realmyst 2000 has a cooler atmosphere than the rest of the realtime remakes

[@blanketfox]

Hey this isn’t the Kenny Chesney concert…

[@EliotLash]

Cyan's changes don't bother me that much but you made some interesting points in your last video. The tendency to overexplain and rationalize things is a bit strange. You might be interested to see this clip from a panel with Rand, Robyn, and the director of the Myst documentary where they directly discuss this shift in philosophy - it starts 49 minutes in kzbin.infouASJUW5K7vc?t=2940

[@graizur]

This video just broke youtube. All my 🎵sharkmuffin🎵 comments are going to crackle with m•e•t•a•s•t•a•t•i•c