Adventure Gamers - Forums

It’s been years since I played realMyst, so I’m not the best person to compare the difference between that and the realMyst Masterpiece edition. But so far—I remember time of day changes on Myst Island, but don’t remember a sun, which now rises and sets. I think there’s more low-lying vegetation—more ivy and other plants. I also don’t remember a flashlight effect as I walked around Myst Island at night in the earlier version. I don’t seem to be bumping up against barriers as much—I can go behind things more easily than in the original realMyst.

The flyover while linking to Channelwood seemed longer and more detailed. I’ve been in Channelwood at night now, and it is well worth the trip. A huge white moon in the sky, fireflies and gorgeous shadings of gray. Two surprises—the trees are more stylized than I remember them—I was expecting them to be more realistic. And the darkness makes it quite hard to find things. I watched the sun set from the windmill tower, and then found it tricky to find the path through the rock back to the trees. I finally did it by navigating while looking up at the sky. Also, the switches that change the direction of the water in the pipes are almost impossible to see at times during the night—I had to find their likely location and then watch for the shadows and light to move before I could use them.

I didn’t see any frogs. Yet.

Will report back with more details later.

This might be a good time to mention you can beat The Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2 in under a second, as I’m sure you all know. It’s nothing to get worked up about.

Becky - 11 February 2014 02:47 PM

It’s been years since I played realMyst, so I’m not the best person to compare the difference between that and the realMyst Masterpiece edition. But so far—I remember time of day changes on Myst Island, but don’t remember a sun, which now rises and sets. I think there’s more low-lying vegetation—more ivy and other plants. I also don’t remember a flashlight effect as I walked around Myst Island at night in the earlier version. I don’t seem to be bumping up against barriers as much—I can go behind things more easily than in the original realMyst.

The flyover while linking to Channelwood seemed longer and more detailed. I’ve been in Channelwood at night now, and it is well worth the trip. A huge white moon in the sky, fireflies and gorgeous shadings of gray. Two surprises—the trees are more stylized than I remember them—I was expecting them to be more realistic. And the darkness makes it quite hard to find things. I watched the sun set from the windmill tower, and then found it tricky to find the path through the rock back to the trees. I finally did it by navigating while looking up at the sky. Also, the switches that change the direction of the water in the pipes are almost impossible to see at times during the night—I had to find their likely location and then watch for the shadows and light to move before I could use them.

I didn’t see any frogs. Yet.

Will report back with more details later.

I very much appreciate both the initial report and this offer to update later

I don’t recall a flashlight effect on realMyst’s main island before either. It was like a brightly moonlit night.

Sounds like a visitor trying the new Channelwood at night would benefit from some nice lantern lights (or a controllable flashlight) - and if I remember rightly what the original journal said about the place, a gallon or so of bug repellent

I’ve been back to Channelwood at night, and this time the flashlight came with me. There must be a way to enable it that I haven’t figured out yet. Using the flashlight makes it a lot easier to see the mechanisms, but the ambiance isn’t quite as spooky.

I’ve now been to the Mechanical Age—the metallic colors are much more intense now, which heightens the surrealism. The ocean effects are also more pronounced. I didn’t see a day/night effect, but perhaps I didn’t stay long enough.

Stoneship Age has the continual lightning storm, as in the original realMyst. Was the umbrella thing always a bright red? It looks a bit cheerier than I remember. I visited the brothers’ bedrooms and walked up the tower. When I played the original Myst, I made a map of every rock formation, just in case it was needed in a puzzle. Good times, good times.

Selenitic was quite different. The fog is more pronounced in some spots and less in others, almost as though it’s moving. Some views, with structures along the far horizon, are ghostlike and eerie. There’s a magnificent cloud formation with the sun gleaming through. It does unusual things with the singing rocks. There was a bit of a surprise in the tunnel area that leads between the sound mechanisms.

Every time I do the sound challenge in the rocketship, it gets harder. I think my humming ability has diminished recently. 

I miss these immersive worlds.

Lucien21 - 14 February 2014 01:26 PM

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-realmyst-masterpiece-edition/2300-8507/

Giant bomb quick look.

That’s nearly 40 mins with the new version on the main island. That does give us all a good idea, so thanks!

I noticed an extra light toward the beginning, during their daytime playing, like a flashlight, but they didn’t get it to come back on when they needed it as the island got a LOT darker than I remembered it doing. Is the flashlight mode a setting that the player has to find or is it just buggy, do you think?

It was fun listening to these guys trying to figure out the puzzles. Funny too, because they were a lot more interested in solving those puzzles than they wanted to admit. (I detected quite a lot of that “cool guys can’t like Myst” thing going on. & I think Drew was actively hiding how much he remembered.) As for me, I found that I still have a lot of the puzzle answers memorized…after a fashion ex: I don’t recall the dates anymore because I know which pillars to light up.

They did catch one important issue for modern adventure game makers - people aren’t used to making their own physical notes anymore. A Nancy Drew-ish notebook taking down important clues as you find them is just about expected.

I shall remember this, because I believe they are right. Make people write down clues to progress and you will lose a lot of players.

I’ve noticed that I’ve been expecting an automated recognition that I’ve found the clue out of recent games too. I used to have all these game journals with my own notes (walkthroughs) in them. It was part of the fun! Now I groan when I have to jot down more than a phone number. I’ve nowhere to keep such details any more. I used to keep a supply of dollar store journals around for that purpose, but I don’t need those often enough to justify the practice now.

TimovieMan - 21 February 2019 09:05 AM

This game is going to kick my arse, isn’t it?

Eh, maybe. Realmyst makes a few of the puzzles easier for the player to understand their logic. Probably because of minimizing the disorienting feeling of the original which gets worse in some places.

TimovieMan - 21 February 2019 09:05 AM

And then Riven will completely demolish me, won’t it?

Riven’s story and puzzles are much more clever and rewarding in my opinion. And aside from one or two cases (where pixel hunting or color based puzzling may be involved (...))  you may find them easy to solve. Especially if you’ve also already played Obduction which is a huge fan service to the Myst series. 

TimovieMan - 21 February 2019 09:05 AM

The flashlight can be enabled/disabled from the save/load menu (it’s one of the options at the bottom). I don’t think it’s buggy, it’s just not in the most intuitive spot.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried this version, but the flashlight also changes a bit a particular location which kind of made more sense without it in the original. Then again the original did not have day/night transitions.