This was my dream assignment.
Plagued by sleeplessness, exams, rehearsals with the New York Philharmonic,
and major sickness, I drove through the game like a junkie, furiously
scribbling away in my composition book and taking note of every little
detail. Neither Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, nor contracting
an unfortunately timed case of mono could stop me.

My friends, I am pleased
to announce that Cyan has returned to us.

And returned with a bang.

You all must know me pretty
well by now, the opera singer in training from the U.S. that falls
all over herself when it comes to Myst and all things Cyan
Worlds. So when my devilishly handsome editor, Mr. Sluganski, comes
to me and says, “Jennifer, how would you like to have a first
look at Uru?” I of course proceed to fall off my chair
and then run around my house like a madwoman while my roommates stare
in much confusion. With the cooperation of Ubisoft, I soon had an
advanced reviewer’s copy in my hands and was hard at work learning
the complicated and rich world that is undoubtedly Cyan’s crowning
achievement.

The
last time we saw Cyan Worlds, they were busy at work releasing their
tech-heavy update of the original classic, Myst. RealMyst
gave us a glimpse into the water that Rand Miller was treading into
– a world where everything was as three-dimensional as possible.
This game introduced to adventurers that the adventure genre can live
in a graphic engine that is normally reserved for first person shooters
and role-playing games. By using this technology, Cyan showed us what
their real intent for Myst was when they developed it back
in the early nineties, that this was a living, breathing world full
of creatures and stories. After having had extensive experience walking
through the Ages of Uru over the last two weeks, I can see
now that realMyst must have been an early experiment into
employing the engine that would be used with such finesse in its follow-up.

But more on that later.
Let me give you some background on where Uru had its roots.

And here is your
history lesson. There will be a pop quiz at the end of this review.

The events of the first
three Myst games take place over 200 years in the past, with
quite a range of back-story surrounding that. Previous to Myst
are the novels Myst: The Book of Atrus and Myst: The
Book of Ti’ana. In these novels, Rand and Robyn Miller
and David Wingrove chronicle the Fall of D’ni, a great city
beneath the desert of New Mexico where for thousands of years a technically
and culturally advanced people thrived. The few survivors of the Fall
link away to other worlds by means of their complicated system of
Ages and Linking Books. A few go the surface, and this is where the
main character of the first three games, Atrus, is raised by his surface
world grandmother, Ti’ana. We learn over the course of Myst
and Riven that Atrus marries a woman from his father’s
Fifth Age (Riven) named Catherine and together they have
two children, Sirrus and Achenar. The two sons become tyrants and
all but destroy the lands and the peoples of Atrus’s Ages and
in Myst, you meet and punish these two. Riven introduces
us to Gehn, Atrus’s power hungry father, and Catherine. After
the events of the Riven, Rand and David Wingrove present
us with Myst: The Book of D’ni that chronicles Atrus’s
attempts to rebuild the ancient city and give new life to the survivors
of the Fall. Ultimately, Atrus decides to abandon his plans and write
a new Age called Releeshan for all the survivors to live in, a place
that would represent the culture of the D’ni, but also represent
a new beginning in this chapter of their civilization. Approximately
ten years after this are the events of Myst III: Exile in
which the Releeshan book is stolen from Atrus by man who had been
wronged by Atrus’s sons and had been left in exile for 20 years
on the forgotten learning Age of J’nanin. It is also in this
game where we meet Yeesha, just a baby and the only surviving child
of Atrus and Catherine.

Now, if that isn’t
the crash course in D’ni/Myst history, I don’t
know what else is. Moving on.

Uru’s
story is locked in deep with the multifaceted culture of the D’ni
people. Unlike the original Myst trilogy, Uru takes place
in the present. Playing a computerized version of yourself (or in
my case, something as close as I could get) you start off in New Mexico.
Yes, as in east of Arizona, west of Texas, New Mexico. Shortly after
meeting your cryptic advisor, Zandi (and grooving out to some brand
new Peter Gabriel on his radio), you begin your quest by exploring
the area in and around the cleft where both Atrus and Yeesha were
raised. Yeesha has left a message for you inside the cleft, saying
that life will be returning to D’ni soon and she needs the help
of industrious adventurers like you to do that. However, she stresses
to you that the journey to D’ni is more important than the outcome.
In a voiceover from Atrus at the start of the game, we learn that
Yeesha was brought here to be raised by her parents after they both
have dreams of a great desert bird (which I’m guessing in D’ni
or Rivenese is Yeesha) that will once again bring life to the vast
ancient city. Atrus leaves the duty of resurrecting D’ni on
Yeesha’s shoulders because he fears the power that it will take
to do this. “It changes people,” he says, which can only
lead me to believe that he is speaking of Gehn, Sirrus, and Achenar.
Atrus does not want the same fate for his remaining child. But let
me ask you this: can leaving a child in a cave to raise herself be
all that mentally healthy? Or better yet, the task of rebuilding an
entire civilization? It’s no wonder that when you finally see
Yeesha’s message you don’t wonder why she seems just a
little cracked. As you play the game, the story becomes evermore complicated,
involving members of an organization known as the D’ni
Restoration Council (DRC) that have organized to restore D’ni
and its Ages for future generations to explore. And guess what, all
the members of the DRC? They are real people you can communicate with
on the DRC message board and in D’ni itself. How cool is that?

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