Dream World

Myst has gone nuts. It used to be in the old days just walk through a world, push buttons, pull levers touch books and then things happened. Doors would open, bridges would lower, and secret passages were revealed. Now they have gone onto a whole other drug addict phase. Today I entered Dream World. After finding my floating bubbles and giving it to the mysterious water ghost, I was instructed to go to the memory chamber. So I went there and met up with one of the protectors again. She laid me down on the bed and put the mask on my face. I was then transported to Dream World (I guess that means I fell asleep?). So in there I was presented with the biggest display of swirls and colors which reminded me of a Music visualization on a computer program. Then a voice started talking to me and telling me about what the dream world was all about. He then summoned a whole slew of colored blobs which were the 'ancestors' and told me to bring them to harmony. Basically I had to change all of them to white, which was not an easy task, but a very fun puzzle at the same time. After this was done I was revealed a combination of 6 colors, and then send back to the real world. I’m guessing this is important, so I wrote it down. After leaving the memory chamber, I was confronted by Anya again who told me that now that I was done in the dream world, she needed to close it off so nobody could get in who wasn’t supposed to be there. So I walked around a bit more and found a part that was now open due to me pulling some levers before. Turns out it was Achenar and Sirrus’ secret hideout. I caught Sirrus trying to leave, and he got scared and gave me some BS story about him trying to protect his father. Anyways, after he left me I went around the back side of his place to discover another bathyscaph, this time not broken. In guessing, I discovered there was a secret door under the water where this bathyscaph was, but I had to get rid of it using the levers next to it. So I did that and went down and discovered a door. This door had a series of colored marbles scattered across the face of it. So, I am guessing that I need to arrange these marbles in the pattern that the voice in Dream World showed me. So next time I go in there, that is what I’ll be doing. But for now I have to study for my final tomorrow. Until then:

Love peace and chicken grease,
David

Bubbles and water ghosts... WTF?

Ugh… Well after a full day of studying for Signals and Systems, I finally decided to take a break to play some of this god-forsaken game. I started out from before and went in to check out the thing that Sirrus blew up. Supposedly it was a ‘harvester’ to get dream orbs which are needed to store the memories of their deceased family. With this they can go into the Hall of Dreams (could be wrong about the name) and dream about their ancestors. Weird people. So behind the harvester there was the memory chamber, which is the place where the old and almost dead people go to store their dreams. Inside, though, I experienced some memories of Yeesha being trapped inside of this chamber and being tied up by Sirrus. Not a very nice man. So I encountered another protector, she asked for my help to fix the harvester so they can get more orbs, which I’m assuming I’ll have to do later on. Then I found another protector who somewhat threatened me saying she didn’t trust me and I needed to gain her trust. If it were up to me I’d push the old hag into the lake, but seeing as that wasn’t an option, I did what she said and headed over to the hall of dreams to check out what the other protector ladies were doing.

Then some trippy (perhaps uncanny?) stuff started happening. As I walked into the Dream Hall, the game took over. Three women were sitting on benches with masks on, and all around them weird colored smoke was burning. Suddenly one of the women’s masks vaporized and she stood up and talked to me. As she was talking, the walls of the room started fading into a swirling mass, reminiscent of a movie LSD trip. She told me I had to go into the dream world to get some message that Yeesha was trying to send me, and the only way in is with a spirit guide. So they assigned me the water spirit and told me to go give it an offering so I can continue into the dream world. So tomorrow I am going to have to go and give this crazy water-ghost a bubble from the bubble tree so that I can go into someone’s dream. Honestly, I believe the Ubisoft and Cyan team have started smoking pot and dropping X in order to come up with weird stuff for their games. Who knows what awaits me in the Dream World. I’ll just have to wait and see, and so will you.

Till then,
Farewell and sweet dreams.

Serenia

Serenia... The last stop on my Journey through Myst hell. If you don't already know, this game is really starting to get boring. It's a good game, and has great graphics, but it's just too darn slow.
Anyways, I got to Serenia and it looks just like the name suggests. It is the nicest, most peaceful looking place I've seen in any video game. Trees are peaceful and swaying, the place is made of marble and everything is perfect. There are bubble fountains and dandelion trees and acid spitting fire plants. Ok, I admit that doesn’t sound too peaceful, but it actually adds to the whole package. Also throughout the age, you encounter multiple spirit guides who are there to watch over the land. And of course, there is also peaceful serene music playing in the background (hidden underground speakers or simply video game effects, I'm not too sure).

Anyways mostly all I managed today was walking around and getting accustomed to the new land. I have come across a few wooden water-control devices that manipulate the many streams flowing through the area, but for what reason I do not yet know. I am sure it will be for a puzzle that I will encounter later on. At one point of the place, I met up with a woman named Anya. She is a protector of Serenia and one of their 'Dreamers.' I also came across a journal by Achenar describing his and his brothers combined plans to kill their father using some dream device located on Serenia. Right after I met Anya, I then encountered Achenar climbing up a mountain with some kind of artifact. When he saw me, he explained to me how he had nothing to do with killing his father and the artifact was to stop Sirrus. Not sure if I believe him or not. Then right after that, I saw Sirrus come up out of the water in some kind of submarine device. As soon as he saw me, he blew it up with the same stuff I used in the other age to blow up the thing blocking the elevator, and ran off. I don’t know what to make of it yet, but I guess I will find out tomorrow, when I enter the mystical temple. Till then…

David out…

Short trip

So like I said these are going to be much more often now, considering the things are due on Tuesday and I still hate like 4 more left to do. That’s what you get for having 3 engineering classes and a writing class; certain things always seem to get in the way.
Anyways, I went back to Tomanha and it was time to check out the final(?) puzzle in that age. In Yeesha’s room there is a book shelf with about 16 books with titles all written in D’ni. After reading some stuff throughout the age on the D’ni writing, I was able to translate the titles of the books. Each one had the name of some character that showed up sometime or another in the Myst series. The 5 that stuck out though were the names of each of the family members. I also noticed that you could push books in 5 at a time, and then they would get pushed out. Hrmm, so I pushed the 5 family members’ books in and when done in the right order (took a couple of tries) the bookshelf lowered and revealed a ladder down. This brought me to a small little alcove looking over a stream with a linking book at the end of the path. Touching this book led me to Serenia for the first time. HURRAY!

In Serenia, before exploring very far, I discovered another linking book. Out of curiosity, I touched it and it sent me back to Tomanha, but to a part I hadn’t been before… or had I. In looking around, a bench that was on the side triggered a memory which showed the opening scene from Myst III: Exile, something I haven’t played in years. I looked around and found a door which led back to where this game started, but the door was previously locked. So I looked around, saw some memories, gathered some information about Serenia and then headed back there, to continue with next time.

Long time no see...

Geez, I really am wordy. Each post has been more than 500 words, when the minimum is 300. I guess there is just so much going on in this game that it is hard to be so short about it. Anyway, the reason I’m back here so quickly is because I forgot something (2 things) that I wanted to mention before, but got distracted because its 12:45 and I’m tired. First of all was the elevator ride at the end. I would never think a video game elevator ride could be fun, but it was. In fact so much that I watched through it twice. Basically this elevator was going up through the middle of his magnetic mountain cave thing up through a windy (windy as in not straight, not as in there was lots of weather) elevator shaft. Unfortunately, the shaft got destroyed half way up, but that’s ok. Sirrus the scientific genius rigged it up so that when it gets to the broken part, it gets caught by this electric/magnetic web. The web charges up energy and then hurls the elevator up 20 feet to another web. This is done 3-4 more times and then finally it gets back on track and up to the top. I thought that was cool, but maybe I’m weird.
Another thing, I'm kind of bothered about the ending of this age. I’ve noticed that in this Myst the extra ages that the player is forced to go through to advance really don’t seem to have to do with anything. I mean, for both of the last two ages, I entered the world, I looked around, learned history about the brothers, and the whole point of all the puzzles was to get back to the book to get to the original world. In all of the other Mysts, you went to the new ages for a purpose. You would get there, then find some object or push some button or something that would be needed for the next part of the game. This one seems to be just walking around and learning the history behind these people. Now as it’s an interesting story, I just wish I’d have something to show for all the work I did. Maybe it will get better as the game goes on, but as I am already half way through (once again, I cheated) I don’t find that likely. Maybe I’ll just have to live with it and then wait for Myst 5 (out in December) to come out and blow this one away. Well that’s all I wanted to say. Look at this… Already 437 words again… well 441…well you get the point (446). Anyways, now that I’ve ranted about that, I suppose its time to go.

See you in a day or two,
Me (469)

Playing catch-up

Well it's been again another month since I looked at this and now I'm realizing I have under a week to get all the rest done, so you might see me here every day. But that’s life, even though it sucks, right in the middle of when my hell week is going to be. I just love being lazy. Anyways, on to the game.

I got put back into the world not remembering much from a month ago, and I kind of had to read through the walkthrough for the section before where I am at to remember stuff. Which is hard, because this game is very not-linear and finding where you are in a 4 page essay describing the same things over and over again is like a blind man finding his way through a mirror maze.
Finally I got my bearings straight and realized I left myself right before I took a nice long dive down a rabbit hole (rabbit hole? ARGs? hrmmm) and ended up next to this big spider looking machine with a chair in the middle, as well as a couple of note scattered around with clues on how to solve the next puzzle. Finally when I read up and figured out what patterns I needed to make in a machine I've never seen yet, I sit down in the chair. In this puzzle you have to move these three levers around to different positions in order to make a crystal shake. There are four crystals and they each shake for a total of probably 30 seconds, and I need to make all four shake at the same time. How did I know this? I cheated that’s how, so sue me. Anyways, cheating or no cheating I still had to get all these levers moved around in a really quick amount of time, which took many different tries and many different combinations before I could get it all done. Hurray, I got it! So when they all were set, a bridge in front of me magically (by magically I mean lifted up by magnetic force, as the games story suggests) and I walk across to another weird lab with weird rocks falling. I trigger another memory in my memory stone and it shows a dispenser dropping rocks, one explosive and one not, into a container. Across from this dispenser is an elevator shaft clogged up with something disabling it from moving. So the logical choice is to make an explosive rock drop and blow the hell out of the shaft-clogger, so I can ascend to the top. To my luck, it works and the elevator is working. I ride up and am put right next to the linking book which sends me back to Tomanha for more exploration for tomorrow. So even though I didn’t progress really far, I still worked way too long on 2 stupid little puzzles that finally got me out of this age. So once again, until next time…

Adios muchachos

Myst Mayhem

Well I definitely put a lot of time into this one today. I gave up last time after a while of randomly walking around the island and trying to see anything of importance. I very easily got lost, but when I came back with a fresh mind today, I was able to scout out the last of every thing. I came across the bridge which was the last puzzle on this section of the island. After solving this one, which was a lot easier than it seemed, I got across the lake and investigated side 2 of the island which was much smaller. This led to much more of the storyline being developed. Turns out Achenar, which is the nicer of the 2 bad brothers was trapped on this island and made the best of it, studying the animals, learning to hunt and studied the primates of the island, called mangees. This is a key ingredient to the final big puzzle of this age. I next came across a tall tree hut which over looked a set of 5 mangee hiding places. The mangees were forced to hide because of the alligator looking thing outside these cages. Also, in this hut (along with more story development) there were 3 knobs which each produced a different sound. Now across the island, I had been encountering pictures of specific mangees, and a chart showing their personal "name" which was a series of sounds. I needed to call out each mangee by name, so he would move around the cages in a certain pattern in order to trick the alligator into falling into a pit and then having a specific mangee ("white beard") throw a rock at him to kill him. Now needless to say, this is an extremely difficult task. So after about an hour of trial and error, I finally gave up and looked online for the solution. This got me past the alligator, and eventually out of this age. When I got back to the original age, I noticed someone (Achenar?) stealing Yeesha's linking book, but could do nothing about it now, so I just went into the next age, Spire.

Now, spire seems to be much more of a simpler age than Haven. This is a floating “island” made of glowing, magnetic (I figure this out after reading books and notes scattered across the island) rocks that are used by Sirrus to create electricity. Sirrus is much more of an evil person than his brother, and his main goal is to get out of this age in order to get revenge on his father. So I basically had to follow his clues in order to get the electricity on the age to work for me so I could find out where he is and what he’s doing. All of the puzzles here involved electric circuitry which required a lot of guess and checking, and some problem solving skills to figure out. After getting most of the power back on in the age, I decided to call it a night and get some rest. More on my travels next time…

2 in the morning and my brain hurts

Well instead of studying for my 2 exams that I have this week, I instead decided to catch up on my Myst adventure. This part of the game is I think the most intricate and confusing I have ever seen in a Myst game, but this makes for a much more fun experience. It started off on the Age of Haven. I was placed in a Jail in some small hut. I had to poke around at the wall to get it to fall down because it was so old and junky. The first thing that I notice is my amulet glowing when I look at a picture on the wall. Some how I got an amulet off of the ground that shows you somebody's memories of certain things when it encounters them. I don’t know who it is, but throughout the Myst world, different things set off different memories setting the main meat of the story line. Anyway, I walk around the Island and first come to an old rotting ship turned on its side with a giant (what looks like) dinosaur carcass next to it. I search through the old boat to find clues about the wildlife on the island, which is very prevalent every where you look, and I am assuming is a big part of the puzzle on this island. Finished with this ship, I walk around more and stumble upon an old deserted camp, and a large flying bird-reptile is looking through it. It lunges for me and (in a cut scene) I grab onto the old tent and use it as a parasail to escape this creature. I am dropped on the ground in the middle of some huge jungle looking place. It took me a very long time to do most of the exploring in this jungle (in fact I am not sure I’m done exploring, but we’ll see). I have come across many different totem poles, each depicting one of the animals on the island, with a symbol on it, which I assume I will have to know for a future puzzle. So basically in 2 hours of wandering the island, I have looked at a lot of beautiful scenery and wonderful CGI artwork, but have only really took a bunch of mental notes and pictures of things that might help me in some future puzzle. Hopefully next time will prove a bit more adventurous. So, until then, fare thee well.