Myst 4 Exhibit

I arrived shortly after 1pm at the County Hall Gallery in London where a gentleman took me in to meet a UK Ubisoft representative who greeted me and told me to feel free to look around.
The Exhibit was in 2 rooms. The first room had 3 Macs and 2 Windows laptops running Myst 4. There were a few prop artifacts on the walls like Yeesha’s clothes and shell amulet and Sirrus’ clothes as well as a primitive Journey Cloth looking item from Serenia. The room also had a vast amount of concept art box designs for the Myst games and Uru.

I approached on of the laptops running the Windows version and started a new game from the beginning. There was a nice intro that had me smiling at the little references to the past games.
I will try to refrain from spoilers, the first puzzle I stumbled upon I managed to solve fairly quickly. Upon seeing me complete the puzzle one of the guides mentioned that another visitor had spent about 2 hours doing it earlier. The game itself is really good, the graphics are nice and the story arch seems to be a lot more intelligent than I first thought with references to the past myst game ages etc.

Characters seem to fit in with the surroundings a lot better than they did with Exile. Only gripe was Atrus’ voice got a tad annoying after a while during one puzzle (sorry Rand) I don’t think it would have been so bad had I been using a mouse not a touch pad, the puzzle could have been completed faster.

After a long while of playing it and sores on my knuckles from the touch pad I decided to go take some photos and headed to the second room.

The second room housed clothing of Atrus and Achenar and clothing which appeared to be from Serenia as well as some jewel eggs that were in a dish-like object. Clay sculptures were on podiums in the center of the room from various ages and areas along with Yeesha’s pipe and Achenar’s weapons and a letter from Atrus.

Some of the soundtrack music from the game was playing, a lot of it was stuff we have heard already except one track I had not heard before. On the far wall in front of the leather sofas was a huge projection of a screenshot of Serenia. Along the walls yet more fantastic concept work including the story board for the game intro. There were also two copies of From Myst to Riven for reading (I can see why it was dubbed the coffee table book).

Overall it was a lovely little exhibit, it was certainly interesting to see the costumes from the game and to play the actual game itself.

Now if only I can get my hands on Atrus’ books.