Text Within a Text

I began playing Myst this weekend. I would have begun sooner except Best Buy and the bookstore don't make it easy to get a copy of the game. I must admit that although this isn't my first experience with the Myst series of games (I have played about 15 minutes of Myst IV, Revelation), it is the most enjoyable gaming experience I've had in a while. At first I couldn't get over what seemed to be almost overly non-linear gameplay ("should I be throwing these switches, should I go left or right, if I go right will I ever get the chance to go left?") but as the game progressed I realized that it didn't really matter what I did at this point, my goal was to get that rocket ship off the ground. Anyways, I'm not a fan of linear style games at all. I started my PC gaming with Far Cry, which was touted as the most non-linear FPS of all time. I must say that Far Cry lived up to this descrition in my opinion, while remaining a great FPS (I know many who have played Deus Ex may disagree, but I'm not that far into Deus Ex to make a good comparison). It was a fantastic game.

When it came to Myst, I knew from the readings for class that we wouldn't be a linear style game, but I was surprised with how non-linear it seemed to be at first. If you don't read the books in the library then you won't really know what you are doing on the island at all, so you might run around for an hour looking for stuff to do. I must admit that I had no idea that there was a help box at the bottom of the screen until I clicked on it by accident. I figured I'd take the hint it gave me and read more than one of those books in the library. So I meandered, or rather, I clicked my way back to the library and began reading. That's when this idea hit me. Myst, at least at this point in the game, is a series of texts within one main story. Each text seems to be represented by a different world that needs to be discovered and saved. This is a common motif throughout literature, and I found it particularly interesting to be noticing it in a game. All the different worlds that are alluded to and described in the 4 or 5 books that are legible in the library represent a new story, a new place for me to go out and discover at some point in the game. This adds to the excitement: I can't wait to meet the characters that were alluded to in the blue book, or even to discover the world that always had a gray sky...

Anyways, these were just my thoughts as I began the game. I can't wait to see what happens as the game progresses. Upon launching the shuttle I realized I hadn't read all the books in the library, so I went back and did that, which is when the realization hit me that there were many different stories, all contained within one greater story going on in this game.

Happy gaming!