Monday, July 11, 2011

Deconstruction: MYST - Part II: Setting

One of the most enduring and mesmerizing parts of MYST (and its sequel, Riven, for that matter) is its dreamlike quality.
Dreamy.
Pop quiz:  what does a clock tower, a spaceship, a tree fort, and a wooden ship embedded in a rock have in common?

Each locale in MYST acts very much like a dreamworld, and like a dream, you bounce between disjointed locations in an instant.  Your mode of transportation is books, and touching magical paintings opens secret passageways.

And yet, despite this, each puzzle in MYST has a brilliant logic to it that you can grasp without resorting to the ridiculous leaps old adventure games were prone to.

The tagline for MYST put it best:  "A surrealistic adventure that will become your world."  Surreal is the best term to describe it.

In fact, the dreamscape is one of the places videogames are most at home.  Like movies before them, the sights in videogames offer a fantastic escape, from Mario's Mushroom Kingdom to Kratos' Grecian legends.  MYST is no exception and its islands are each memorable in their own right.  You feel like a kid again climbing the intricate tree forts of Channelwood, and the horror when you discover the back rooms of the Mechanical Age.  Each Age pulls you to both emotional extremes as once:  the excitement of exploration and the terror of discovery.

That desire to see the next Age or uncover the next clue to the story drives you to complete even the most frustrating of puzzles (my pick goes to the pixel-perfect, pitch-perfect organ puzzle).

The locations in MYST also do a striking job advancing the story.  It's hard to forget seeing the electrified jail cell in the Mechanical Age, realizing Achenar is a vicious sadist, or finding the needles in Stoneship, realizing that Sirrus is a drug addict.  After helping the two, you start to wonder who's really the good guy.  Heck, are you a good guy?

You're seriously helping THIS guy?
MYST's clever visuals and characterization-by-locale are often elements forgotten in other media, but it videogame storytelling, such techniques are mandatory tools of the trade.

It took a few more years for developers to truly catch on, but now these techniques are pushing games to the next level of storytelling.

To bring us back to mechanics for a moment, it should be noted that immersion can't come from pretty visuals and environmental storytelling alone; these techniques shine through specifically because neither HUD nor complicated controls get in the way.  Like all of the best examples of videogames, all elements of art and design come together seamlessly and compliment each other.

The bread of videogames is mechanics, and its butter is art and level design.

Read Part III:  Setting

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