Play Myst for me - again

Myst was one of the most captivating computer games ever. Its sequel was less well received. So can Myst III: Exile recapture the original magic? Sandra Vogel spoke to the game's new developers

Groundbreaking is a word that is often misused when it comes to describing computer games, but it was deservedly applied to adventure game Myst when it launched way back in 1993.

Its graphics were eerily realistic yet definitely in the realms of science fantasy. Its plot unfolded as the game progressed – players had little to go on at the start and were almost immediately plunged into exploration and puzzle-solving to work out what was happening and what was expected of them. Getting through the game was never going to be easy, and for many successful players the price was sleepless nights and a heavy dose of mental gymnastics.

But Myst had something that other games yearned for – an ability to captivate the player, dropping them into a world they could believe, for the duration of their time in it, was real. In this, Myst achieved the Holy Grail of computer gaming – a truly immersive experience.

Myst proved itself to be one of the most popular games of all time, and, not surprisingly, it spawned a sequel – Riven. Riven wasn't quite so well received. Its puzzles seemed tougher, and its plot just that little bit too obtuse for the average player. But the overall atmosphere and the gameworld itself were consistent with that of Myst, and between them Myst and Riven notched up over 10 million sales worldwide.

Now, nearly 10 years on, comes the third game in the sequence, Myst III: Exile. Behind the scenes there have been changes of both development company and ownership. The Learning Company, publishers of Myst and Riven, sold Game Studio, its entertainment division, to UbiSoft in March this year, just two months before Exile was launched in the US. By the time of the sale, few alterations could have been made to the game itself, even if UbiSoft had desired it.

A more significant change was the replacement of Cyan, developer of the first two titles, with the San Diego-based Presto Studios right at the start of the development cycle for Exile. Presto had a strong pedigree, having been associated with the likes of Stephen King and the Star Trek game franchises. But their new challenge was to retain the features that had made Myst and Riven so popular, while at the same time taking the saga forward.

Michel Kripalani, president and CEO of Presto, explains the company's approach: "We looked at what had been done before and identified the elements we wanted to keep. The non-violent nature of the game was important – its emphasis on puzzle solving rather than battles was crucial and had to stay.

"The use of island worlds was central, so we have retained that. The fact that a person at home in front of their computer is the main character, and there is no role playing, was also central. Of course, we also needed to retain the look of the original games.

"But we also wanted to add some stuff of our own and to create a new game that could stand alone. So we've provided what we think are some interesting characters, and we explain some of the history of the earlier games. The goal there was to give people with experience of the first two games a feeling of continuity but also to allow Exile to stand on its own."

During the development of the game, Presto came up with a number of technical innovations. "We didn't really like the way you moved around in the earlier games, so we invented a 360-degree scrolling system. You can now use the mouse to pan around the game world, clicking when you want to go forwards. Getting this to work presented us with many technical challenges, not least for our live-action sequences involving real actors. We had to use special lenses and techniques to make sure they looked right with the computer-generated graphics."

Fans of Myst and Riven will be pleased to know, though, that the general look and feel of those two games has been retained and has not been tinkered with in an attempt to give Exile its own unique ambiance, and that this game, like its predecessors, takes place across a number of different "Ages", each with its own unique visual style. The marriage of fantasy-like, surrealist worlds and elements of mechanical technology was one of the things that made Myst unique, and the somewhat Dali-esque look and feel has not been lost. Kripalani likes to refer to the overall visual style as techno/fantasy, though he admits that it isn't easily categorised. What makes it work, he says, is the way that all the usual elements are familiar in form and style, even though the particular combination of elements at any one location may come from different historical periods and geographical locations in our own world.

Greg Uhler, vice president of operations, chips in to explain another of the innovations. "We also had a thing about computer music," he says. "So much of it is boring, and so often we hear that players just turn it off after the first few minutes. This is a great shame as music really helps with ambiance.

"So Jack Wall, our composer, came up with something different. His system for the music works on two fronts. First, in each stage of the game we have songs that change depending on the puzzles you've solved. Within each song there is a single melody around three minutes long. On top of that come different musical elements – say a horn section, vocal section and rhythm section. These obey certain rules. So the horn section might fade in, loop twice and fade out, or a voice might always be accompanied by another voice. The game itself then creates the actual music heard based on these rules and what the player does. All this makes for non-linear music that never loops."

Getting all of this right takes time – and money. "As a development studio, we will spend as much money as the financiers will provide," Kripalani explains. "In this case, it meant we could allow nine months to get our ideas together before going anywhere near a computer to start working on the game itself – more time than we've ever spent before on planning." Doing a quick calculation, Kripalani worked out that between them the various people involved with Exile had taken a total of 35 working years to develop the game.

The good news is that it shouldn't take anyone that long to complete Exile. Somewhere between 20 and 40 hours is Kripalani's estimate. It is tempting to do the maths, and suggest that this equates to something like a year's worth of development time being put into an hour's worth of gameplay. But Kripalani would probably not like the inference. He is keen to emphasis that completing the game is neither a race against others or a time trial against yourself and how much time you take to get to the end is not really relevant.

"We didn't produce the game just to challenge the world's Mensa members. It isn't a test or a competition. We take the view that enabling players to accomplish goals and feel good about their experience is what we're all about. We really want players to get to the end. Therefore, the challenge and reward system in the game are really good.

"As the game progresses, the puzzles do get harder, but there are some really stunning rewards, and we figure that as the player's investment of time and immersion in the action grows, they become more prepared to spend time finding solutions."

Riven, the second game in the sequence, was widely criticised because its puzzles were seen by many to be just too difficult. Kripalani accepts the point, but has a slightly different take on it: "In fact, we think it wasn't so much that the puzzles themselves were hard, as that the surrounding information was obscure. You weren't always sure what you should be doing, or how far along in the game you really were. This time around, we provide a lot more background information, to help you work out what to do and where you actually are."

How well this works in the real world remains to be seen. It is frustrating but true that feedback from real gamers always comes to developers after it is too late to do anything about what they have to say in a game. But Exile will enter a genre of games with, in many respects, only two other occupants – its predecessors. It has to live up to them as much as to the demands of a new generation of players.

Myst III: Exile is published on Friday by UbiSoft