Exclusive preview: This is ‘Obduction,’ Cyan’s spiritual successor to ‘Myst’ - smiththared1978

"Actually through and through the line of designing [Obduction], IT swung game around much further to the spirit of Myst games than information technology ever was at first. Information technology's Myst in infinite," says Blue-green's art director Eric Anderson. "We call [the disparate worlds] Ages, in-firm. We feature the equivalent of Linking Books. Sol yeah, when people play it they're going to say 'Buckeye State, they made another Myst game.'"

I've made the tetrad hour driving force from the Kiss of peace convention in Seattle bent on Spokane, Washington D.C. to a small small studio hidden in a grove of pine trees unofficially of a highway. Information technology's the construction that houses Cyan Worlds, creators of the classic stake games Myst and Riven, and there's not even a sign out front to let me know I've come to the opportune place.

Cyan Worlds Studio Tour — The front capture to Cyan's studio.

But I made it, and now I'm getting to see something I don't think anyone in the open has really seen: A first deal Obduction, the game Cyan successfully Kickstarted to the tune of $1.3 million last fall. Cyan showed off a trifle of the "introductory tear down" at the one-year Mysterium conference this year, but I'm acquiring a real look–a glimpse of two out of the ternary major worlds that make up the game, albeit in very early stages.

Unfortunately I return without many pictures. Why? IT's pretty simple. "We're kinda at a stage in development right-hand now where all but of the work we'rhenium doing is not very photogenic," says Anderson. Cyan is busy refining the puzzles and devising for sure the mechanics work before prettying everything up, because as Anderson jokes-but-is-totally-earnest, "Turns tabu artistic production's expensive!"

"We've got a lot of money to do this project, so we'Re stressful to constitute truly smart," chimes in Myst co-creator Rand Miller.

So reserve me to blusher you a word-picture, I guess.

Forest for the trees

I did get a look at what Cyan's prepping towards—information technology wasn't all untextured models. The team constructed a demo of the introductory "level" for Mysterium, which is now serving as their target for future day assets.

Information technology's gorgeous. Obduction is improved on Unreal 4, and wow. The introductory area places the player in a itty-bitty moonlit woodland clearing, a campfire off in the distance. All of the lights in the scene are presently dynamic, including an anele lamp that Anderson picks up and ignites. There's a selfsame efficacious The Board-esque presence in Obduction—you can now pick up, circumvolve, and interact with objects in the environment, and those objects power have (for representativ) secret doors to uncover or codes scraped into the can. "It's the kind of stuff that you wished you could do in Riven when you'd nab the stuff on Gehn's nightstand," says Anderson.

Take it in while you can—"The solitary berth in the game I think you currently never go hindmost is the starting forest," says Anderson. Overall, Marian Anderson says the gimpy is "non as not-lineal atomic number 3 Myst, and it is somewhat inferior linear than Riven."

I also got a few details nigh the knob-based navigation system that Cyan's building in addition to a freeform WASD/Sneak away mode. The early scheme was freeform in epic outdoor areas; in other words, you could click anywhere and it would walk about you towards that spot. Only in areas where thither are objects to interact with does it resort to hard-boiled-set nodes. This way node-based players will get to explore Sir Thomas More than, say, realMyst, patc still being able to keep in line the entire game with a mouse.

Myst in Quad

I maneuver to a whiteboard in the conference room where I'm seeing Obduction and take if it's hole-and-corner game design stuff. Rand Miller laughs, then does a double-take. "Really…That is in reality tops-secret. That's some of the Francis Scott Key gameplay towards the end that we retributory transformed."

Wear't headache—no of it made sense to me. It's a nice lead to talk about how Cyan is developing Obduction, though, compared to its past Myst titles. "Richard [Watson] and I are sort of the first front of intention," says Miller. "Then we present to the whole team, and they have the chance to think over information technology complete without us in the room, and it's large-hearted of like 'Put perfect your egotism metre.'" He laughs. "OH, I dread these days."

"Before when [Teal] was this big, big machine, it was Rand separate of design in a vacuum," says Anderson, later. "Now it doesn't real crop that way. I think, every bit very much like IT's tough for him to sustain to flex with all this feedback, He likes it because we have this repetitive 'pull through better, make it better, make it better.'"

I got an abbreviated take the entire design process and it starts, conceive it operating theatre not, in theory. Ryan Warzecha, Project Manager on Obduction, pulls out one of these maps for Pine Tree State to pick up—the first large environment you'll attend, which is a bizarro, alien Old West/Mad Easy lay-type world known as Hunrath. It's literally a circular map drawn taboo happening a piece of paper with words and scribbles everywhere.

That map then becomes the fundament for the 3D model present—it's scanned into the game and projected onto the ground every bit an initial layout.

"They definitely have an old-school intent process, so taking their puzzle design and mapping it into the tech is always an interesting challenge because they don't draw play things to scale of measurement, they wear't suppose about the verticality," says Anderson. "It's truly play—and preventive close to years—merely mostly amusing."

As Anderson walked more or less this early, previous variant of Hunrath, which is in what Blue-green terms the "massing model" represent (a.k.a. mostly untextured blocks) there were words and arrows on the found describing what should be in each country. For illustrate, "Sign of the zodiac" with an pointer pointing to an area where someone has stacked the house in question. Those speech and arrows wholly come from that original real-world map.

"That's literally how IT was done for Myst and Riven," says Anderson. "People are like, 'That doesn't seem very detailed.' You should get a line some of the Riven maps."

Hunrath, Mofang, and Villein

"I would call this three Oregon four Myst Islands together. And we consume three of these," says Anderson. I asked him how big Hunrath is, after watching him wander around the space for few minutes and having it seem enormous.

Miller, for his part, says the game as it currently stands is most likely large than Riven which is…substantially, a pretty stunning assertion. We'll see whether the game ends dormie that size at one time everything is fully production—the team fully admits the content and scope are in flux still.

"It's big, but I think we can pull it dispatch. We'Ra pretty good at this aft the years," says Miller. "It's acquiring deeper and deeper and it's really satisfying." Recently the team pushed Miller and James Dewey Watson to make over an alien language/numbering system, a la Riven, to devote it extra depth. Whether you think that's a good thing or not, intimately, that belik depends happening your affinity towards Riven.

But back to Hunrath. As I aforesaid, it's class of a Mad Max/Old West feel, with all sorts of cobbled-unneurotic structures and desolate. Of course, at the moment IT's mostly untextured lily-livered structures, just you sack get a good thought of the size and scale.

"When you first arrive Here at that place are only so many places you can actually go," says Anderson. "You can't get into the house so far, you can't get into this jumbo structure midmost yet, all you nates see is there's a tree inside this wall up, and there's these kiosks around that give you… almost like imager messages. People that lived here left these messages for you.

"There's no one vagabondage around, there's signs of struggle, there's a graveyard with fresh-dug graves, and you'rhenium like 'What the hell happened hither?' And it has this class of Wild West tactile property yet it's surrounded by this alien landscape."

I also get a coup d'oeil at an early puzzler, which has you [MILDEST OF SPOILERS] redirecting the flow rate of water to open a gate to a recently area—put differently, a very Myst-ilk series of events. "It's funny because they started turned really Myst-like in the puzzles and so they moved in a diametric way towards the end," says Derrick Robinson, who's doing very much of the concept artwork on Obduction.

He shows me a ended formulation of the gate we just opened—how this yellow mass bequeath flex into corrugated argentiferous and old car doors. It's all very familiar and Earth-like, until it's not. There's the tree that has water spraying impossible of its leaves, for case, surgery the large floating stone sphere. And, course, the aliens—three alien races, all of which leave beryllium present atomic number 3 NPCs in the gage (though they're not in in that respect yet).

And Hunrath is far and away the most Earth-like environment. Mofang, which is affectionately called the "Concatenation Age" internally, is a city built into a cliff. Oh, except the drop is floating in the pitch. Originally an thought for a Myst Age, Anderson resurrected the theme for Obduction and the team likable it enough to make it a full world.

The last world, Serf, is more of a swamp world. However, I don't know much more that—we bypassed the 3D models and looked at a few pieces of construct prowess instead, so I don't flat know what alien twists testament show dormy in that location.

"[The three worlds] are very closely linked simply they are three very razor-sharp worlds with distinct races and clear cultures. They're equally set-apart from each other as Myst Ages were from each other," says Anderson.

Rear end line

You know what? I could pass on about Obduction forever. And I already kind of sustain, even without discussing all the stuff I kind of know merely am not supposed to speak up more or less because spoilers. If you want more spoiler-free information though, feel free to check out this transcription of the interview I did with Rand Miller and the rest of the team, and if you're an old-school day Myst fan I too took some pictures of the fabled "Myst Vault" and Cyan's offices.

But overallObduction's already looking good. Early on in development, sure, just withal good. The game exists—IT's not evenhanded the handful of construct art we saw during the Kickstarter last year.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435583/exclusive-preview-this-is-obduction-cyans-spiritual-successor-to-myst.html

Posted by: smiththared1978.blogspot.com