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This article originally appeared in the November issue of The Inventory, the world’s largest and best online adventure magazine. The Inventory is sponsored by Just Adventure and is published monthly New and previous issues can be downloaded from the front page of Just Adventure. It is currently also translated into eight different languages around the world.

This article has been updated and edited for content.

Fact: ten years ago there was a game that redefined PC adventure gaming. Whether you liked the game or not is unimportant. The game was, of course, Myst, a title that would be imitated and cloned, though rarely equaled, not even by the game's creators, the Rand brothers. While Riven and Exile came and went, the developers at Cyan, and later, Presto Studios, were never able to match the accomplishments of Myst. With the imminent release of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, though, they are going to try again to recreate the magic.

What is Uru? Who better than Cyan describe the game and it’s etymology:

It is both a compelling single-player game and a persistent online multi-player experience that carries on the breathtaking atmosphere, challenging puzzles and intriguing storylines of the Myst series, using a real-time 3D engine that puts the player in the fantastic worlds of Myst like never before.

Historically, Uru (pronounced Oo-roo, rhymes with guru) is one of the first written words in early Sumerian cuneiform. In Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, it meant deep and city. Sumerian myth mentions it as an Underworld Paradise. It is the name of the native people who lived on the floating islands of Titicaca, supposedly descendents from Atlantis. It refers to a Mesoamerican earth-deity, and a tribe/clan of peoples in Central America connected to the Incans. The oldest known name of Jerusalem was actually Urusalem, ‘uru’ meaning, lay the foundation or establish. Uru is also the Japanese verb ‘to obtain’ or ‘to acquire’.

But more importantly, it’s the word that the D’ni (pronounced dunny, rhymes with sunny), an ancient and presumably extinct civilization that lived in a great city in a vast cavern below the Earth’s surface, used to explain to the early humans in Mesopotamia the community from which they came. In D’ni it translates to’.large gathering of people’ or ‘grand community’ - a concept unfamiliar to the early humans. They adopted the word and used it when they began to gather into cities.

Rand Miller, the leader of the team that created Myst, refers to Uru as a sequel, “truer to our Myst roots than anything we've done to date. Myst was the introduction of a small piece of the D'ni civilization. URU takes it all to the ultimate extreme. In URU, we point out that D'ni culture was part of the Earth, and lived underground and died hundreds of years ago, so they are still there. Several explorations have uncovered a long dead underground city, and people are starting to go there to explore and uncover even more."

But let’s now move on to the game. While not as complex as Riven, Uru will offer an intricate experience. As with previous games, there isn't much of a backstory to get you started. Hardcore fans of the Myst series, especially those who have read the novels and completed the previous games, will start with a better sense of what is going on. The mysterious world of Uru begins in your own time, in the first years of the 21st century. You have been asked to help in the exploration and restoration of the ruins of an ancient civilization, an archaeological marvel recently discovered by the D’ni Restoration Council (DRC).

As in Myst, players will enter ‘out of the blue’ at the beginning of this game. For the first time, however, players will be able to see and design an onscreen avatar - even if they plan to stay in the single-player world. This avatar is necessary as this world will be explored in the third-person (a first-person option is under consideration, but the team feels that a third-person view is the way Uru is meant to be experienced). This feature is, probably, one of the biggest adjustments that fans will have to make. The development team is understandably confident: "It gives a sense of things around you," they emphasized, "and it also provides a sense of scale."

The gameplay has also changed a bit. While there won't be action sequences or gunplay, players can expect the addition of some physical puzzles where you have to move objects or complete tasks in a certain amount of time. The other big change is that the gaming environment begins in the middle of a desert instead of the verdant islands of previous journeys.

Uru starts the player in the middle of the desert with little in the way of introduction. Only through exploration will the environment and story reveal itself. In a break from earlier games, this Myst game will make specific references to places. Uru is happening here and now, so you might notice details like a New Mexico license plate.

The essence of the Myst games is interactively exploring detailed environments, and Uru (off-the-shelf) will offer a single player experience that is the next game in the Myst series. Of course, what truly sets Uru apart from other Myst games is the existence of Uru Online. In addition to the offline game, for an additional fee, players will be able to join a persistent, social world with regularly updated content and new Ages to explore. The biggest difference this time is that players will be able to enjoy not only the "off-the-shelf” game, but can continue the adventure online and experience Uru by bonding with thousands of other players. Uru will not though be another massively multiplayer world where leveling-up is the main goal. Instead, Uru is a game of easy exploration for many - similar to how the original Myst was a dreamy journey.

Players will be able to choose who they want for companion, thus freeing themselves from unwelcome partners. The game is designed to be a continuous adventure for small groups of people who will always have new places to go and new things to see. As you meet other players, you can create a neighborhood, or join a neighborhood. The neighborhood serves a function similar to that of guilds in other online games; it is an online area where you can meet with other friendly folks. It may also contain activities itself, such as mini-games, that can be played with the other denizens. Neighborhoods may even serve as the basis for communal activities, such as a massive D’ni device that needs regular calibration. Calibration then becomes a group activity, and that service to the community can be tracked on a neighborhood level, encouraging group participation.

Visitors to your dwelling are by invitation only, and even ages that you might visit in Uru Online are private and will only be visited by people you invite or are invited by. If you are not feeling friendly, you can choose to play Uru Online as if it were a single-player game. You can create a neighborhood solely for yourself, and even Ages that have group activities could instead be explored alone to unearth more elements of the ongoing story. That being said, Cyan is attempting to encourage social behavior by adding some puzzles that may require you to enlist the aid of other players. Ages might even be competitive in nature: an Age could contain ‘fugitive’ elements in which one player is trying to trigger a series of events while avoiding the pursuit of another group of players.

According to Uru’s development team, an ancient civilization called the D'ni created different worlds thousands of years ago, including Myst, but they have long since vanished. As Uru begins, you have apparently discovered an entrance to one of their underground cities, and you get the chance to explore it at your own pace. The D'ni mastered an almost magical technology called the "art of writing," thus leading to the creation of incredible places like Myst and Riven. The now famous "linking books" (items that have become the centerpieces of the Myst series) are used to travel to and from these different ages. At some time in the past, the D'ni made a journey to New Mexico, creating a linking book to our world.

This linking book and the New Mexico location will serve as the hub that allows you to access various worlds. Journeying to other worlds and ages will let players bring items back and leave them in their house or yard to showcase where they've been and their accomplishments (similar to Nintendo’s wonderfully addictive Animal Crossing). Your house will have a library that begins with a modest shelf and virtually no reading material. As players head to different ages and solve various puzzles, they'll get new linking books that can be placed on the shelves. When they go online, the number of books that can be found increases. Once a player secures a book, the age becomes "theirs," and is semi-customizable by the person who claims it, by altering the details in their linking book. Sounds tricky, but it isn’t.

Multiple players will have linking books to the same Age, but the Age visited will be the customized version of that linking book's owner. Thus, a group of players could have different experiences exploring the same age, just by using different people's books. In a way, Uru could really be described as the first "massively single-player game."

Many upcoming games are pushing 3D graphics to an unprecedented level, and Uru is no exception. The entire world is rendered in 3D, from the vast expanse of desert to the underground D’ni city. Along with 3D graphics, the game is designed as a third-person experience, so you can see your own avatar. That makes this the first Myst game in which you can see yourself. As in many rpgs, numerous options are offered to create your avatar - hair color, skin tone, clothing options, etc. - so if you choose you can create the avatar in your image, or someone totally different. The third-person view allowed the design team to create cinematic effects and events by manipulating the camera, and your avatar lends a sense of perspective and size to the scenery.

Of course, with the third-person perspective come puzzles of a new sort (at least for the Myst series) - physical puzzles! Solving certain dilemmas or exploring particular Ages will require simple activities like jumping over, pushing or pulling objects. Some of these activities will have to be completed within a time limit. Cyan Worlds knows their audience, so while there will be physical puzzles, they are also taking care to make sure that these challenges are not twitchy and can be surmounted by players of all skill levels, including those of us who are lazy and slow.

Probably the biggest difference from the original Myst, though, is that Uru is not pushing system requirements at all. But it must be said, Uru does not have the visual effects that require the latest and greatest hardware. Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is only a week from release so you will soon be able to firsthand explore more the new Ages and Ancient D’ni city. What makes this game remarkable and will set it apart from others is the addition of the online component. New content, together with voice chat, will make the social experience an interesting one for an anxious adventure community.

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You can learn much more about the worlds of Myst and Uru at such wonderful sites as The Lysts and the official Uru site. Don’t forget to also enter UbiSoft’s Uru promotion for the opportunity to win a free trip to Machu Picchu.