Deconstruction: MYST - Part VII: The Mechanical Age

Once in the Mechanical Age, the player finds a fortress that vaguely resembles a gear.

They don't call it the Mechanical Age for nothing.

The fortress is quite small, revealing only two bedrooms, a basement, and a control room at the top (in fact it always made me wonder why Sirrus and Achenar got their own rooms in most ages when Atrus didn't get his own).  However, both bedrooms have hidden chambers, which reveal more disturbing facts about what happened in this age, including an electrified jail cell in Achenar's room and a note to Sirrus about taxes.

At this point, the player should feel a sense of wariness in regards to Sirrus, but complete horror at Achenar.  However, Achenar seems to have a moral problem with taxes, but not with torture?  That seems odd, and so the player may think that Achenar only has a fixation with torture devices as a hobby rather than actually using them.

In Sirrus' room, there is a telescope, which shows a skeleton hanging on a mast.  This only occurs when the fortress has been rotated the correct way, so not many players may notice it.  But if they do, it may appear as further proof that Sirrus is the immoral brother, and Achenar just seems wacky in the blue book from imprisonment.

But if the player is wrong, they'd be trusting the wrong brother.

Looks legit.

So the player should really start to question everything, whether either brother is trustworthy, or neither at all.  But the player, judging by the number of ages left to go, assumes that not true harm can come just yet from giving another page to one, the other, or both, so the player may pick up a hidden blue or red page in this age to bring back to hear more of one brother's side of the story.

One of the problems found in this game is that the player can only pick up one page at a time, and this has a wholly negative effect of slowing the game down, making the second visit to an age tedious, and breaks flow in general.  In addition, when a second page is picked up, the first disappears and reappears where it first was found, which is completely nonsensical.

This ends up being a frustrating feature of MYST, which was fortunately corrected in RIVEN, where the player can hold an inventory.

Beyond that, there is also a fortress manipulation device at the top of the fortress, and a replica in Sirrus' room which teaches the player the audio cues to understand which direction the fortress is facing.

Would have been nice to have on the actual controls.

A second problem arises if the player goes to the Selenitic Age before going to the Mechanical Age, because the audio cues for the fortress rotation and for the tram ride are identical.  If the player goes to the Selenitic Age second, they might remember or have written down the cues and can navigate the tram maze easily.  If they enter the Selenitic Age first, they have to learn the cues on the fly, which can lead to much frustration.

This problem is not easily solved, however.  Perhaps Cyan could have forced the player to enter the Mechanical Age before the Selenitic Age, but that would have destroyed the notion of non-linearity and the option for the player to roam freely and explore.

Hold their hand or let them starve in a maze.  The decisions game designers have to make.

Excusing this (since we are still in the Mechanical Age and haven't yet truly come across this problem), the player finds some interesting objects through the age to play with, but the first real puzzle comes in when trying to figure out how to get to the control room.

Rotating the elevator with the basement control panel is not particularly difficult; however, understanding to get out of the elevator after pressing the button takes some thought.  Most people don't expect to leave an elevator after pressing a button (unless they're a prankster, I suppose), but this elevator gives an extra moment for the player to leave before the doors close, giving a clue as to what to do.

Once the player figures this out, rotating the tower with the audio cues and collecting the four symbols necessary to find the linking book is a breeze.

Once back on MYST island, the player gets a little bit more information from one of the brothers, then must go back to the Mechanical Age to get the second page.  Or, if the player has already decided which brother to trust, they may move on immediately.

At this point, if this is the only age the player has visited, the question basically becomes: which is worse, death or taxes?