reflections on finishing Myst 3
Apr. 23rd, 2007 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zwolYeah, yeah, I know, this game has been out for how many years now?
Oblique spoilers follow...
The final puzzle was cute, but a bit annoying, particularly when a glitch meant that I entered one of the sub-patterns correctly and it didn't work.
The endgame annoyed me. Sure, Saavedro has no reason to do anyone associated with Atrus a kindness, and besides he's completely batshit insane, but ... why am I forced to kick the man in the face one more time after all he's been through? Relatedly, he can see me standing there, why does he not chase me when he sees me going up the stairs instead of turning the switch as requested?
More generally, it would have been really nice to be able to talk to him. I realize that doing this right is an AI-complete problem (there's a fun little post-Singularity ethical nightmare: deliberately implementing an insane AI with the memory of having been screwed over, his entire world destroyed, and then stuck for 20 years in a giant puzzle - just to make a game that much more realistic...)
Nitpick: why was there a linking book to Atrus' new home Age in the endgame? If I understood correctly, that Age was written long after the puzzle worlds. It would have been more sensible for the book to have taken me to Myst, from which it is apparently possible to signal Atrus. (And it would have been a nice nod back at the first game.)
Oblique spoilers follow...
The final puzzle was cute, but a bit annoying, particularly when a glitch meant that I entered one of the sub-patterns correctly and it didn't work.
The endgame annoyed me. Sure, Saavedro has no reason to do anyone associated with Atrus a kindness, and besides he's completely batshit insane, but ... why am I forced to kick the man in the face one more time after all he's been through? Relatedly, he can see me standing there, why does he not chase me when he sees me going up the stairs instead of turning the switch as requested?
More generally, it would have been really nice to be able to talk to him. I realize that doing this right is an AI-complete problem (there's a fun little post-Singularity ethical nightmare: deliberately implementing an insane AI with the memory of having been screwed over, his entire world destroyed, and then stuck for 20 years in a giant puzzle - just to make a game that much more realistic...)
Nitpick: why was there a linking book to Atrus' new home Age in the endgame? If I understood correctly, that Age was written long after the puzzle worlds. It would have been more sensible for the book to have taken me to Myst, from which it is apparently possible to signal Atrus. (And it would have been a nice nod back at the first game.)
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Date: 2007-04-24 08:14 am (UTC)It occurs to me that, even if he had managed to crack both halves of the puzzle, he wouldn't have been able to get out! Someone has to be on the inside to pull the handle. Of course, hard on the heels of this notion is the thought that surely in all those worlds he could have found tools with which to cut down that spikey grating (the one he hands the book through after you trap him).
I played the ending in which he throws the book off the edge of the platform, so I did see one of the Atrus-gets-all-upset scenes. I kinda wanted to rant at him then.