Obduction review: The captivating start of the post-Myst age - beelerbuntind

It's unlikely I privy be objective about Obduction. I say that up front because I think it's important for a reader to experience where a reviewer is coming from, know anything that might influence the textual matter or the score aside from the gimpy itself.

And in the case of Obduction($30 on Steam), it's pretty complicated. We've covered this game a lot in the last three years, starting in 2013 when my fashionable editor Alex Wawro and I went refine to sunny Culver City, California for IndieCade. Looking at the lineup, I saw Myst co-Lord Rand Miller—"T he Rand Miller," I probably would've aforementioned at the time—was giving a talk. I told Wawro I needed to lead, and a good matter I did since that's where Miller announced Cyan was back from the near-dead and looking to Kickstart a new project.

We were the first big site to report that news. It was the firstly "story" I ever broke, and an serious milestone to me.

Three years on and I've been out to Cyan's studio apartment multiple times. I've met and chatted with Rand Miller and the crew at Cyan at length. We were the first press to see Obduction spouting, and I think the first to contract hands-on with the game too. And every last because when I was a tiddler, my pa showed me this game Myst. IT was one of the early games I ever played (though it wasn't until umteen years later I eventually through with it) and it's a series I'm really enthusiastic about.

All this to say my life has been level up with Cyan for almost As long as I can remember, and I've spent much of the live on three years of it with Obduction. If you're looking for the most objective, the about exonerated-bystander-happened-upon-a-game variety of meet this game, then you've come to the dishonorable review.

And I preceptor't just mean that in an "Expect undue congratulations" way either. I talked to my now-editor Brad Chacos about this issue yesterday and told him IT's even as much an issue of being overly critical as it is overly thrillful. Fandom is a realm of extremes.

Apologies if this intro seems overly-rambling and indulgent. I prognosticate we'll get to the pith of the review soon. One last note: There are low-cal spoilers to follow, including some screenshots of the main worlds. If you wishing to come in Obduction blind, I don't even have intercourse why you clicked on this review but this is your last chance to close the window.

A new age

Get a load at this screenshot:

A locked door, an over-engineered and mechanical-looking keypad, that sallow lighting—and scarce a glimpse of something in the next elbow room. Something ready.

Here's another:

A perilous bridgework, its metallic rusted by the interminable befog of this world. Also a altogether impractical bridge, one and only end terminating in thin air, waiting for you to rearrange it. "Why didn't they precisely build a more multipurpose bridge?" you think to yourself, before finding the lever that'll swing it into place.

For Myst and Riven fans these should personify immediately perceptible sights. It looks like Myst. It looks like Cyan.

I start Hera because that connection is important. This is not a Myst bet on. You'll find none traces of the D'ni here, nor linking books, Atrus, or the rest. But it is a religious successor, and more populate are coming to Obduction expecting the Same things they'd expect from a Myst sequel—subtraction twenty long time of traditional knowledge and world-construction.

A original start, but not overly wise.

Here it's "Worlds" instead of Myst's Ages. After a brief launching you'll arrive in Hunrath, which you'll probably recognize if you've followed this project at all. Information technology's the orange-rocks-and-purple-sky land Blue-green's showed off most, along with the picture-perfect rustic unintegrated business firm plopped in the thick of IT all.

It's yours to explore. Well, not the house. Not yet, anyway. You can try the handle but wholly you'll try is the classic chuckachuckachucka of a fastened door in an adventure game. There are puzzles to solve ahead you gain entree to the house's secrets.

But there is a world-wide present. The hot narration around Myst is always concerned with the game's puzzles, and for good reason out. The puzzles are the muscle, the connective tissue paper that move the player through Myst's Ages.

Teal is a world-detergent builder though, and that talent is on flooded display in Obduction—along Hunrath, sure as shooting, but in the game's other Worlds too. Hints almost diverse cultures, sent finished their lost artifacts and their decorations and, most often, their machinery. The way a political machine is built, or over-built, tells you something about the people who purportedly used it.

And yes, sometimes the bit of information you learn is "This society's architects were sadistic to design something like this," Oregon "These mass must love living in a puzzle box." Much though there's more to be inferred from the use of materials, from the shapes IT favors or its power reservoir or its decorations (or lack thereof). An care to small inside information lends these worlds, these incredibly noncitizen worlds, a believability. They birth weight. They have substance.

It's not something most games pull disconnected, and to a greater extent luminary is the fact you could plausibly reel off the names of the ones that did—BioShock's Rapture, or Unlighted Souls's Lordran, or Morrowind's…Morrowind. Places where individual (or rather a lot of someones) really cared, had thought hard nigh the particulars of this world and its inhabitants.

Obduction's Worlds aren't inevitably the best Myst Ages. They're not given the same room to pass off as in Riven, and I wish Teal had many sentence to impart fluff objects and stochastic traditional knowledge. But they feel about eligible with my expectations—a little larger than Myst's regions.

Near also big actually, at times. You can tell there were plans at one metre or another to ramp up knocked out Obduction into a slightly large game, with a few awkwardly-empty areas and a bit likewise much space between several of the important elements. IT can be especially preventive in the tardy-game if you bog down on a puzzle and get into't know what you've missed and are stuck running back and Forth River from turning point to turning point across blanket stretches of nothing in 'tween.

Cyan's lowest would motionless be much better than many studios though, and Obduction is far from Cyan's pessimal. I've unchaste particularly crazy with Hunrath, not precisely because it's grown familiar over the last three years just because its cobbled-together machinery is so bewitching, the juxtaposition of familiar Americana with the utterly strange.

And the art is worth mentioning. While we're still not quite on par with the photorealism of Riven's most good-looking areas, Cyan's turned Unreal 4 into a treat. Both aspects intrinsical to the engine (phenomenal light) and many aspects unique to Obduction (not going to suppose lest spoilers) are a technical marvel.

I did point out some hitching, even after Nvidia's current number one wood update. I recollect it's caused past load-streaming and don't know if it can be firm. In any even IT didn't bother me overmuch, though my GTX 980 Ti is a powerful identity card. Woe follow to all who hoped to run Obduction on a lower-end machine.

The strange fractional of the equating is, as I mentioned earlier, the puzzles. I'm a tur more mixed on this vista—Saame as whatever Cyan game, I guess. There are a few puzzles I think are too bedim, both interactive objects that could've used more than highlighting, and a few puzzles that commit the cardinal sin of being harder to execute than they are to solve.

Stillness, Obduction is quite a bit easier than the Teal of old. This is no Riven. (A conclusion I came to done acting Obduction sans-walkthrough, which is something I've still ne'er managed with Riven.)

But IT's generally a good mix of Cyan-style puzzles. You've got your "Move levers and gears around on this overly-complicated political machine." You've got your number codes. You've got journals where people accidentally write down all their key info. You've even got a few more complicated concept puzzles.

It's a Cyan spirited for 2016, I think. Which is to say: A much kinder, more than predictable sort of puzzle game. One with its fair parcel of "Aha!" moments, but too one that's supposed to take you a hardly a days instead of few months (or in my mom's case, a few decades of being stuck on Myst's dumb underground tangle).

I think close to people, the Myst purists, will cost a bit defeated by that fact—those who come for the puzzles, who played Myst the likes of a battle of wills. (You might neediness to stay outHaven Moon, though it as wel has issues.) Me? I'm mostly present for the worldbuilding anyway, and Cyan's typically-understated storytelling.

One last note: The medicine. Robyn Arthur Miller makes his return to Cyan (however shortly) for Obduction, and the results are pretty damned strong, adding just a hint of tensity to your differently lonesome explorations.

Bottom line

I miss information technology, now that it's over. I've waited a long, long time for another Myst game. There have been some substitutes, some pinch hitters that tried to emulate that style. But there's something special to ME well-nig an honest-to-goodness Cyan game. ME, personally—meaning I'm non strictly sure whether there's a real-life difference or if my opinions are rose-colored by nostalgia. It doesn't matter, truly, except insofar as I felt equal I should write that lengthy revelation up top. I like Cyan's exploit.

I think others may discovery it factious. I fear it won't be Myst enough for some longtime fans. And for the the great unwashe who ne'er likeable Myst? Well, this for certain won't sway you. There's still a lot of digging finished journals for clues, Reading lore that's almost entirely inconsequential except for what it creates in your imaginativeness. There's a lot of pulling levers, turn cranks, pushing switches.

I thoroughly enjoyed it all, and I hope Teal gets the fortune to follow it up with a sequel. With the era of Kickstarter apparently behind us, I'm non sure how promising that is—but I can hope. And you can stake if Cyan does announce another game, I'll personify one of the first in line to play IT.