Finished Myst V

[gbnogkfs]

So?

what was that game about?

Am I the only one believing it has a quasi-nonsense story plot?
Am I the only one believing the "Myst" title is somewhat inappropriate?
Am I the only one disappointed by the New-Agely-flavoured end speech by Yeesha?


e infine, perché non è stato tradotto in italiano?

[gbnogkfs]

So?

what was that game about?

Am I the only one believing it has a quasi-nonsense story plot?
Am I the only one believing the "Myst" title is somewhat inappropriate?
Am I the only one disappointed by the New-Agely-flavoured end speech by Yeesha?


e infine, perché non è stato tradotto in italiano?

[LEOMAG]

Hi gbnogkfs!
No, you are in fact not the only one who has these feelings. It actually seems like this is the most contreversial game in the series. Although i have no problemsb with the plot, i too felt like the setup was more of a Uru-style game rather than the Myst series. And yes, the end was rather dissapointing. I recommend reading other thread's on this point as there are many views and ideas on this game. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the game. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-sad.gif

[gbnogkfs]

I've read through other threads.
people complaining about the game do so following two lines:

1) the 3D environment made it difficult to immerse in
2) the puzzles were too easy

Well, 1 is not really the issue for me: even if I found URU at times really too hard to be completed without guides, I liked the URU feeling of immersion. Some added necessity for agility is not really ruining the puzzle-driven gameplay, and I really felt exploring the City a rewarding experience per se.
And regarding 2, the puzzles themselves ARE somewhat easy, and I took about the same time solving EoA as it took to originally overcome Myst: aroung a week of play (some 7 three-hour sessions of play). But that I can pass over... and I really enjoyed Myst when I bought it in 1994.

the real reason I didn't like EoA is

3) the plot... it's just... uh?

VERY MINOR SPOILERS HERE



We are told some cool phrases from Atrus, and then thrown in the game.
We see those strange creatures fleeing away, we explore, see the bubble, touch the tablet, and hear Yeesha uttering a couple of words about

* I don't deserve the tablet
* the Bahro are strange creatures

nothing else. We are then send to the Shaft, where Esher says

* we all know Yeesha mustn't get the tablet
* the Bahro are evil

We then explore the Shaft for the sole sake of it (not bad, but it doesn't belong to the story). Direbo is also quite useless, and the wooden bridges even more useless. Exploring the Ages, we get to know one thing we already suspected

* the D'ni enslaved and tortured the Bahro

But no guess as to what you are doing. Now, the beauty of the Myst games is also the fact you have to discover the story while playing, but here you really get nothing. No background information about the Bahro (who they are, how do they build those bubbles and tablets, how do they link). No background information about The Fall (why D'ni fell). No background information about Ti'ana, Atrus or Yeesha (what was their involvement in the story of the D'ni? I suppose I have to read the books...).

And then, after you get at the end... you are told about a childish bible-fulfilling-prophecy fairy tale about the true happyness is in our hearts, we don't have to worry because our good Creator is caring for us, and that we don't have to rebuild D'ni because we are happy here in this Releeshan that old fool man wrote for us.
It seems like 80% of the "plot" is suddenly given in the final speech by Yeesha, with no connection whatsoever to Atrus, D'ni, The Fall, or the Regrowth. And only veeeery loosely to the Bahro themselves. And then, the game ends.


Desert Bird?
Grower?

the explanation of those two terms that we wondered about for the whole of URU and EoA are simply not explained...
the regrowth of the City of which we get a glimpse at the end of tPotS is not explained
"you see... his body no longer lies in his vault...": where the hell has Kadish' body finished to?
I even didn't understand if Yeesha was in fact the Grower or not... was her?
The Great Tree dying in tPotS... why? (to symbolize the new life is now in Releeshan?)

I COULD live without answers to those questions; but... not being given AND being treated as if I were... it's just simply sad...

All in all, the fact this had to be the "final" (that is, somewhat concluding) piece of the saga reallymade it deserving some better line.

[thehuggableone]

This post may contain spoilers. If you do not wish to have anything spoiled, do not read any further.



Yea, I'm gonna have to agree somewhat. The storyline of this game was rather weak compared to, especially that of Myst 4. I felt rather confused while playing. I knew I was suppose to be unlocking the tablet, but it was very unclear to me why anyone had to. Why was it even locked in the first place? Did the D'ni lock it up? If the Bahro are so powerful, why would they create something like that that could control them. If they did create the slates, how come I was the only one that could make them solid in the keep?

There was very little background information regarding... everything. Not to mention, compared to the other games, the puzzles were simple. I'm quite ashamed of Yeesha and Esher both... they're morons. They've lived and grew up in a society of people who like puzzle stuff like this, yet I was the one who had to complete THEIR failed quest.

Part of me was seriously hoping that I would be the one to get to run away with the tablet when all was said and done. I wanted to be the grower. I wanted to control the bahro. I wanted to restore the D'ni... but no.

I'm also kinda anoyed at the lack of a decent ending in the other scenarios. I mean, Myst Island shaking apart, Keveer being ripped to shreds, something disasterous or similar would have capped it off nicely. Even Esher killing me would have done the trick. I suppose they wanted the solitude of being trapped on Myst island to be real... but no one's really going to let themselves feel that kind of depressive isolation in a video game.

What else would have been nice, would have been a second chance to clober Esher after he came back for the tablet he left with me on Myst.

Yeesha's end speach was interesting. You didn't like it because of it's "New Age" sound to it. You have to remember that everything that she's dealing with is very religious in it's nature. Prophecies of D'ni's fall and rebuilding have long permiated the culture of the D'ni, we learn this in PothS. Also at the end of URU we get a good idea that Yeesha is indeed the grower. She has crazy power beyond anyone else who's ever written. I was kinda worried about what was going on when Yeesha was questioning her claim to be the grower. But if there was any question, the end of Myst 5 should have cleared that up when Atrus calls her the grower.

I think that questioning this game's worthiness to have the name "Myst" is a bit far. I mean, the story line wasn't developed quite as well as it should have been for a game put out by Cyan, but I have no problem with the course that things took. The end result of peace with the Bahro, Yeesha taking her place as the grower, the burden carried by Atrus and his family finally lifted. It wasn't a bad ending to the story. It just wasn't as descriptive as it needed to be.

There were some things I thought were kinda cool. The shaft was kinda neat. I had seen it before when playing URU but getting a bit more perspective on its size was neat. The graphics were good. Not as awesome as I was expecting, but great none-the-less. I liked the way they put perspective on the time frame the game took place in with all the signs that the DRC had come and gone. The shape recognition with the tablets was neat, if not a little quirky at times (I was accidentally brought to the keep once while I was testing symbols. And I think I only misdrew a symbol 2 or 3 times).

All in all, I'm rather disappointed that the Myst series has ended, but I suppose it had to eventually. I think it would be cool to see more books about the new age of d'ni or even the age of the kings, not without much work in developing their history first though. So yea, mixed feelings. It was good, but it wasn't great. It wasn't horrible. It was just kinda...

[Thietris]

I enjoyed the game, mainly for the graphics in one or two Ages, but I have to agree that the plot was weak. That's understandable, I think, knowing the constraints that Cyan were under. The weakness was already apparent in the Path of the Shell, which by the end had descended into a meaningless magic. Myst V continued in that vein.

D'ni was, after all, meant to be a real place - a place that had existed for thousands of years beneath the Earth, and which we as explorers were privileged to visit. The one piece of "magic" for which the D'ni civilization were noted was the Art - the power to produce linking books. In the earlier games this provided material for both plot and for the production of imaginative Ages. It was the only magic that was needed to immerse us in the world of Myst.

For me, Riven was the pinnacle of the Myst series. It had a tightly woven logic and coherence - to the extent that I knew instinctively that what I was experiencing and puzzling over had to make some sort of sense. I would lie in bed at night thinking it over, and often the answer would come to me. Its premise was embedded in the real world: the protagonists were engaged in believable activities and battles. There were no water sprites or dream worlds, or magical talismen borrowed from second-rate fantasy novels: the magic sword, the magic jewel, the magic ring - and now the magic tablet. You can imagine them all glowing with a mystical and nonsensical light. How far we've strayed from the Airstream trailer in the desert, from the safety warnings of the DRC, from the sounds of reconstruction and from the cones!

A little magic goes a very long way.

[poutrew]

Hmmm....yes. It sounds almost as if the Miller Brothers went out and watched The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series of movies and then concluded that it is Magic and Fantasy that sell, and Science and Logic are so "2003" http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Alahmnat]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by thehuggableone:
I'm quite ashamed of Yeesha and Esher both... they're morons. They've lived and grew up in a society of people who like puzzle stuff like this, yet I was the one who had to complete THEIR failed quest. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
In their defense, it's not that they failed to solve all of the puzzles, it's that they failed to properly use the Tablet once they'd unlocked it, and so it returned itself to the Keep to await another person's attempt.

[rw.]

I agree, Thietris, I enjoyed V mainly for the graphics. Yet, when I think about which one was the most "real" for me in terms of place, story, etcetera, it is Riven, for all the reasons you have stated and something else, the video cuts.

I know that for financial, creative ease and the desire to create a mentally seamless experience the video cuts were removed. Intellectually I understand that. Yet for me at least, it also removed a great deal of the "real" in Myst for me. It was seeing a "real person", even though clearly a recorded scene indexed into the artificial world in the game, that really and ultimately "linked" my mind, me, somehow into the worlds of the original Myst and Riven.

Myst IV had this also, but additional elements, i.e, "sprites", etcetera, my mind could not fully wrap around as part of a "real" experience.