Blaugust 2022 – Finishing Myst (Finally)
Posted on August 22, 2022 by Aywren
Years ago, I vaguely remember playing bits and pieces of Myst on someone’s PC – it wasn’t my own, and I can’t recall who it belonged to. I just remember being in the forest world and trying to figure out how to navigate the puzzle there.
It wasn’t until the 2021 Myst remake landed on Game Pass almost a year ago that I actually sat down to play through the game as a whole. I did most of it without looking up the answers – which means I did some of it wrong, naturally. I tried to hold out as long as I could without resorting to guides, but I admit, there were a few times I had to.
Aside from that, I made it all the way to the Mechanical age, explored it, and got the gist of what I kinda needed to do. I put the game down for some reason (Playnite said I last played August 28, 2021), and while I meant to play it again, I just never did.
Well, until I found out that Myst was being rotated out (along with other games) on August 31. This would make the second Game Pass game that I had almost completed that was being taken out of the library this month. The first was Boyfriend Dungeon, which I first wrote about last year.
Just like Boyfriend Dungeon, I picked up Myst again and pushed through until the end. This is the second game I finished this month thanks to Game Pass’ Leaving Soon bit. I’m not sure if I like it or not, but it certainly does spark a motivator to get things done!
Anyhow, back to Myst.
I’m glad that I spent some time with it and saw the story to the end. I managed to guess (based on psychology cues) what I needed to choose for the good ending. But I did go back and experience all the alternate endings out of curiosity.
There’s something about the PC games that came out of that time. Many of them were what we’d consider puzzle walking simulators now days. But back then, while they couldn’t always experiment with the most amazing graphics, they did seem to think long and hard about story and the subtle psychological nuances that could be communicated through objects, atmosphere and location.
After digging through Playnight, I realize I actually own two older copies of Myst, both on GoG. But I am glad that I played the most recent version because the updated look and feel worked to bring these worlds to life. I might even go back and explore Riven – which I also own on GoG.
But for now, I have so many other games on my hands, I’m just happy to have actually completed a few this month!