![]() Second, Ubi has been very careful to avoid the arbitrary, arcane and mind-bendingly difficult puzzles that Myst became infamous for. This is nothing like those blindingly ugly budget adventure games where you'd rotate your view fisheye-style around a 2D image and talk to stiffly-animated characters and whimper through the voice acting. This, in combination with the environmental sounds and ambient music, create a rich and varied audiovisual experience. When you see it, it might be grazing, or sniffing at something, or staring back at you. What that means is that a roving beast won't appear every time you go over to Random Building. Animals and people also have long animation "loops" with randomized starting points. Trees sway in the wind, little bugs buzz around in the air, water ripples, and clouds crawl across the sky. I shouldn't say "static," though, because almost every location I saw was alive with animation. ![]() The player rotates the camera a full 360 degrees around a static location, and the context-sensitive mouse pointer changes to indicate another place to move to, or an object you can interact with. The Ubi team also decided to keep the same pre-rendered system as before, instead of going full 3D, Uru-style. The help system works in three stages, progressively, with the last step giving you the answer outright. ![]() To prevent the player from using the help system as a crutch, though, it's under several menu layers, where you'll also find a map of the area with points you can click on to find out more info. Likewise, you can follow the story and use the built-in help system to give you hints to the puzzles. In fact, you can pretty much ignore the story aspect, although skipping through dialogue and scenes can make it difficult to solve certain puzzles. What's also nice is that being aware of the whole Myst story isn't necessary. You can explore them one after the other, if you so choose. The game still employs the familiar "hub" system, where you can access almost all of the Ages from one location, instead of progressing in a linear fashion. Atrus' sons, Sirrus and Achenar, are still missing in action, and Atrus asks for your help in tracking them down, since you have so much experience exploring the different Ages. ![]() Revelation, set for a late September release, picks up the story ten years after Exile, which puts it twenty years after the original. You can also adjust brightness, contrast and gamma within the game, which is nice if you want a custom set up for that game, instead of adjusting the monitor itself every time. You can turn this off, as well as toggling water and "immersive" effects. The game uses an intriguing "depth of field" effect where the game tracks where the mouse pointer is, focusing what it's hovering over and blurring everything else slightly. The characters look like they just stepped out of a DVD transfer. ![]() There's also a ton of FMV (full-motion video), and it's not that nasty, pixellated stuff we've been subjected to in other games of its type. Think of all the books you read in the average Myst game, and imagine voice-overs being recorded for every single one of them. As Myst was a CD pioneer ten years ago, Revelation has the potential to do the same thing for DVDs-and it's about somebody did it. The visuals are of such high quality, in fact, that Ubi decided the game would be DVD-only the high-resolution textures, integrated video, and massive amounts of voice acting would mean as many as ten CDs. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |