Myst (2021)
Playtime: 3.6 Hours
Decided to go through the Ages in a slightly different order this time, Mechanical - Channelwood - Stoneship - Selenetic to leave my favorite for last. I basically only did a quick & simple playthrough, but took my time admiring the updated scenery at least. Oh, I also used the randomized puzzle solutions modifier, though it didn't seem to change too much which was still fine by me. This game was originally made for VR, but since I'm not a big fan of using it I played it all normally with just the standard mouse & keyboard.
I really liked this remake for the most part! It's kind of funny to see over time how the Myst remakes kind of fall further and further behind the current "top-of-the-line" visual fidelity, especially as the original game was considered a pretty large leap forward in visuals for the time (though it used pre-rendered GFX). However, the graphics are still very pretty and fit the game well; there's a bit of cheapness to some of the shading and lighting effects that I noticed in some scenes, but I think this is just the natural cost of developing the remake for VR first before eventually porting it to standard displays. Probably the biggest disappointment is in the character models, which really don't look human at all and felt incredibly weird; for Sirrus & Achenars' prison books, these could be disabled by switching back to the original FMVs, but the final scene with Atrus can't be reverted. It's such a small part of a game which is otherwise very devoid of interaction so it thankfully doesn't ruin anything.
This is the first Myst game with full standard movement controls (ie. WASD), and it feels strange to be honest. I'm so used to either the pre-rendered scenes or hold-to-move realMyst control style that strafing feels kind of off. On top of that, having to actually move the mouse in circles to turn wheels or otherwise drag it around the screen to move knobs and levers also make for a slightly less than stellar experience from an interaction standpoint, since duplicating those motions is a bit harder to do consistently on a mouse than it is with a controller in my experience.
As might be expected, the actual experience of playing through the game including all of the ages & puzzles is pretty much the same as the original Myst, just with drastically improved scenery and environmental detail. I tried the "randomized puzzles" option for my playthrough, but that doesn't seem to affect very much of the game in the grand scheme of things. I noticed it changes the Mechanical Age combination, Selenetic Age switch voltage and tram maze, Stoneship constellations, and the Channelwood safe combination? Since I wasn't intent on speedrunning the game anyway, and the differences do not affect the way you think about or solve the puzzles, this option was pretty much pointless in my case. In fact, I think it made some of the puzzles even easier than before.
Most of the criticisms are just nitpicks, because the game is otherwise is very true to the original game (and all its subsequent versions) and that core is as strong as ever, no matter how many times I play it. At the end of the day, I thought this version was a wonderful, if brief, revisit to one of the favorite worlds of my childhood, and I felt that my time with it was a strong affirmation that my affinity for the game runs deeper than just nostalgia. I just wish the Rime Age could have been included in this version; it's a shame that such an interesting world would be excluded (for time/cost reasons, from what I understand) from the most visually advanced rendition of Myst.
