What would you change in Myst IV?
#1
Posted 26 August 2010 - 10:33 AM
So, what would you like to change in Myst IV? what would you change so it would be better?
(and please no "GET RID OF SERENIA AND DREAM!" or "THE BROTHERS NEVER RETURN! TRAP BOOKS!" or such. I'm talking about samller changes. Get rid of a certain puzzle, or change it. A certain way to improve the depth of the characters)
#3
Posted 26 August 2010 - 11:29 AM
#5
Posted 26 August 2010 - 02:56 PM
Talashar, on Aug 26 2010, 07:46 PM, said:
Make Achenar more nervous.
My suggestions for Serenia and Dream would be fairly major changes, so at the very least I'd skip the last puzzle.
Lose the 'time' factor on the Spire chair and make the Mangree puzzle a bit easier (or different) for those of us who are not musically inclined. (Would lose the 'time' element here too).
Mind you I had similar issues with the Spaceship in Myst so...
Found the whole 'Spirit' thing in Serenia a bit tedious too. Myst/Riven was about solving puzzles, as good as Revelation was it started to go down the usual 'PC Game' route in terms of its gameplay which made it less enjoyable than Riven or Exile..
Oddly enough I enjoyed the whole 'dream' thing although I appreciate that I am in the minority here...
#6
Posted 26 August 2010 - 03:06 PM
As for Serenia, I would get rid of Curtains in Dream (it's a great song, but really it doesn't fit in a Myst game. Unless it's on a radio or something, like Zandi's radio...but not as background music). More scientific explanation on how things work (I think more could be expanded on the big dream flower-thingy). Better actors for some protectors. I would get rid of the first dream puzzle (it was quite stupid), and make the second dream puzzle easier (putting memories back together was good enough, but the way the symbols work makes no sense). And I think I would get rid of the offering puzzle...or at least make it easier...the offering vanished too often.
#7
Posted 26 August 2010 - 06:17 PM
Recasting Catherine

A different journal, definitely (that was quite jarring and just weird and ugly looking for no reason - something more like Myst V's [not with the functionality of save points, but with that general look] would work better).
Atmospheric effects workable during the animations for the big movements (so the air didn't suddenly go clear every time you make a cinematic movement, then revert back to having wind and dust and all afterwards).
A little bit more of a case for Sirrus (either in his Serenia speech, or in a journal or memories there) for the end.
Better technical, visual, sound, and musical stuff, of course (not that it was bad in that, but more greatness is always good).
A differently laid out Serenia. I'm not sure particularly why.
Better Atrus journals. The wording and all just didn't seem to fit.
A bit different interpretation of Catherine's journals and role in the story.
#8
Posted 26 August 2010 - 07:59 PM
Ok, seriously, I'd definitely get rid of the amulet; all it does is serve as exposition, and it doesn't really do that at all well; some of the hints are far to blatant. Some, like the hint for the snake-dragonfly-creature-thing in Haven are insulting to the players' intelligence (I think finding a note is good enough the first time).
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Yes, definitely. The way he is in the game, he's so obviously the villain the only reason to get the bad ending is because you want to (sort of like in Riven, but that's beside the point).
Also, I wish they had been a little more faithful to the original characterisation of the brothers from Myst, even though there wasn't much to really to go on. Still, I don't get 'Overacting Supervillain' from Robyn Miller's performance in Myst. And Achenar is just way too calm, even after the effects of the therapeutic Mangree.
And Serenia. I intensely disliked Serenia, but I feel it could be handled much better. I'm fine with fantasy and spirit worlds and all that, but it would have been better if Dream was handled a bit more, well, like a DREAM. More subtlety, more of the feeling that what happened in Dream may or may not have actually happened. And no puzzles. I don't know about Team Revelation, but when I dream, there aren't any well-structured puzzles.
#10
Posted 27 August 2010 - 12:28 AM
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Don't know if completely removing the amulet is the solution, but as I said, making it much less frequently used would be better.
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Yeah, I think all Myst games need one (even though I never use it

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Well, easy solution for that: make it realtime!

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Thinking about that, it could be really nice. Maybe she returns from Tay after nightfall...
#11
Posted 27 August 2010 - 08:45 AM
Thestrangered, on Aug 26 2010, 11:28 PM, said:
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Don't know if completely removing the amulet is the solution, but as I said, making it much less frequently used would be better.
Well, I didn't like the background and general flavor of the amulet either (and it just seems tacked on to Serenia/Dream just so that they could get its gameplay usage), or its very linear "oh look, a clew, Watson!". Less frequent, less bashing-over-your-head recordings just of a natural kind would work just as well for most of the cool things it did (more voice acting, more atmosphere in places, and not everything being the same journal type).
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Yeah, I think all Myst games need one (even though I never use it

Yeah, all Myst games should have a Myst IV camera and a Myst V journal (without the save functionality part - that's not needed).
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Well, easy solution for that: make it realtime!

Shouldn't it be easy even if not realtime? I mean, the atmospheric effects have to be placed over the static cube images and the various animations in the normal scenes anyway - would it really have been that hard to also place them over the full videos (or to just make the videos with such effects)?
#12
Posted 27 August 2010 - 12:00 PM
Gehn, lord of ages, on Aug 27 2010, 10:45 AM, said:
If you include the effects in the videos, they may not look like the realtime versions because they won't be at the same state.
If you place them over, you have to compensate for the camera movements. If one effect is visible at the beginning and at the end of the video, it has to be shared between the two nodes. Not just something similar in both nodes. If something looks right from an angle, it doesn't mean that it will look right from every angle. The shadow effect used in Tomahna (day) and Serenia requires a fixed camera position.
When you enter Atrus' bedroom, you can see the skybox behind the transition video.
In the ride between the two island on Spire, the effects are visible.
During the cinematic where the camoudile kills a zephtyr, the sky and lens flare effect are visible.
But they should have at least made sure that the FOV angle are the same between the node and the video. Same goes for the lighting.
#13
Posted 27 August 2010 - 07:06 PM
realXCV, on Aug 27 2010, 11:00 AM, said:
Gehn, lord of ages, on Aug 27 2010, 10:45 AM, said:
If you include the effects in the videos, they may not look like the realtime versions because they won't be at the same state.
If you place them over, you have to compensate for the camera movements. If one effect is visible at the beginning and at the end of the video, it has to be shared between the two nodes. Not just something similar in both nodes. If something looks right from an angle, it doesn't mean that it will look right from every angle. The shadow effect used in Tomahna (day) and Serenia requires a fixed camera position.
When you enter Atrus' bedroom, you can see the skybox behind the transition video.
In the ride between the two island on Spire, the effects are visible.
During the cinematic where the camoudile kills a zephtyr, the sky and lens flare effect are visible.
But they should have at least made sure that the FOV angle are the same between the node and the video. Same goes for the lighting.
Yeah, I can see it could be difficult. Still... I don't know. I actually didn't notice too many problems in any Age other than Haven, which has particularly jarring transitions (especially near the beach and jungle [for example, go to about 1:35 in this video to see the rather drastic change that happens for almost all of the video points there]). Probably was simply a more noticeable effect than others, or simply harder to replicate in videos. Still, it almost would have been better if the effect wasn't there to begin with, or was included in the video, even if it made a stuttering effect or something when viewed.
#15
Posted 28 August 2010 - 02:26 PM
realXCV, on Aug 28 2010, 01:14 AM, said:
Yeah, I'm sure there's got to have been something they could have done to at least make it closer to the effect-full version (but yeah, perhaps they were the first scenes rendered that would really need such extensive integration with realtime effects). I almost wish I could just selectively disable the effects for that area alone (it ends around the Jungle, iirc), because it still doesn't look too bad without them (but the transitions are a bit jarring).