You will visit eight major
areas throughout Uru, which include the Cleft, six brand
new Ages previously closed off to explorers, and restricted areas
of the main D’ni city. I can feel your excitement . . . oh yes,
I can. And for that drool on the side of your chin, here’s a
tissue.

Is that really
me on the screen?

One of the most intriguing
and personally troublesome aspects of Uru is its use of third-person
perspective. Again, this is definitely a me thing, but I have never
particularly loved playing adventure games in the third-person (except
of course The Longest Journey and Syberia). Doubling
this with Cyan’s previously exclusive use of the first-person
perspective made Uru a little off-putting when I started
playing. The very first thing I was asked to do when I booted up the
game was to make a three dimensional representation of myself. This
actually was quite fun, as there is quite an array of hair colors,
styles, and clothing to choose from. I made something as close to
me as possible, but I really think she looks more like my sister,
Nancy. They just didn’t have my nose in there. After designing
yourself, you enter the gaming world with little to no explanation
as to why you’re there and where you should go. Sound familiar?

Controls
in Uru come in a combination of keyboard and mouse driven
commands, which for point and click enthusiasts, might be a turn off.
The mouse is used primarily to locate and activate hotspots on the
screen and to rotate the camera angle. My one complaint with hotspots
in the game is that when your avatar needs to interact with a machine
in her environment, the hotspot doesn’t become apparent until
you are almost on top of it. A good example of this would be when
she needs to look through a telescope, which you will do several times
in the game. You can’t actually activate the spot until she
is standing directly in front and almost on top of it. The keyboard
controls are very sensitive, so your avatar can easily run in doughnuts
around the screen if you let her/him. This can also become a problem
when you’re trying to cross narrow bridges and walk close to
the edge of cliffs. You can fall, and fall far. Also, there are many
places in the game where you will have to become as agile with the
keyboard as you are with your logic. Puzzles can involve anything
from running and jumping across cliffs to small pillars of rock, to
running back and forth between pieces of a larger machine in a small
amount of time to activate it. I will admit, I had a difficult time
getting used to the keyboard controls and puzzles involving physical
agility, but rest assured, the other aspects of the game rise above
these. So if you want to learn about the D’ni and get another
chapter of this award-winning epic, then you are just going to have
to deal.

Details, details,
details

From the very beginning
of Uru, old followers of the series will be presented with
some rewarding answers that will only serve to bring up more questions.
(If that wasn’t vague enough for you, please feel free to email
me.) Since the game hasn’t technically been released yet, I
don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say keep
your eyes peeled for some souvenirs from a previous Cyan game that
I have reviewed on this site. Traveling to the Cleft was so rewarding
for me, to finally have confirmation of where Atrus came from. For
me, it gave so much understanding as to just how isolated Atrus and
Anna must have been back in the New Mexico of the American 18th century.
They had their own world here, and that’s why the reunion with
his father and the journey to D’ni must have been so difficult.
The ground of the Cleft is covered in Anna’s little blue flowers
that she adored so much. In keeping with continuity, these same flowers
can be found around her headstone on Myst Island in realMyst.
Throughout the Cleft is the fading evidence of Anna’s paintings
and Yeesha’s primitive stick drawings. This detail travels to
the other Ages you will visit, from the Maintainer Age of Gahreesen
with it’s superfluous use of the Maintainer Guild symbol, as
one of the DRC explorers notes “just incase you have forgotten
where you are,” to the industry Age of Teledahn, where luminescent
spores are constantly falling from the large mushrooms that dominate
the Age’s landscape.

My favorite detail is that
you can push stuff around. Yes, that was a very articulate statement
I know, but really . . . you can push stuff around. I especially
loved taking the orange caution cones left by the DRC in Gahreesen
and pushing them off of cliffs. I suppose this goes back to my days
as an undergraduate when I would do quick drive-bys of the St. Mary’s
parking lots with my roommate and pilfer those darn plastic cones
when public safety wasn’t looking. I think we had a whole family
of orange cones by the time I graduated. But I don’t remember
if we let them back into the wild or not.

Much
D’ni history is also presented to the player in Uru.
These come in the form of various notes and journals left throughout
the Ages by the DRC explorers. Most of these are translations done
by the language specialists on the histories of the specific Ages
you are exploring. In Teledahn, I came across a particular journal
that chronicles the restoration of the Age over three years. What
really struck me about this particular writing was when the explorer
went back to surface for a vacation, his return was delayed by “tragic
events.” His return date was October of 2001. I’m not
one to normally get sappy when I play games, but Cyan really made
an effort to make this game as timely as possible and by including
such a vague, but very real reference to the heartrending events of
September 2001, it only drew me into the story even more and even
brought a tear to my eye.

An interesting development
in Uru is the use of a small device known as the KI (pronounced
kee). A KI is a personal device that was used by the D’ni
shortly before the Fall. They are similar to cell phones in that you
can communicate with other explorers, much like we would text message
someone today. They also are capable of taking pictures and capturing
sound samples. In some places, they are necessary to open doors and
pass security checkpoints. The KI looks much like watch and fits around
your avatar’s wrist. As of this point, I haven’t made
much use of the KI in the core Uru game, but from what I’ve
read of the online portion, it will become much more important there.

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