The later two versions of Myst follow in a similar fashion. Finally, near the end of the booklet there are three black-and-white development sketches of overhead views, which in retrospect tell us little about the game and turn out to be red herrings, since they are older designs that are different from the ones in the game. In “A Message from Cyan,” we are told that Myst is an “alternate reality,” that it has “the most depth, detail and reality that you've ever experienced in a game,” and that “Myst is real.” The player is told to “react as if you were really there,” an idea repeated again in the “Playing the Game” section, which describes the mechanics of playing, without revealing much about the game apart from a few small black-and-white images of scenery.
Beyond that, little is said about the game itself, and instead the booklet stresses the “realness” of the game. Inside the booklet (which the player can only see once the game is purchased) the premise is described as the finding of the Myst book and the arrival at the island (which we will see and hear again in slightly more detail during the opening credit sequence). According to Richard Watson, the note was the idea of Brøderbund's marketing department, and Cyan could not persuade them to change it. And as it turns out, the note is deceptive, since it does not appear in the game itself, nor is Atrus dead as the note's very abrupt ending (“before it's too la-”) seems to imply. Perhaps the most striking thing about the packaging that sets Myst apart from other games is that there are no characters or action scenes depicted only the handwritten note from Atrus, which appears to have been cut off abruptly, suggests anything in the way of character or action. On the back of the box and booklet are images from the game, a variety of lavishly detailed and moodily lit settings. A tagline announces the game as “The Surrealistic Adventure That Will Become Your World.” An outline of a falling person is in the clouds, suggesting Atrus falling into the fissure (or even the player's arrival on the island). Both display an image of Myst Island as seen from afar, surrounded by blue waters and skies.
Unless one first encounters Myst the way I did at the Digital World Expo, dropped into the game in medias res, the first impression one has of Myst comes probably from the game's box and the booklet accompanying the CD-ROM. As the player repairs the damaged books page by page, question arises who should be freed first, Sirrus or Achenar, and the role Atrus plays in the story, as well as his whereabouts, must also be discovered.īut none of this is known, initially Myst does not reveal much up front.
When the game begins, Sirrus and Achenar are trapped in damaged linking books in the library, and Atrus is nowhere to be found, though the player finds his messages, intended for his wife Catherine, early on in the game (and in the opening sequence, Atrus narrates how he fell into a fissure, but this remains unexplained). While initially in the Myst mythology it was hinted that the worlds were brought into being by the writing of the books, later adjustments to the mythology suggested that the books merely allowed their users to link to the preexisting worlds that matched the descriptions authored by the writers of Descriptive Books (bringing the Myst universe more in line with Christian theology in regard to ex nihilo creation and Tolkien's ideas of subcreation, described later in this book). They are part of the D'ni culture, a people who have perfected the art of writing Ages, which describe worlds that can be traveled to with “linking books.” Placing one's hand on the image inside the book, allows one to travel (or “link”) to the world described. Myst is the story of a father, Atrus, and his two sons, Sirrus and Achenar.
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