A lightning storm brews in the distance while a staticky female voice-over talks about how she and others first encountered the bright light shooting across the sky.
Obduction starts with the player standing in a forest next to a lake at night. Obduction, the newest game from Myst creator Rand Miller and developer Cyan Worlds, is a spiritual successor in every sense of the term to its great and well-loved predecessor, Myst.
It had intrigue, deep and complex puzzles, interesting visuals, and just enough story to keep the player moving forward. Maybe we could have a topic? But it would probably be good to wait a couple weeks until more people finish Obduction.There’s a reason that Myst was one of the best selling computer games of all time.
I might play the Myst series some to whet my appetite. Unfortunately my computer cannot run Obduction at all, which I anticipated when I funded the Kickstarter! Well, it is starting to die and was due for a replacement anyway, so I will be able to play it within the next few months. I really enjoyed my partial playthrough and will finish it someday, though I will probably need to start over. The amulet and most other gameplay additions are good, the animated pre-renders are amazing, the story gets a lot right, and the ages are big and developed enough to be like mini-Rivens. The first two are forgiveable blemishes though, and I only got through part of Serenia so I can't exactly make a judgment on that (but regardless Serenia is only one age).
Plus unfortunately you can't play it without awful mid-00s DRM. Myst IV seems to be controversial for three reasons: some really bad acting, a few annoying timed puzzles that are too exacting even after you know the solution, and the mystical/magical turn in Serenia. Anyway it's gorgeous, the story is good, and a lot of the puzzles are really well-designed on their own merits. Of course there is an in-game reason for this - they're "teaching" ages. The only real criticism I have is that the puzzles are all abstract and disconnected from the story (which a lot of Myst I's puzzles are too in fairness, but not all). IV is very ambitious and tries to combine Myst, a scaled-down Riven and some of its own new ideas - not all of which work, but it still gets a lot right. III and IV were not made by the Miller brothers, but are pretty worthy (though not perfect) follow-ups to the first two in my view. The puzzles tend to be more abstract than Riven, though not always. But besides that, the ages and the atmosphere are great and the story is very simple but done just right. The maze (which the brothers always mention as their biggest regret about the game) is the game's biggest sore sport. RealMyst holds up well, though it's a bit surprising how short it is now. Virtually every knicknack you see is part of a puzzle and/or of some significance to the story and characters. It's brilliant though - one of the most fully-realized game worlds ever. The world is big and mostly explorable at the start, so it's hard to even know where to begin beyond just wandering the beautiful islands! The puzzles are actually pretty logical in the way they're integrated into the world and story (like you have to learn the local culture's numbering system), but with the clues scattered all across five islands it's so easy to miss things.