![]() Yes, in a move that would’ve granted him the title of “Coolest Dad Ever” if his kids hadn’t been utter shitheads, Atrus wrote a series of Ages that Sirrus and Achenar could play around in, learning the ups and downs of the art. You gradually learn that Atrus made this world for one purpose: teaching his sons, Sirrus and Achenar. So you chase Brad through yet another book and find yourself in an Age called J’nanin, a ring of rock with a central crater lake and giant ivory tusks sprouting here and there. Whether you think of him as Chucky the doll, Wormtongue, or the telepathic creep in that one X-Files episode, Brad Dourif never fails to be awesome onscreen. I guess if you wanna prove your sequel is legit, you hire a character actor with serious geek cred. But before he can show you, a scary-looking chap appears in Atrus’s study, starts a fire, and absconds with the book containing Releeshahn. Atrus has been working to build a fresh place for the remaining D’ni, and now he’s successfully installed them in the sparkly new Age of Releeshahn. A little backstory: Atrus is a member of the D’ni (pronounced “Dunny”), an advanced society that was all but wiped out in a great apocalypse. You’re there to make goo-goo noises at their new baby daughter, but also to check out the cool new Age that Atrus has written. As the new game opens, you drop by to visit Atrus and Catherine, who now live in a world called Tomanha. The makers of Exile chose to ignore this and pretend you and Atrus have remained buddies this whole time. How to continue the story? Spoiler alert: at the end of Riven, the Stranger (you) is sent home, your work in the Ages complete. However, the creative team behind the game clearly threw their minds into the process, broadening the possibilities of what comprised an Age of Myst and giving us some striking images. Once again, you’re visiting an episodic series of Ages, each of them an isolated island in the midst of an endless ocean. In terms of its puzzles, Exile is considerably easier than Riven (or seemed that way maybe I’d just gotten older and smarter). I say, thank God the new developers improved on what was already good in the series, rather than trying to reinvent it. This allows the game to show off its awesome graphics (actual moving clouds!) and ambient sound design. It finally updated the gameplay somewhat! The biggest addition was a 360-degree camera you still move by fading from one scene to the next like a ghost, but you can look all around you at any point and even rotate the view while being talked at by characters in cutscenes. My verdict is that Myst III: Exile is not as good as Riven, largely because it did what Riven was careful not to do: it just copied Myst. The screenshots on the box looked awesome, but would the game be worthy of its pedigree, or would it dumb the series down? Or bloody it up? The game had been made by a new studio with little input from the original creators (although Rand Miller did return, probably with a long-suffering sigh, to play Atrus). But it was my favorite kind of enthusiasm, the cautious kind. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was to discover a new Myst game. I was an only child, so I got away with that kind of shit. I was not in any way expecting a third game in the Myst series, because I’d read an interview with Rand and Robyn Miller and they were like, “Yeah, no, Riven is the last one.” Out of the blue, a friend of mine mentioned to me that he’d seen Myst III was out, and I was all like, “bullSHIT.” Then I went to Staples and saw that he was right, and on the spot, I convinced my mother to buy me the game as an early birthday present. Myst III: Exile - Hey! Teacher! Leave Those D’ni Alone!Ģ001. ![]()
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