Myst in Retrospect

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst

“I thought you might find it interesting to read about what I’d hoped to achieve, compared to what the Age truly is.” - Atrus

Uru is a game about exploring the ruins of the D’ni civilization, and in a stroke of bitter irony, it’s built on the bones of an equally ambitious failure: Cyan’s aborted attempt to create a multiplayer Myst.

After completing Riven in 1997, Cyan went quiet and began work on an online game which was codenamed “Mudpie.” The concept was a surprising one, Myst being a quintessentially single-player experience. The development process was long and Cyan’s occasional preview screenshots offered glimpses of a game that seemed perennially just out of reach. But the promises were tantalizing: real-time graphics, ongoing storylines, and (perhaps most intriguing of all) access to D’ni itself. We waited patiently, forgiving Cyan’s radio silence on the grounds that Uru: Online Ages Beyond Myst was going to be awesome.

Yet even early on there were signs of trouble. An online Uru would require its players to have broadband connections, but late in the development process it was clear that high-speed internet had not been adopted as widely as Cyan and its publisher, Ubisoft, had hoped.¹ The specifics behind the decision to make a single-player Uru are not public knowledge, but we know that Cyan held out on their online vision for as long as they could. In 2002 there were rumors that Cyan was creating a “dialup version” of Uru at Ubisoft’s urging, and as late as 2003 the company was still cagey about whether the scope of the project had changed. But on April 18, 2003, the rumors became official: the game’s website now described online play as “optional,” and the word “Online” was dropped from its title. It was a complete about-face, turning what had been a massively-multiplayer experience into a single-player experience (with optional online content) in a single stroke.

That being said, Uru Live (the eventual name of the online component) did exist in various forms. A small number of beta testers were playing online starting in 2002, and within days of the game’s release in November of 2003, the first of the planned online campaigns began to unfold.² But it didn’t last long: in February of 2004 Rand Miller announced that the online version would be terminated, citing insufficient subscribers. Fans have long laid blame on Ubisoft for killing Uru Live without giving it a proper chance, although whether the decision was ultimately theirs or Cyan’s is not public knowledge.

Perhaps the closest that Uru Live ever came to achieving the original vision was in 2007, when it was resurrected by the subscription service Gametap. This iteration ran for just over a year, and brought its own exclusive story content and new Ages. Since then, multiplayer Uru Live has continued to limp along in one form or another, but with no new content beyond what fans add to it. As of 2023, Uru Live can be downloaded and played for free, though the presence of other players at any given time is far from guaranteed.

Thus, the Uru that most of us came to know was this strange husk of a game, a tiny stagnant chunk of what was supposed to be a vast and vibrant universe.

Even as a single-player experience, Uru was a significant departure for the series. We leave behind not only Atrus and his family, but their entire time period: it is now the present day, the player character is “you,” and the setting is New Mexico. Myst’s creators and fans had long enjoyed blurring the line between fantasy and reality, but the games themselves didn’t partake in this prior to Uru, which presents itself as “real” with gleeful enthusiasm. The game environment is filled with real-world clutter imported by the explorers from Earth: styrofoam, t-shirts, composition notebooks, and the infamous orange construction cones. It even goes so far as to include a number of real people as in-game characters, such as longtime canon-keeper Richard “RAWA” Watson and Myst creators Rand and Robyn Miller.³

Uru is also distanced from the other games by its real-time graphics and freedom of movement, aspects which it utilizes in many different puzzles, to varying degrees of success. Movement as a puzzle mechanic is of course common in video games, but it was new for Myst. Unfortunately, player physicality also gave rise to the dreaded “kicking puzzles.” These involve shoving objects around by bumping into them, a frustrating process which greatly hampers suspension of disbelief.⁴ Overall, Uru’s puzzles tend to convey a sense that the creators were still trying to get a handle on what to do, and what not to do, with the freedom of movement.

Uru’s most regrettable departure from the Myst formula, however, is its neglect of story. Uru, while still including the usual invasions of privacy (diaries, hidden drawers, etc.), doesn’t really have much in the way of characters or plot. This is in part another symptom of Uru’s stillborn debut, as the story was supposed to evolve online in real time. But regardless of the reason, the absence of narrative is pronounced. While it tries to be as accessible as possible, Uru remains a somewhat forbidding game, often coming across more like an austere experiment than an enjoyable adventure.

Yet the way Uru was marketed bears some resemblance to the way the original Myst had been. Uru was frequently advertised as a game in which “you play as yourself,” an innovation which the creators found so appealing that it was incorporated into the game’s very title: you-are-you. This concept, though treated as novel, was in fact central to the original Myst as well. “You have stumbled across a most intriguing book,” the game’s manual says, conveying with a single pronoun that the player and player character are one and the same.

Another similarity in the games’ promotion was the depiction of the games as “escapes from reality.” Magazine advertisements for Uru showed a man in a real-world elevator, the doors opening to reveal the Age of Teledahn, with the caption “Like exploring?” It’s a concept strikingly similar to a 1999 advertisement for Myst: Masterpiece Edition, which describes the game as a way to “forget everyday worries” and “get away from it all.” The implication in both cases seems to be that these aren’t video games so much as they’re computer-generated vacations.

So while Uru was a significant change of pace compared to the games that came before it, it was in some sense a spiritual successor to the intentions of Myst, even more so than Myst’s direct sequels. While Uru can be seen as an attempt to “reboot” the series, it was also a callback to what had come before: smaller Ages, simpler goals, and understated narrative.

Ages Beyond Myst⁵, the first installment of the Uru arc, opens, predictably, with a voiceover by Atrus. He is telling Yeesha about a dream Catherine had which predicted that groups of humans would soon be drawn to D’ni by some sort of supernatural compulsion. The dream also indicated that Yeesha would be their guide. These people, naturally, are those who make up Uru’s target audience, and once the intro ends, the game presents you with a sweeping view of your avatar standing in front of the volcano from The Book of Atrus. (Like many aspects of Uru, a familiarity with Myst’s backstory is assumed. The diehard fans are served, but more casual players will be left in the dark.)

Inside the Cleft, a hologram of Yeesha explains the game’s objective by way of a long and impassioned speech about a stream. This is consistent with Yeesha’s depiction throughout the D’ni arc overall, which invariably involves florid, barely-coherent speeches. She never gets the usual Myst-style “getting to know you” routine (in which the player would read her diary, snoop in her desk, etc), so as a character she unfortunately becomes completely unreadable. She’s not a person, just a preachy voice, and as a result her “quest” feels less like a personal adventure and more like the bidding of an inscrutable deity.

Yeesha’s quest, “The Journey,” requires players to visit five D’ni Ages and explore them as a neutral observer. In each Age there are seven Journey Cloths, which the player must find in order to “complete” the Age. These are generally placed strategically, so that in order to find them the player must visit areas which serve Yeesha’s ultimate purpose: to teach the player that the D’ni were evil. (More on that later.) The Journey Cloth mechanic is a glorified easter-egg hunt, a fact which the game makes no attempt to disguise. The original Myst used more or less the same mechanic: the player visits an Age and searches for the red and blue pages, stumbling across incriminating evidence on the way. However, Myst took its egg hunt a step further by putting a prize inside each egg: each of the red and blue pages unlocks a bit more of the brothers’ stories, drawing the player deeper into the narrative. The Journey Cloths, by contrast, are simply arbitrary devices which eventually unlock a state of completion. Likewise, “completing” an Age in ABM doesn’t reveal additional story content, but another annoying sermon from Yeesha. In both games the player finds evidence of wrongdoing while exploring the Ages, but while Yeesha simply uses it to strengthen her thesis (D’ni = evil), the brothers of Myst spend most of their time trying to disprove the player’s notions, creating a complicated narrative tug-of-war not only between the brothers but between the player and the game itself. ABM’s story, so far as it has one at all, is far less sophisticated.

Luckily, the “Ages Beyond Myst” more than make up for the shortcomings of gameplay and story. The five Ages vary considerably in size and all follow a somewhat linear progression, but each has a unique atmosphere and its own flavor of beautifully-executed visuals. ABM is about big things, and it adeptly handles the grandiosity and intrigue of its landscapes. Its handling of small details, unfortunately, is less impressive. The game has very few of the close-up shots common in the preceding games, and most on-screen objects are low-detailed and only meant to be seen from afar. Whether this altered scope is a detriment or a benefit is subject to debate. While I would have preferred a game world that straddles both the epic and the intimate (as Riven did), the grandiosity of its Ages still makes them worth a visit.

Each of the Ages in the game is meant to portray a different perspective on D’ni’s sins, so let’s take a look at each in turn. Teledahn, otherwise known as “the one with the mushrooms,” was among the most anticipated locations in the game, as it was the subject of many pre-release screenshots. It’s described as an extremely old Age, one which changed hands many times over D’ni’s history. Players can access only a few acres’ worth of Teledahn, but the game does a decent job of implying additional areas beyond what can be seen. The art direction here is phenomenal, suggesting a murky, slimy place permeated with stagnant smells and dust. The water teems with life, some visible, some only heard, suggesting a rich ecosystem. There’s even an optional puzzle in which the player coaxes a large lobster-like creature to come out of hiding just for the sake of looking at it. It’s a clever idea to add these kinds of hidden details to the game world, and Uru should have done a lot more along these lines.

Teledahn also introduces Yeesha’s most important piece of anti-D’ni evidence: the remnants of a slave trade. The addition of slavery is the game’s most hamfisted attempt at sullying the D’ni reputation, placing it on the same level as the Terahnee of The Book of D’ni. The game is somewhat unclear as to whether the Teledahn slave trade was an isolated crime or a widespread societal ill, which somewhat weakens Yeesha’s argument, but it’s still the most potent example that she provides, and one which recasts the entire Age in a more sinister light.

Teledahn is also the only Age with an associated diary, the journal of Douglas Sharper, an explorer affiliated with the D’ni Restoration Council (DRC), the human explorers who represent an organized attempt to study the D’ni ruins. Sharper’s job is the “restoration” of Teledahn: exploring it, fixing its machinery, and ensuring that it’s safe to visit. His diary records his daily activities toward these ends, particularly dwelling on his frustrations with the bureaucracy of the DRC. This is the primary source of information about the DRC within ABM, and depicts it as a stagnant and misguided organization which is blind to the “truth” about D’ni (i.e., that it was a deeply flawed society). As for Sharper himself, the journal establishes little about his character other than his love of American football. He appeared as a non-player character for the privileged few who played Uru Live, but for the rest of us Sharper is little more than a name.

Gahreesen, an Age used by D’ni’s police force (the “Guild of Maintainers”), is the only Age in the game where we really get a sense of the strength of D’ni itself. Gahreesen is dominated by huge fortresses (garrisons, as the name puns) built on rotating pedestals. While the spinning buildings seem absurdly unnecessary at first, you eventually come to understand that such designs are the only way to ensure security against a technology like The Art. (You can’t write a linking book which connects to a specific room if that room is constantly in motion.) Gahreesen is filled with details like these. It’s also the only Age which requires you to visit another Age in order to complete it: a secret link hidden in Teledahn is the only way to access the prison at the top of the fortress. This does a lot to disrupt the linearity we experience in the other Ages, so it’s a shame that the technique is only used once. The nature of the Age highlights the differences between Yeesha’s motivation and that of the DRC: Yeesha sees Gahreesen as disgusting because it exemplifies the amount of work needed to protect D’ni’s ill-gotten assets, but the DRC see it as a particularly interesting example of D’ni’s engineering prowess. To the player, Gahreesen is an enjoyable Age: the puzzles are about right, it uses the possibilities of real-time gameplay admirably, and it gives you a lot of nice scenery to look at.

Kadish Tolesa is more of a diversion; it’s similar to Exile’s Amateria in that it’s basically a collection of intentional puzzles. As you wander through the Age’s massive forest (home to some of the game’s most beautiful scenes), you encounter a variety of puzzles designed to safeguard the wealth of Guildmaster Kadish,⁶ one of the richest men in D’ni at the time of the Fall. To complete the Age, the player must look for hints in Kadish’s lavish antechamber and apply them to the Age’s puzzles. As discussed previously, intentional puzzles typically fail to be as engaging as those which exist for a genuine reason, but the main credibility problem here is that Guildmaster Kadish leaves the key to his vault lying in plain sight all the time, albeit in an obtuse form.

He does try to throw potential robbers off the trail, though, by the inclusion of false doorways. The game treats this as background detail, but these red herrings suggest a different direction the Age itself could have taken: what if Kadish was itself a puzzle? What if these false doorways could be opened to reveal puzzles that don’t actually lead anywhere? What if it were ultimately the path we travel through the age that unlocked the vault, rather than the successful completion of a linear sequence of puzzles? This would have been a far more difficult task for the level designers, it’s true, but potentially could have been much more interesting.

In the context of Yeesha’s case, Kadish Tolesa serves to illustrate the greed and pettiness of D’ni’s most prominent citizens. When you finally reach Kadish’s vault, you find his skeleton lying amidst his riches. When D’ni collapsed, his first thought was to protect his valuables, and so in the end his treasury became his tomb. With what little we see of him in ABM, Kadish comes across as a pathetic figure more than an evil one, but we haven’t seen the last of him yet.

This brings us to the sister Ages of Eder Gira and Eder Kemo. These are “garden Ages,” the kinds of places where D’ni citizens would go for a picnic. Gira is an arid desert, Kemo a horticultural masterwork. They’re both fun to look at and explore, but they ultimately fall somewhat flat, as they have no story engagement whatsoever. You learn nothing about the D’ni from them, you don’t encounter any new characters, and you find nothing which challenges our understanding of the world.

In Kemo you find a DRC notebook containing a D’ni fable involving a garden Age which was taken from its prior inhabitants by force, and Yeesha attempts to imply that the same was true of Gira and Kemo, but you don’t find any evidence to corroborate that. Games are a visual medium, and to make us, the players, believe these kinds of assertions, we need to see some sort of evidence. In the original Myst, we don’t come to believe that Achenar is bad just because Sirrus says he is, but rather because we see direct evidence of Achenar’s evildoings (and likewise for Sirrus, of course). We never see anything to suggest that Gira and Kemo were ever anything but the bland, small parks that they are today, so Yeesha’s sermon in this case is particularly reaching.

Once the Ages are complete, the player is able to return to the Cleft and retrieve a final message from Yeesha, who warns you that there will soon be a major schism between the explorers of D’ni: half will side with the DRC and their tedious, superficial mission and the other half will side with Yeesha. By this point, however, neither of these groups have done much to attract the player’s allegiance. The DRC come across as tiresome bureaucrats who prefer protocol to the thrill of discovery. Yeesha comes across as a killjoy who seems to think that all closets must contain skeletons. Her own obsession is with the Bahro, a race of mysterious creatures that she insists were oppressed by the D’ni. The topic of the Bahro is not sufficiently explored in ABM, leaving them as little more than an enigma, an element foreign to all previous installments which never quite manages to sit comfortably.

I’m personally not inclined to side with Yeesha or the DRC. Neither really subscribe to the Myst mentality of wandering for its own sake, which is particularly strange when you consider that Uru, with its limited story content, is perhaps the purest example of that approach. There’s something of an echo here of the original’s “two bad choices and a good choice,” but in actuality there’s no choice available at all, just an imaginary conflict which we couldn’t participate in even if we wanted to.

Yeesha’s message, in this and the two installments which follow, is that the Art corrupted D’ni society just as deeply as it did that of Terahnee, just on a subtler level. But the problem with Yeesha’s arguments is that she holds up examples of individual wrongdoing to imply that the society overall is corrupt, committing the “fallacy of composition.” A society can contain evildoers while not being evil itself. As aficionados of the D’ni universe, many Myst fans were somewhat disappointed by Uru’s depiction of the D’ni as a corrupt race, and that it’s done in this way makes it worse. Were there criminals in D’ni? Yes, of course. Was it necessary for D’ni’s entire populace to die in order to atone for their sins? I would say not, but Yeesha argues unwaveringly that the Fall was deserved retribution. This position is shallow, callous, and succeeds only in making Yeesha appear irrationally attached to a moral which only she can see.

Ultimately, what is Uru? Unlike its predecessors, it is not a story game. While the Yeesha/DRC conflict forms a story of sorts, the primary narrative is one formed by the player, based on your observations of the D’ni ruins. Uru is about wandering, looking at the world, and imagining what it was in its prime. And even as you consider the Ages’ fictional histories, you’re also aware of the alternative Uru, the one where the Ages were filled with fellow explorers and new content appeared on a daily basis. The success of this single-player version depends largely on your own attention and imagination.

During my most recent⁷ playthrough, I happened to notice a detail that I’d never spotted before. Cut into the wall of a cavernous room in Teledahn was a tiny door. It was high on the wall, too high to be of any apparent use, and in any case too small for a person to fit through. Its intended use is unclear, and it has no relevance to the game. But someone decided to put it there, both in the game’s universe and in the real world of game development. Why is it there? No one can say. But imagining the possibilities is, ultimately, what Uru came to be about.

Footnotes

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