Of the Cyan games, Myst is the game for me, always was. I'm not that much for Riven, which I know is heresy for many fans! Still, after all this, I'm tempted to go through Riven again, with a walkthrough. Of the non Cyan games, it's Myst IV, always Myst IV.
In the solo player games, it was never the D'ni for me, though I really like uncovering the D'ni civilization in Uru, quite a lot. For me it was going into the world. Fictionally, if felt nice to be a friend of Atrus.
I think there is a successor to Myst, though it's not in the realm of adventure games. The successor is the world of MMOs, mostly MMORPGs -- pick your favorite -- World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Vanguard, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, Everquest, Everquest 2, many others, and upcoming ones, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. Though gameplay is different, that's where you get a big wonderful world, a world you would like to lose yourself in. . That, and some of the big RPGs, Morrowind and Oblivion come to mind, also the upcoming Skyrim.
There are adventure games out today, the genre never went away. They tend to be story driven, third person games, with more characters and a lot of character interaction. I'd say most of them are not focused on the world as world, though there are exceptions. This is different from the game type of the Cyan series. Not only are the games in the series first person, but they are a very specific sort of 1st person -- wander around in the lovely, mostly empty world and figure stuff out. Most of the games in the series (3 done by Cyan, 2 by other development shops) do not make use of AI characters, they use videos of actors instead. It's a very specific, niche genre, nothing wrong with that. That's the old games -- who knows what new games will be like, assuming Cyan continues to make games.
_________________ mszv, amarez in Uru, other online games, never use mszv anymore, would like to change it Blog - http://www.amarez.com, Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/amareze
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