In reply to Animan’s post on D’ni Guild Forums Forums RAWA clarified what “10 Ages in offline version” (a rumor posted by one of the game websties) means:
quote:
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Originally posted by Animan121:
But don’t worry, there’s still the offline portion with 10 full ages.
——————————————————————————–This isn’t exactly a reply to your post, but your post did set off a red flag for me. So let’s do some rumor squashing, so that y’all aren’t disappointed later by various assumptions, shall we?
Yes, technically, depending on how you count things up, there are 10 different areas/Ages in the off-line portion of Uru. If you’re really generous in your definition, you could even get a bit higher.
Hurrah, right?
Hang on. Don’t assume that means that there will be 10 full Ages (such as Channelwood in Myst) in the offline package, because you may be disappointed.
So as to not spoil anything in Uru, I’ll use Myst as my example.
How many Ages/areas were in Myst?
Most people would probably answer “5” – Myst, Mechanical, Stoneship, Channelwood, and Selenitic. Those are the Ages that you got to explore – the main Ages.
Those who finished the game might answer “6” to include Atrus’ prison (D’ni). It’s small, there really isn’t anything to do there, but it is a separate Age. [Yes, realMYST players would say “7” here to include Rime, but let’s not confuse the issue even more 🙂 .]
Others who know more about the back story might give you “8” to include Sirrus’ prison Age and Achenar’s prison Age. You don’t get to see them, but if you do the “bad” endings you do get to link to them.
Those who really want to stretch it to the extreme can say “10” – the surface, where you find the Myst Book (technically the same Age as Atrus’ prison, but separate enough to be counted as a separate area), and Riven – which you can’t visit, but you can see its sky, sun and moon through the fissure in the intro.
So which number do you think someone in marketing (whose job it is to make Myst as “big and attractive” as possible to potential buyers) is going to pick?
Fortunately, the “10 Ages” quote for Uru is not nearly as much of a stretch as saying “10 Ages” for Myst would be. But it does count a few small Ages (think Atrus’ prison in the Myst example, or Gehn’s Age and the Moiety Age in Riven) where there may not be a whole lot of exploration to be done, even though they’re technically separate Ages.
The other side of the coin is Riven – the game is quite a bit larger than Myst, but it only has three Ages (four if you count Atrus’ prison in the intro)!
The point is that the “number of Ages” is extremely arbitrary, and doesn’t really tell you anything useful. Are they 10 Ages like Riven? 10 Ages like Channelwood? or are they 10 Ages like Atrus’ prison?
In Uru’s case, it’s a mixture of Ages of all different sizes, but you really won’t know for sure how big it is until you’ve finished playing.
Just don’t base your assumption of how big the game is by something as arbitrary as an Age count.
🙂
RAWA”