The story of Uru was presented in a novel way in that it mixed the history of the previous games’ events with the real world, treating them as if they had really happened. It was to be called Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and would take the franchise in an exciting new direction. Happily, it was not long until Cyan Worlds, the small development company from Spokane, announced their next Myst project: an ambitious MMO based within the Myst universe. I plunged myself into the Myst fan community, taking part in message boards (remember those wonderful things?), visiting websites and trying to watch videos about the making of Myst on YouTube with the not-so-great connection suffered by those of us living in rural Australian. I quickly bought the next two games and devoured them. The third in the series – Myst III: Exile – had just been released. I quickly looked to see if there were other games in the series.
When I finally played Myst, I was completely absorbed by it. But after enjoying the book and its two sequels, I decided to hunt this game down. Having only ever played consoles and not paying much attention to PC gaming, the whole Myst phenomenon had passed me by. It was only due to the blurb on the book’s back that I discovered that Myst was, in fact, a highly thought-of game on Mac and PC. When I first picked up The Book of Atrus, I hadn’t known it was based on a game. My active 16-year-old imagination longed to escape the doldrums of high school and explore these fantastical locations. Having been raised on a healthy diet of Tolkien, comic books and Doctor Who, I loved the idea of a city hidden hundreds of feet below the Earth’s surface, and one that housed magical books which could transport you to any number of amazing worlds. The novel Myst: The Book of Atrus told the pre-history of the first Myst game. I’d discovered Myst in a somewhat unlikely place to find a video game – but appropriate, given the franchise. However, to fully explain the story, I have to go back a little further, to 2001. With all the studying and stress that came with such things, I needed somewhere to escape to. Mysteries unboundĪlso at this time, I was a young Australian lad completing my final high-school exams. Among all this, a small indie company in Spokane, Washington was readying to release something the world had not yet seen. Eve Online had just launched to offer something a bit different to fantasy RPG staples, but World of Warcraft was a whole year away.
Ultima Online (1997) was the king of the genre, with EverQuest (1999) a close second. In 2003, the online MMO scene was still in its infancy.
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