Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:52 pm Posts: 179
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WOW, it's Robyn Miller! If this thread hadn't been brought to my attention by someone at MystCommunity (you're welcome to create an account there as well, Robyn ) I think I would've continued ignoring it. I mean, I did see it before, but I looked at the thread title and thought it was just the same old same old again. If I'd seen your name next to it, I'd probably still have thought it was the same old same old, but this time written by someone pretending to be Robyn Miller. To cut a long story short: I never expected you to appear on this forum. And now that you're here I obviously can't wait to ask you loads of questions. Sorry!
It amazes me to read that pretty much everything you've said so far is in line with the things I've said over the years - well, except the parts about having designed Myst and Riven, obviously - but those parts confirmed some things I've felt all along, but could never prove before. I'm not really into Star Wars (I like Star Trek better), but I feel your pain, because it's the EXACT pain I've felt over all the retconning we've had to endure in the Myst universe. The fact that you're in complete agreement with me about everything Myst makes me feel so vindicated! I really have to keep myself from going all "I told you so!" now, I'm afraid...
You see, I've said this before, probably also on public forums (although I can't be bothered to look up any quotes), but to me you're the true genius behind Myst. That's not to say Rand is not a genius (of course he is) or that the others weren't important, but you are the genius. It's like the Jagger/Richards song writing partnership. Keith Richards is a genius, but Mick Jagger is the genius. I mean, the guy wrote Brown Sugar and the lyrics to Street Fighting Man. Need I say more?
Now that I've gone off on a music-related tangent, I feel a need to share a little story that isn't very relevant in the context of this post, but I feel like writing it down anyway. You may skip this paragraph without consequence. Anyway, I really love the music of Myst because it fits the mood of the game so perfectly. I liked the music of Riven a bit less already because it blends in just a bit too perfectly. At times, I forgot there was any music at all. Myst had music that was pretty much always there. Neither style is objectively better than the other, but personally I prefer Myst. I really dislike the music that Jack Wall made for Myst III and IV and Tim Larkin's music is only so-so in my opinion. I apologize for the pun, but you're the only one that managed to hit the right chord when it came to music! Myst has the best music ever in any game and I love it dearly. So, I went to show Myst (RealMyst, actually) to a friend of mine who's mostly into classical music (which I hate), because I was curious what he'd think. We had some trouble getting it to work on his computer, so I had to play the game a bit to see if things worked properly, trying not to spoil anything. Now as I said, he's very muscial (I'm not - I like listening to it and I can sing, but that's it), so I took him to the spaceship to show the puzzle there. I explained that it was an easy puzzle for me and that I easily got it right every time, that I was just comparing the notes by ear. I can always hear if the note being played matches the note that was played on the organ, but I know some people find this so difficult that they're completely unable to complete that puzzle. I'm not sure what the technical term is for having the ability to hear it (relative pitch, maybe - but that would seem to entail more than just comparing notes in a lower-equal-higher fashion), but I obviously have it and by consequence, so should he - because, as I said, he's infinitely more musical than I am. This is probably the part where I should mention that he plays piano and people say he's very good at it. So anyway, we never got to the point of figuring out how the puzzle worked for him, because he just looked at the organ and noticed it didn't have the right number of pipes. I'm not sure if there were too many or too few, I believe there were too few, but in any case, the organ's number of pipes didn't match its number of keys. And I was so disappointed by this... Here I was showing off my favorite game that was so perfect in every way, and within a few minutes of playing he shows me that a mistake was made. To this day it still pains me and I think that captures the very essence of why Myst is so great. In any other game, I wouldn't have cared about such a minor error. But Myst is REAL. I don't want it to contain these little goofs, I want it to be real!
With that out of the way, I guess I should get down to business, right? I'll restrict myself to asking just a few questions at first:
What are your thoughts about the changes in the way books (prison books in particular) work, between Myst and Riven? In Myst, the books (some books at least) act like videophones. In Riven, they just display an animation of what the Age looks like. You can't see Gehn inside his prison book after you've trapped him, whereas you could see Sirrus and Achenar in Myst. Several explanations have been given in the past, but I'd like to hear it directly from you.
When you were designing Myst, was it set in the "present day" (i.e. late twentieth century) or in the early nineteenth century? Did this ever change during your time at Cyan? Myst obviously needs to be set in the present if you are you, but the idea that it actually happened centuries ago surfaced pretty early on.
What's up with Atrus' letter on the Myst box? I mean the "My only hope is that I can find the answer before it's too la" one.
Last edited by Free Bird on Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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