60 Second Preview of...

Myst III

The Specs

It's an adventure game that returns to the first Myst's hub based system, but it uses something similar to Riven's freedom of viewing. Brad Dourif will play the villain and Rand Miller returns to play Atrus. Presto is, of course, very tight-lipped about the plot and the puzzles.

The Speculation

Tom's comments: So what if Myst killed the adventure game genre. It made Grim Fandango that much more special. Maybe Myst III will revive adventure games like Baldur's Gate revived RPGs. Whatever. Genres come and go. I'm going to make a bold prediction: Myst III will dominate the sales charts for a while. But here's another prediction: Myst III will also be a good game. The folks who did the Journeyman Project series have a big budget, a lot of time, and a fairly clever writer. I met her. Her name is Mary. She's a geek like us. She laughs nervously like someone who lives in her head instead of laughing too loud like some guy who works in PR and lives on the retail shelves.

Mark's comments: I haven't met Mary, but I'd laugh nervously also if I was developing an adventure game. If the excellent Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games can't revive the adventure game genre, I see little hope that Myst III can. Will the legion of Myst fans who seemingly played that game and no others even be able to play Myst III? Will they have the muscle PCs needed to run a state-of-the-art game? Myst was the game that everyone bought when they got their first computer or finally got that CD-ROM drive installed. It was the game that aunts bought for nephews and the game that the mainstream press was able to play and understand and talk about when they deigned to talk about computer games. In other words, it was in the right place at the right time. I don't see Myst III lucking into that enviable position.

November 24, 2000

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