Myst train puzzle7/1/2023 There are also a number of camera angles in Riven that intentionally conceal objects that would be plainly visible from a different angle of view, once again encouraging the player, through not just the structure of the world but through the ways it can be viewed, to slow down and take in as many details as possible in any given scene, or at the very least, to think outside the box a bit. This is further complicated by the presence of a number of switches that open and close gates in various directions. In order to keep track of the room’s rotation, the player is forced to take careful notes on the distinguishing features of the different walls, as well as the various halls surrounding the room. Confusing the player’s orientation within the room makes pinpointing the room’s direction, and even its shape, more difficult than if the player character could turn freely. This puzzle involves steadily rotating the room, one wall at a time, until doors and switches align in such a way as to allow passage to different areas. In the scarab room, the walls are marked only by the presence or absence of a door, and the presence or absence of indecipherable text that, at a cursory glance, appears much the same. Although the ultimate goal is to press only a few of these pillars, the jumpy camera and similarly framed shots confuse the simple task and force the player to make careful note of where they are and what’s around them in each shot. The tight framing of the constellation pillars and the lack of transitional animation between them makes it very difficult for the player to tell precisely where they are in the line of pillars. As an example, observe the following areas: Symmetry in level design and the intentional similarity of shots adds an extra layer of difficulty to sections of the games that would otherwise be quite easy to navigate. Ultimately the moments of frustration I experienced, in which I wished I could move the camera freely, or even just turn 90 degrees instead of a full 180, became integral parts of the gameplay, and forced me to pay attention to smaller details, and to orient myself in different ways than I was used to. The balance for the player is in deciding what is significant enough to warrant clicking on, and why the balance for the developers and designers is in creating and utilizing fixed camera angles to conceal or reveal locations and clues as necessary, thus modulating difficulty and justifying the core gameplay of exploration and puzzle solving. Often these puzzles involve a good bit of trial and error and, more importantly, a lot of wandering and observing.Īs in most games, the navigation scheme of Myst and Riven has hard limits – namely, some objects or locations will move you forward or cause changes when clicked, while most will not. Progression through these games is controlled by solving environmental puzzles that unlock the next piece of the plot, or the next clue for a bigger puzzle. Myst and Riven are early examples of what we might today consider “walking simulators”. “The problem is that I just can’t seem to find anything.” “I understand the logic behind the puzzles, once I have a few clues,” I lamented to a friend when I was perhaps halfway through Riven. This was, perhaps, a side-effect of budgetary and graphical restrictions in Myst, but was clearly intentional and incorporated into level design in the better-funded sequel, Riven. What this ended up doing was turning the landscape itself into a series of puzzles. My brain had no model for constructing a coherent 3D space from the images I was given – something that was made easier by Riven‘s much larger volume of images, transitions, and camera angles, but that made telling landscapes apart and orienting myself in Myst almost impossible for the first hour or so of the game. Through both Myst and Riven, I was plagued by moments of frustration when I wanted to move the camera just a little bit more in a given direction, but that option simply wasn’t there. It’s amazing how much harder a puzzle game based on exploration becomes when you 1) aren’t used to the mode of exploration, and 2) don’t have complete control over the camera. It really was a kind of shocking reminder that there was a specific set of modes of gamic movement that I had gotten used to. One of the things that first struck me about the game, other than how painfully early-90s it was, was its movement scheme: a jerky, abrupt point-and-click that moved from one location to the next with nothing in the way of transitions.Īs a child who grew up playing games that featured relatively free movement in 2D or 3D spaces, this style of movement through the game world – a 3D space presented as a series of discrete 2D images with no transitional space between them – was extremely disorienting. Those who know me will know that I recently jumped on the Mysttrain, precisely 25 years and one or two target-audience-generations after the first game came out.
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