He hasn't even replied...

Maybe he's stuck on a puzzle.

I didn't realize anyone had been responding to this until just now. The forum responses icon in the upper right hand corner occasionally appeared, but clicking it just took me to a screen saying nobody had replied to anything I'd posted lately.

I overstated my case somewhat. I don't mean that when Myst came out all subsequent adventure games sucked. Adventure games do seem to be thinner on the ground post-Myst, but as other posters suggest that likely had a lot to do with other new genres eclipsing them. But Myst was hugely influential when it came out, so many subsequent adventure games aped its style of exploring sterile landscapes and, especially irksome to me, requiring the player to solve irrelevant logic puzzles in order to advance the story. Even some of the great adventure games that came long after Myst like The Longest Journey suffered from the (thankfully infrequent) inclusion of that type of puzzle.

It's a bit like releasing a movie that occasionally pauses until the viewer completes a sudoku grid. Then other studios like the idea so much they start putting sudoku puzzles in their movies too, even if those movies have nothing to do with sudoku.

I'll admit it's fair to say Myst resulted in a similar aftermath to, say, Star Wars: flooding the market with brainless knock-offs designed to cash in on their success. Lord knows the mid-90s did not lack for shovelware Myst-clones. But a bad game has nobody to blame but itself - and neither does a bad puzzle. Irrelevant logic puzzles are so common in bad Myst-clones not because they were Myst-clones, but because they were bad games. Good games in the Myst style, such as Dark Fall, Return to Mysterious Island, or Riven (the Grandmaster itself) feature some of the most tightly integrated, relevant logic puzzles I've ever seen, not to mention vibrant landscapes full of personality and story.

And let's not get too stuck on a definition of "irrelevant logic puzzle" either. There were plenty of those pre-Myst, you just might not recognize them. Thanks to the Myst-clones, bad puzzles became identified with curious-looking, board-game-like machinery. But the actual logical mechanics of such puzzles can exist in many forms, even a Zork fetch-quest. The best puzzle in Riven is the wooden gate early on in the cliff-side. It's locked, but has at least a foot of open space both above and below. A bad post-Myst game would have you get through the gate by solving some sort of arcane combination lock that looks like an alien Scrabble board. A bad pre-Myst game would have you get through the gate by finding a piece of bread to give to the parrot at the shop so he'll shut up long enough for the shopkeeper to give you an order to take to a customer who will repay you by providing a map through the tunnels to where the key is kept.

In Riven you just crawl under the gate.

I don`t think Myst killed off anything. It was just a new kind of game; it created a new genre.

I`ll admit that the only reason I played Myst originally was because there were so few games at the time.

I am now playing Myst (since I found it here), but I most certainly go back to the games that have a litlle more going on in them, like Planescape Torment for eg.

Myst is .... boring, but something I have to try and win eventually.

You, sir, win at the internet.
I love the Myst series, and Riven remains to this day one of my favorite games of all time. You just don't get genius like that anymore, with all the cookie-cutter fps games now. Where did the true game designers go?
Oh, thats right. they're with arenanet working on Guild Wars 2

I like the line of reasoning that they didn't die out, they simply evolved into other genres. In the same way that Halo has very little to do with Wolfenstein, you could argue that an evolved version of the older P&C games is something like the more modern Zelda games, or that sort of thing.

It might sound crazy, I mean you fight and you ride a horse etc, but where were the vehicle sections in Doom? It's only like if you controlled Gabriel Knight's bike as he travelled from location to location. When people make old school adventure games now, it's kind of like someone making an intentionally old school FPS where you can't jump, duck, look around, throw grenades, etc.

Of course, it's more than a little different because that would simply be a technical step backwards whereas more traditional adventure games have a tighter focus and a lot more dialogue - but it's an idea I think makes sense nonetheless.

Myst is not really an adventure game, but a glorified puzzle game decorated with plenty of window dressing that makes the whole endeavor seem more impressive than it really is.

Same difference. If it seems to make an impression, it makes an impression, so it's impressive. Not all like it, and it certainly is more of a puzzle game. However one with a well developed setting, characteristic style and a plot that appeals to some. In those regards it is considerably exeptional for a puzzle game.

This is exactly what the entire adventure genre is, from Colossal Cave Adventure on up.

I don't think it killed the genre.

I usually hate puzzle-heavy games, much preferring good characters and plot. And yet, Myst and Riven are some of my all-time favorite games. I had to use a walkthrough the *entire* time, but it was worth it to me. Because I loved the characters, and the backstory was so unique and interesting and detailed. Did you know the writers of the games wrote 3 books based on the games? They go so much in depth, I love the mythology of it. And yeah, you don't get much of it in the games. But I saw enough small glimpses to have me hooked.

Lets, for a moment, forget about Myst as a game and more of a technology. If it weren't for Myst, who knows what physical media games would be on today. Myst, along with The 7th Guest, was some of the first games to use CD-ROMs, and ultimately pushed CD-ROM drives to the mainstream. 3D graphics might also not be where it is today. Myst showed us how good (at the time) 3D environments could look, even though PCs weren't anywhere near powerful enough to process them at runtime.

Its easy to see a game thats 'different' or 'out-of-the-box' as stupid, boring, or a failure, and completely forget about the great strides in technology it makes.

That is a huge reason the gaming industry is currently quite stagnant, in my opinion. Games cost so much to make and the people who have the money to invest want to do so safely, so we end up with an over-saturated market filled with annual rhythm/music games, sport titles, and first person shooters who's only difference is which culture you get to devastate this iteration. Which brings me to the reason why I shop at GoG in the first place.

Myst didn't kill the genre, and actually Myst was receiving accolades at the time because it had movies in it, and photorealistic images, something that was pretty much unheard of at the time.

Myst didn't kill anything, gaming genres come and go depending on the power of the computers at the time.
As computer got more powerful things like adventure 'point-and-click' games fell to the wayside, because game developers started introducing new genres or beefing up old genres and adding features they never could before because the computers were getting more powerful.

Look at the gog game list, sort the entire catalog of games by year and it almost reads like the geologic layers of the grand canyon.

Not true at all.

I love myst and myst clones.

They are my absolute favorite games.

Easier adventure games that involve items like monkey island don't challenge me.
I enjoy them, but they aren't even close to hard enough to keep me interested.

Myst games are designed for people with 135+ IQs

If you can't stand them, you're either being impatient with the puzzles, not thinking them through from every angle, or just don't enjoy being challenged that much.

Myst involves everything from solving puzzles to translating languages.
They are not for everyone,
but unfortunately those of us who do love them don't have much to pick from.

Myst did not kill the genre at all.
They are still making lots of inventory based point and click games such as syberia, a new beginning, back to the future, etc.
Puzzle based, Myst style FMV games are what's dead and it's the people who had to go out of their way to bash the game because they could handle the puzzles that killed the genre.

To each their own.
If you don't like them,
Play something easier.

I'm damn sick of not being able to find a single good puzzle based game anymore.
Please stop spitting on the genre.
@Fantasysci5

try going back and playing them without a walkthrough.

It's ridiculously challenging (especially the 1st myst and riven),
but so much more fun than just following an faq.