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Myst.
1 Playsin 11 hours
After decades of avoiding it, Ben and Jess finally play the bestselling adventure game and make a terrible discovery.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
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Transcript
Opening Challenges & Excitement
00:00:30
Speaker
It is quest quest. The adventure game podcast. No, I thought you were waiting. Well, yeah, I know you. That was a dramatic pause. In our script, it says there in parentheses, dramatic pause. Oh, sorry. I'm, uh, you know, it's like gas. Let's try it again. Let's try it again.
00:00:48
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Take it from the top. All right. Here we go. So what have you been playing? No, that's no Ben. The Adventure Game Podcast.
00:01:01
Speaker
Ben. The Adventure Game
00:01:05
Speaker
How you doing, Jess? I'm Ben. I am Jess, Ben, and it's great to great to see I'm doing really well. I've been having a ah ah terrific day. I'm excited to talk about our topic today, but not right away. I...
00:01:18
Speaker
all right I'm also, this is, this might be the most excited I've been to actually talk about the topic at hand for a little bit. Yes, I would agree. like Jess and I...
00:01:37
Speaker
You know, we, i ah like, we'll start talking, like, we you know, we have a chat, often includes a friend of a friend of the pod, Grayson, in it, and sometimes we'll start to talk about the game that we're playing for that week, and one or either of us or both of us will say, you know what, like, we have to stop talking because that's podcast fuel.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, we're burning the good stuff. We can't you can't afford to do that. And i so ah like, but for for this, you know, to get tip off a sense of ah what our feelings about the game have been.
00:02:23
Speaker
ah ah Jess and I have kept talking about it.
Cultural Differences & Brand Humor
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, just can't stop. Can't stop. We've been talking all week about this game. We've been chatting. I've been having side chats with ah my my my or our friend, Mike, about ah about it, who who is a big-time fan of this game and this series.
00:02:47
Speaker
um But no. No, I'm not going to talk about a mysterious, a surrealistic game that has become my world.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yes, it's become our world, Ben. um And I don't know. I don't think this arc is. so Let me say, I could see this for you. i never saw this for me.
00:03:14
Speaker
all right. all right. right. See, you're, you're, you're burning it. We're we're burning it. we but this be a podcast This is the podcast. Oh, I was so excited to talk about this podcast. I wrote, like I beat it out at like a very basic outline.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yes. Now, now some of you, are are are looking at your watch, and your idle animation sonicking, us you know stamping your foot or or tapping your foot and and going like, well, why don't they talk about the adventure game at the the the start? Like the the show would be much better. Why do they wait 50 minutes ah to get to it?
00:03:56
Speaker
To which I say, the genesis The Mega Drive of this podcast. For our friends in the PAL region.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. For our our friends that are what? Like 28 frames a second of Mega Drive? i don't know. Weird plugs? Weird plugs.
00:04:19
Speaker
I'm going to have to. We're sponsored by weird plugs this week. but Yeah, look at my hair look at my hair. I've got weird plugs. I have a different kind plugs. We'll talk about them later. But ah anyway, so the the mega drive of this podcast was Jess and I playing Star Trek Resurgence. and I had to think for a moment as well. Telltale. was it Was it Telltale or was it one of those other companies? Was it Dead Nine?
00:04:52
Speaker
Deck Nine did, I think it, didn't they do the Expanse? No, that was Telltale. was Telltale. I think Deck Nine did it branded as Telltale. Or like Telltale published it and Deck Nine developed it.
00:05:07
Speaker
Talking way too much about Adventure Game. Okay, here you go. Developer, damn Dramatic Labs.
00:05:14
Speaker
Publisher, Bruner House?
00:05:18
Speaker
What? Yeah, Bruner House. A classic. Classic. Didn't they do Call of Duty? It was a Bruner House joint. um Now, what else is... where i'm making fun of Bruner House, but you're going to look it up. Like, Bruner House, like, you know, helped to ah produce, like, Perfect Tides or some shit. Well, let me say, doesn't have a link in the Wikipedia entry and does not have a Wikipedia entry itself, as far as I can tell.
00:05:44
Speaker
um We create interactive narrative games and technologies for console games, mobile games, and interactive television. I've got to say their website is not. Okay. So, well, I don't know about this. Let me tell you what's on Bruner houses ah highlights of their previous work.
00:06:03
Speaker
Star Trek resurgence. Yeah. They also developed, uh, the walking dead Minecraft story mode tells from the borderlands game of Thrones, Batman, Jurassic park, the wolf among us and star Trek, Obi-Wan star Trek, Obi-Wan.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah. They got a bad, Obi-Wan. I'm sorry. see That's a weird one. It's all that again. That's only in the UK region. Um, that's, There, of it's like how, you know, it's Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK and it's Action Force instead of G.I. Joe. In Australia, Burger King is is called monarch of the patties.
Game Critiques & Audience Engagement
00:06:50
Speaker
Classic down under monarch of the patties.
00:06:55
Speaker
I think it's called like Hungry Jack or something there, right? like Is that true? Burger King is it has a different name in... like let me But they're still part of the Commonwealth, aren't they? but What problem do they have with a Burger King? They're actually called Hungry Jacks. Oh, wow. Because I believe...
00:07:11
Speaker
Listen, look this up. you I don't want to listen. I don't I've already offended enough members of the Commonwealth. I can't I can't go on about this thing. I only know about like 10 percent of.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, I just know that they have a different name. Back to Star Trek Resurgence. We were streaming this horrible, horrible. Hold on. Hold on. A beloved game that by some that you and I did not enjoy at all. Yes. You and I who both really love Star Trek and really love Telltale style adventure games. Yeah. Both, both the, the, the, the kind of like narrative, like CYOA type ones and the like point and click adventure type ones of this. This was more of the CYOA, like the the walking dead type. Anyway.
00:08:02
Speaker
terrible. just Jess and I didn't like it. And, and I don't want to like, it's not even available for sale anymore. So it's not like ah we're, we're, we're kicking any, like it's, it's not like, but also I will note, I think you and I are in the menor minority on that. too There are a lot of people who love this game because it just seemed straightforwardly not good, but yeah, or at least straightforwardly not interesting.
00:08:31
Speaker
At the very least. i But anyway, so the Mega Drive... I hope nobody from Bruner House is listening to this. Oh, my God. Bruner House is deep on this podcast.
00:08:42
Speaker
um i Do you know how many potential guests have have canceled ah because of this? Anyway. Oh, no. um So... We were ah so deeply disinterested in ah Star Trek resurgence that we kept finding anything else to talk about.
00:09:02
Speaker
And ah ah ah the many members of the Twitch chat ah constantly so like you know would say, like this would be an interesting podcast. And I'll note...
00:09:14
Speaker
It wasn't. They were saying that when we were talking about Star Trek. They were saying that when we were talking about literally anything other than the adventure game. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, it's worth noting that, A, this isn't our fault.
00:09:30
Speaker
yeah and yeah I blame the, uh, the, the, the 15 people that were watching on Twitter. And also ben and I are exactly the kind of people that if you tell us you'd like to like see some sort of creative output from us, we will both rush to give you exactly what you want. We will just, I mean, we love an audience. We love to, uh, to make an audience happy. So, you know, this and only the first request so if you're going to request well you just just get to uh talk about uh missed right now no man no man yeah you gave it away that's true i mean we agreed we were going to title this one cruise for a corpse just to throw people off
00:10:17
Speaker
Do you think, here's a question. Do you think that people are going to, so, ah you know, and I think I've mentioned this on previous podcasts, that like generally when we play a more beloved like,
00:10:34
Speaker
ah often from the 90s, sometimes from the 80s, but like generally our our Sierra game ones, like LucasArts game ones, those tended to outperform the other ones.
00:10:49
Speaker
ah Do you think that this, one of the best-selling game adventure games of all time, maybe the best? Probably? um do you think Do you think this will will have it, or or or do you think our our listeners are PNCers? I feel like this is way too on topic. You know what? well the Yeah, no, mean, this is a great question. I mean this is, if not still the best selling, obviously one of the best selling. It's probably still the best selling. i mean what other adventure game has sold these numbers since 1993? Cruise for a corpse.
00:11:23
Speaker
Cruise for a corpse. Other than that, that's the only other real contender. Yeah, less manly to lost LA. But I do also feel like this is one of the most polarizing games in adventure game history. So maybe a lot of people see this getting way too on topic. No, a lot of people see this and they think I don't want listen to an episode about mist that I hate that game it it and and the serpent rouge killed adventure games.
Health & Recording Anecdotes
00:11:53
Speaker
well well we'll Well, we'll get into that and much more, but we have weve far more pressing things to talk about. What did you do? yeah So, okay.
00:12:04
Speaker
We have a ah little leftover business from last last week. Are these more apologies? No. Last week, I feel that that we owe the the audience a ah little ah further peek behind the curtain, which was that last week that you discussed...
00:12:21
Speaker
how you were the ah only person in your household of three, not counting your cats, that wasn't sick. True. At the time. i and And then what happened?
00:12:36
Speaker
You know, about an hour later, the podcast. Yeah. As, as we neared the end of the podcast, um, I'm not sure how well Ben's editing was able to cover this up, but I was having to mute my microphone, uh, quite often. sometimes you muted So i don't have to cover anything up I didn't have to edit anything. There were awkward gaps. you know but I just kept talking. Good. Yeah. Sometimes in the middle of my own sentence, I would have to mute the microphone because I began coughing. And within a few hours of signing off, um i was I was down with a full-blown flu. So my hubris once again got me. It was instant karma, as John Lennon once said.
00:13:15
Speaker
But you, you, you seem pretty good today. so I'm great. I actually had a short run with it. It was like, I was like kind of whapped out for about 48 hours. But now Ben, I've never been better.
00:13:29
Speaker
and A 48 hour flu is actually kind of the ideal. Like it's like, enough for sympathy but not enough to really inconvenience you yeah yeah like as long as it's not like as long as it doesn't start on a friday and it's like perfect i'm good for work um uh as long as as that's not the case uh then like you know because you have 48 hours that's one of the the worst things about You know, like if if you have COVID, it's like you might just linger for a while. Sometimes that just lingers for a while.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, you know, this because Ben could watch me throughout the podcast grow sick. And this is not the first time Ben has witnessed me becoming sick before his eyes. If we flash back to, I believe, 2020, 2021, when I streamed. Yes, yes. the Sega Genesis Scooby-Doo point click adventure game. I'm sorry, Jess. I'm from the, uh, uh, the Europe, the mega drive. It's, uh, it's, uh, Scooby Don over there. think it's, uh, it's a, uh, a burger chef.
00:14:43
Speaker
Scorby. um No. But as I was streaming that to an audience, I believe, of only Ben and Friend of the Pod, Grayson. It was like literally two people watching this this sad stream. It was 2020. I didn't have very much going on. Yeah. Yeah. I developed COVID live on air. um No one has ever declined into COVID as quickly as
Nostalgia for Classic Games
00:15:06
Speaker
I did. I started out that stream um at 100%.
00:15:09
Speaker
By the end of it, I like like hit in stream was like, I should probably go to the emergency room. ah But... This was similar last week. i just like, started out the podcast feeling great. Ben could see it on my face. In fact, Ben cruelly laughed at me as soon as we hit end broadcast. So he was just like, ha, you got sick.
00:15:28
Speaker
ah you pointed I pointed and laughed. Yeah, I couldn't believe he did that. Well, you know what? Like, yeah, I'm a bully. What are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah, i mean, what can you do?
00:15:40
Speaker
And, you know, Jess, speaking of bully, what have you been playing? Oh, wow, Ben, you asked. You've been bet, you know, it's the only Rockstar game I like. I just play it. Is that? Have you played that? I've never played that I've never played it either. Like, honestly, Rockstar games are kind of not my jam. I was just about to say, there's only one rockstar game that I've ever gotten into.
00:16:10
Speaker
The Game Boy Color Austin Powers Oh Behave game? Yeah. How did you know? I just figured. No, the L.A. Noire, which I can't tweet it.
00:16:23
Speaker
Hey, Ben, you say that right now, I'm saying doubt. Oh, very good. Yeah, you know what that means. Here's a fun little trick about L.A. Noir, though. here's a little Here's a little neat little snack of L.A. Noir.
00:16:38
Speaker
Is that if you fail an action sequence in it three times, it gives you a prompt that says, do you want to skip this? and Yes. And you could just hit yes. And then it just puts you that sequence.
00:16:50
Speaker
Thank you. i you absolutely might have And and here's here's the really great thing Noire is that like the very final sequence, like where like you're like some final battle, like shootout thing. I don't remember.
00:17:10
Speaker
And like, and I was like, well, surely there will be something after this. I was like, ah this is like, I don't want to do this final shootout. And it was like, do you want to, do you want to skip this? And I was like, yes. And then it just dumps me into the cinematic. Beautiful.
00:17:24
Speaker
That's what you get. Yeah, no, that's perfect. No, I mean, honestly, I probably would have finished every GTA game ever released if that were a feature in those, because as it stands, eventually there's just like that one race or something in a GTA game where it's like, well, guess I'm done with GTA V now. I can't ever win this mission. I have not played a GTA since three, and I didn't like it.
00:17:53
Speaker
I don't love I liked Vice City entirely for the Miami vibes and the 80s thing. If you call it vibes city. They should.
00:18:04
Speaker
Ben, do you think that like rock star is listening? We know Bruner House is.
00:18:13
Speaker
Both of them are, and they're they're they're they're threatening they're their sponsorship. Do you think here in a few months Grand Theft Auto 6 will turn up on Bruner House's About page?
00:18:32
Speaker
But what I've been playing Ben, for some reason that's beyond my own comprehension, I got the itch to play a little bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Turtles in Time.
00:18:46
Speaker
So I purchased the Digital Eclipse Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga collection and decided to play it there. And let me tell you, Ben, I don't know if you played around with this digital eclipse collection. I will say of of the because that one seemed like ah more one of their more just kind of bare bones, like kind of collections. not has lot of behind the scenes stuff like fuck no don't make play this shit and now it doesn't have a lot in the way of like documentaries and things but like giant collection of all the advertisements for the turtles game strategy guides animation cells all kinds of stuff like that so it's actually a pretty large uh
00:19:31
Speaker
what they call the Turtles Lair. um that was That was quite nice. But honestly, yeah, I think they say it has like 2,000 plus items in the in the Turtles Lair behind the scenes stuff.
00:19:45
Speaker
But, you know, it's it's a wonderful Digital Eclipse collection. It has 13 TMNT games, all the good ones and quite a few of the bad ones. I don't know if anyone... Nintendo, yeah, I'm looking here. The Nintendo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah. I don't know if anyone on the internet has ever complained about how hard that game is, but let me tell you. yeah Actually, I'm the first to say it. Most people love that game.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah. you You particularly like the swimming levels, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the swimming level. It looks like it has a lot of Game Boy games, which is not...
00:20:22
Speaker
anyone's idea of good not i ideal no but i mean and honestly i mean a nice emulated arcade version of tmnt and turtles in time is almost worth the price of admission have you played uh shredder's revenge no i haven't you should you you if if if you've got that itch yeah if you've got that itch in you you should get Shredder's Revenge, which is excellent.
00:20:54
Speaker
It's a lot of fun. And it's gorgeous. It's by the, they did the... They did that Marvel Comics Invasion game that i streamed last year at some point, which was also like a side-scrolling beat-em-up that was very good. Really impressive game. They did like a Streets of Rage game, I think. like Oh, did they do the Streets of Rage 4? Yeah. I was that.
00:21:18
Speaker
Ben, did you know Streets of Rage 4 is like the third game I ever streamed on my channel? That I did like a full game playthrough of Streets of Rage 4 somehow.
00:21:31
Speaker
I did not have. That's a weird game for me to have chosen. I don't know what was going through my head. It's 2020, you know, it's just how things were back then. Sometimes you think, I can't go out on the real streets, so I'll just have streets of rage here at home. Yeah, it's, it's, that's exactly it. But yeah, no, you should absolutely
00:21:52
Speaker
Absolutely play Shredder's Revenge.
00:21:58
Speaker
if If you've got that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ah like arcade itch, a gotta you got to play that. Did you pick up anything in the Steam sale?
00:22:12
Speaker
You know, don't I Other than the game we're talking about today? other than the game we're talking about today, I don't think I did. i i don't remember the last time, like, I jumped on a Steam cell. I don't really have much of a wish list at this point that I'm maintaining. I kind of just, like, when something crosses my mind, I look it up, and if it's too expensive, I just decide I'll never play it.
00:22:34
Speaker
I like, sorry, you should have been $7.99 instead of $24.99.
00:22:39
Speaker
Never, never playing your game. I picked up a couple, up a couple things. What'd you get? What'd you get? What'd you get? What'd you get? What have you been playing? All right, well. So here, i'll I'll say what I i got first, and and I haven't played. of the I picked up four things on the sale, one of which is the the game we're talking about today. The other one is... Which we haven't revealed yet. um Yeah, haven't revealed yet.
00:23:04
Speaker
Other one is... um uh, Deltarune, the, uh, follow up. Uh, I was, I was holding out for a while, but now they're like up to episode five or some shit. I was just like, all right, there's enough. There's enough game in there.
00:23:20
Speaker
um I picked up this adventure, at this point and click adventure game, like this indie, I think it came out last year called Casebook 1899. The murders that looked kind of interesting.
00:23:36
Speaker
Oh, that was charming. might be scream or something in the future. like It just looked, it came across the desk over here and I looked at it and I said, Yeah, looks like something I should check out. so Looks like content to me. Yeah. um And then I think as a content creator, you know. And then I and then I got Shovel Knight.
00:23:56
Speaker
Oh, yes. Everyone was talking about Mina the Hollower. And I've been thinking about Mina the Hollower. And then I was like, you know what? Still have not played Shovel Knight, which I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy.
00:24:10
Speaker
I know next to nothing about Shovel Knight. Am I correct or have I hallucinated the fact it's the one that like the mechanic is kind of based on the DuckTales NES game, right?
00:24:21
Speaker
I haven't played it. Like DuckTales NES has like Scrooge pogoing on his cane. That is my understanding. Okay, gotcha. That is my andrew understanding. yeah
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, are were you a DuckTales man? Um, not the game, but absolutely love the show. Like, love the show. Love the show. Love some DuckTales. Woohoo.
00:24:44
Speaker
Anyway, what I've actually been playing... Actually, I've, uh, was, uh, I've played recently, actually, hold on.
00:24:55
Speaker
Um, I have been, playing a bit of...
00:25:02
Speaker
uh the sims legacy collection oh the sims one legacy collection oh and uh and you want to know what yeah it's the sims one it still is yeah can you still woohoo oh you can woohoo for sure here's the thing i wish that they had the ability for you to kind of like pick and choose the X-Packs, opening it up like it it was like, hey which one do you want hot date on? Do you want, you know, going out or whatever?
00:25:44
Speaker
Do you want that out? House party, et cetera. Because it it just by default has everything uh on release like it has every expat which is great yeah um and but you know what like jumping right back into the sims one and just having it like dump every single x pack on you like me those are things that kind of like they're to spice up the game when you're starting to get a little bored right you're like i kind of need a vampire here now
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah. And so it's like that you open it up and then like you get that. I bought the the game of the year edition version of a game as the first purchase. And like when you boot it, it's like all of a sudden you get like five status messages that are like, oh, you check your pack. You have the bonus armor.
00:26:37
Speaker
A mysterious stranger is waiting for you in realm five. Like, yeah. You get all of like the various DLC, like, and like you open up your thing and you have like the special super armor and stuff like that. Like, and and all that. like Like Bethesda style. Yeah. Yeah. I know that's exact it yeah this Yeah.
00:26:58
Speaker
And so the the Sims, like you open it up and it's just like, it's like, oh, yeah don't forget you can ride the bus downtown. Oh, a mysterious box that takes you to magic world has appeared. Oh, this has happened. This has happened. Like all this shit. It's just like,
00:27:13
Speaker
I haven't played this game in literally decades.
00:27:19
Speaker
And I, part of me just wants to play vanilla ass Sims one. Yeah. And then, and then, and then after a little bit like go like, all right, I want to check out what's going on downtown.
00:27:34
Speaker
I've quote unquote installed hot day. Like I wish, i wish you could do that. It's, it's a little like, You know, i appreciate that they managed to get a game from the year, what, 2000 working on Windows 11. It works on the Steam Deck. That's incredible.
00:27:55
Speaker
And it's a great way to play it, too. ah You know, it's not that bad, honestly. Because you got the trackpads. It's fun.
00:28:04
Speaker
But, like, you know, it's just too much. You just have too much shit in there. Yeah, no, I mean, my daughter is an avid Sims 4 player, I think, as I've mentioned before on the stream. And she has mentioned the Sims 4.
00:28:24
Speaker
Yes, the Sims 4 here on the yes. And she has like every expansion pack ever. And I have to say, I don't know exactly what the game is anymore. It is difficult to decide.
00:28:39
Speaker
All I want to do is load up the Sims and I want to make characters kiss each other. And if some of them are ghosts now or you know like they're like in ancient Greece or something, it ruins that sense of immersion that I'm looking for.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like it's it's it's just too much. Ben, did you like put people in the swimming pool and then take away the ladder? Yeah, I haven't done that yet.
00:29:06
Speaker
You know, that's a thing you can do. some Some gaming magazines talked about it back in the day. There were countless articles where they were like, here's how to torture your Sim. And we all laughed and laughed.
00:29:21
Speaker
That's horrible. Yeah, no, I mean, these are... That's horrible. Yeah. what mean Have you ever wondered if we're just Sims in some sort of grander simulation? No.
00:29:32
Speaker
We don't have floating diamonds over our heads, so probably not. there there was ah a a you know There was a ah digital antiquarian ah last last Friday. They said we're not living in a simulation? Yeah, it was about that. But no, he's actually he's he was building up to he's going to one on The Sims. And he was backfilling because he didn't feel like he did. I think he did SimCity many years ago, but he didn't do...
00:30:00
Speaker
all the other sim games of the 90s leading up to the sims and so ah like you know it was kind of a like here's some stuff on like sim ant yep yeah you know which which one i because my when i was a kid um my my parents especially my mom felt good about getting me sim games like you're learning when you're playing a sim yeah yeah she didn't she didn't like that i was playing computer games all the time but she was okay with me playing sim games um and so i had sim earth like i had sim city 2000 3000 and then i had earth
00:30:46
Speaker
um and then i had earth farm life, which I have no memories of, which makes me assume. Is it the evolution simulator? Yeah. Yeah. For.
00:31:02
Speaker
sim sim life like i remember having the box yeah but i don't remember anything else about it which makes me think i probably played it for like 20 minutes and then it's like all right um and then obviously tower everybody yeah he's like everybody has memories of tower um But ah you want to know which which non city was my favorite, like of the 90s Sims game was Sim Farm. That game. I loved Sim Farm.
00:31:35
Speaker
Did you have a favorite 90s non city Sim? and No, you know, I have skipped like I played the original Sim City and then 2000 and 3000. two thousand and three thousand And then I think I went straight to The Sims. I never got any of the spinoff games. ah I was aware of them. And I will say I'm sometimes tempted. There's like an endless supply of them flowing into my local Goodwill. I don't know how people keep selling like full sets of the works of Will Wright.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's the answer. They're just countless copies of them. Basically, you can just go to my Goodwill anytime you want and get all the Nancy Drew and Sim and Maxis games that you want. It's just like, here's a big pile of them.
00:32:19
Speaker
But yeah, and I never got got into any of them. So it was Sim Farm. What did you love about it? I think it had, like Sim Farm had a very pleasing, like where the...
00:32:35
Speaker
And I never played Ant, which I know a lot of like a lot of people really enjoyed. oh So i can't I can't speak to Ant. But Sim Farm like kind of scratched that same, like, I'm building something and I'm going to make more money and I will become bigger.
00:32:56
Speaker
ah itch that like SimCity like because it's like SimEarth is very abstract and strange like it's more of like the will right like this is a software toy yes where it's just like a whole bunch of shit like I just remember being deeply confused by it um But Sim Farm, it's just like, you know, you you have farmland, you start with a limited amount of farmland at the start, and you select the the crops ah that are suitable for the soil ah and the like the the weather and season.
00:33:38
Speaker
And ah you also grow livestock. And like, it's it's pretty straightforward. And then it's just like, as you have harvest, you ah you have the chance to expand the size of your farm. Like it just has a nice, it's a very, every now and again, because it's on... um like the virtual DOS machine on archive.org every now and again, I'll just open up some farm and I'll play it for like 20 minutes and I'll be like, you know what? Still good game. Like of, of all the various nineties non city Sims farm was the one that stuck with me.
00:34:20
Speaker
i I played a lot of Sim Tower, but I didn't... um Like, Sim Tower, I've never quite loved. Yeah.
00:34:40
Speaker
but I did enjoy Ute Tower because Sim Tower was a Japanese game that they rebranded, if I understand correctly. And that continued to have sequels, one of which that also made it over to the United States and was not Simified, so it was just called Tower.
00:35:03
Speaker
played some kind of mobile game like ah played some kind of mobile game like 15 years ago that was basically like a a mobile version of sim tower that like a knockoff uh by like kairosoft or someone that really enjoyed yeah yeah yeah what was that one i don't like it was it was like a big game at the time when mobile games no i know exactly the game but don't recall its name yeah all right well well jess i think we've killed enough time you've people have mashed skip 15 enough that it's time for for their reward let me pull out so as I said I'm so excited for this discussion oh me too yeah this is a bit I've been looking forward to it all day my family keeps saying you seem distant Jess and it's like this has become my world yeah so
00:35:59
Speaker
Let me ah first off, I want to say that I would i would like to to thank a friend of the pod, Harrison Pink, for kind of putting this bug in, like, for for for really kind of putting it in my head, like, you know what?
00:36:24
Speaker
I think it's time to play mist. His passion for mist was very compelling. It, it, you know, it it was certainly strange to have someone who's like, you know, the, the, uh, like most recent and very like cool project that he worked on was something that neither of us had played.
00:36:47
Speaker
Yes. But you want to know what? it was really interesting yes so like i walked away from our conversation with with uh uh harrison thinking like damn um uh that sounds interesting we might have even said that on the podcast where it's like i think i kind of want to play mist now yeah um and i was on board from the beginning
00:37:16
Speaker
um So, so the first thing, so Jess and I, ah in the last week purchased the, the recent, uh, remake 2021, I believe remade many times and ported everywhere.
Behind-the-Scenes & Myst Discussion
00:37:37
Speaker
um the the most recent remake of Myst. And Jess... Was this, this was the first time you, you actually played it, right? This is literally the first time I've loaded up mist. So you've actually never even like tootled in it?
00:37:56
Speaker
No, I've never even seen mist before. Really? Like five days ago. Oh shit. Really? Yeah, I literally never touched it. Literally Yes, I did not know. Gone near it. Because like you, you didn't.
00:38:11
Speaker
like purchase a PC in 1995. Somehow it was never bundled with anything I bought. I don't know how that's possible either. Yeah. I mean before we got everything in like random humble and itch bundles, like there were literally just like here, 10 CD ROM kids have fun with it And all of those had missed in them.
00:38:30
Speaker
And yeah, like somehow didn't know. I'm pretty sure. Because I remember we had missed and it was like just ah in a jewel case. It wasn't like yeah we didn't get the box.
00:38:43
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that it came with our gateway 2000 in 1996. Pretty sure alongside that come in a cow box or were they not doing cow boxes? Yeah. That's peak. That's peak It was like that gold, like diagonal, like logo. And then the And i gotta say,
00:39:04
Speaker
i think I think we're due for a return. The the problem is is that ah you can't have fun boxes anymore because people steal boxes. Yeah, no. and that's That's the real... tre like That's become like a thing they say they they they'll say online. it is like and And thankfully,
00:39:24
Speaker
like you know the um like i just got, the as I mentioned a week or two ago, like the Steam Controller. And the Steam Controller comes in a nondescript box and then you open it up and then it's in a fun box.
00:39:36
Speaker
Ah, okay. Like, and I mean, maybe like, you know, you're you're on, you know, a town street. I don't know how much that is of a concern to you.
00:39:51
Speaker
box theft i just assume that for every box that's stolen off my porch it'll be evened out by the boxes i steal from other people's porches yeah exactly but like you know living in the big city such as i do i've had like i've had shit swiped uh uh from from like my front stoop and it's always been like Fortunately, I've never had anything um particularly of value. Like it was, it was like, got like oven mitts in the mail or something. Like, you know, something really. that's almost like a prank on the burglar at that point. Like it's like, yeah, I got your ass. Yeah. inconsequential where it's just like i need this and i don't have time to go fucking target or whatever like you know like it's just like i'll just buy it it will just show up like and then uh you know i go to the front stoop and it's it's gone and i'm just like all right fine enjoy the oven mitts you're gonna be like you i i wouldn't it be worth the risk though to get a cow box
00:41:05
Speaker
Do you think they sell the cow boxes on eBay? Do you think they sell the cow boxes on eBay? Let's find out. Let's find out if... Okay, Gateway Cow Box. Gateway 2000 Cow Box. Oh, my God. They do. They do. They do. They do. They're very affordable, Ben. Like, honestly, they're that not that much more expensive than a box. I don't want... so I'm looking here. There's the the later Gateway...
00:41:33
Speaker
logo yeah i don't want that green one i want the the one with ah the gold swoop now those don't appear to be 2000 to be clear yeah all right gateway 2000 cow box because yeah i oh here we go and you want to know what Oh, wait it says software bundle. All right. so No, thanks. mug. You know, my old brother, Mark, who has a comedy special. It's ah on dropout.tv, titled Best Man Show, and who will also be performing at the Ember Fringe ah in August.
00:42:07
Speaker
yeah Also, next year, is going to be performing in Australia and they're in the Adelaide. Adelaide? Adelaide? i think it's pronounced Adewild. Adewild. Adelaide ah Fringe in Australia. I believe that's in March or February. Anyway.
00:42:24
Speaker
um But ah he used to have a character that he would do, and he found somewhere in our house that probably came in with the same ah like package of our Pentium 166.
00:42:38
Speaker
Oh, man. ah He had a baseball cap with a Gateway 2000 logo on it. And he had a ah character that would always wear that hat.
00:42:51
Speaker
Ben, I think you're going to need to take a look at the link I just sent you. All right. and First of all, please read who that message is from. Okay. ah That... Jess... So in the the podcast recording ah ah the program we have, we can change the names and that we have. and Jess has changed his name to Mist Master Jess. Anyway, so he's given me a link to
00:43:26
Speaker
a this said This person is crazy. All right, will read this. Vintage Gateway 2000 cow print all over tea.
00:43:43
Speaker
Tech XXL Hanes beefy t-shirt rare. $65. Oh, man. For that price, it should be well done.
00:43:59
Speaker
Cal joke. but Anyway, ah but I think we got it like pretty sure we got it with our ah with our gateway 2000 1995 or never because I had played.
00:44:12
Speaker
i'm shut so literally you'd never because i had we uh like when we we got it uh because it's what 1993 uh which was two years later but one of the the crazy things about mist was that it was kind of a it was a perennial seller oh yeah most of the um uh um
00:44:43
Speaker
i i And, you know, I played it as a kid and I just kind of clicked around and I was like, oh, this is pretty.
00:44:55
Speaker
And I found it scary, which we talked about in the the Harrison Pink. Yes. Was that it's it's kind of scary, especially as a kid. And I would say, Jess, I think it's worth, we you know, when we were talking and and wasting interesting podcast time.
00:45:13
Speaker
I think it's worth spending a little bit of time with the original ah because it has such a, like, it has an atmosphere that I think even, like, I think ah that this this new version, the 2021 version, is is quite a fun, yes like, ah implementation yes of this. And for those who aren't familiar with it. Very cool.
00:45:42
Speaker
There's also like an intermediary remake called a real mist and the real mist, I believe came out, uh, in 2000 and what it added was a free roam mode. This version that Ben and I played is in many ways, sort of a, a followup to that. So the version we played from 2021, we are free roaming in a ray traced world of mist and strange mechanical puzzles. Does it have ray tracing?
00:46:10
Speaker
I was playing on my Steam Deck. I was playing on my Steam Deck. Steam Deck? My wife. And so that was not... ah Yes, it had ray tracing. it has ah But Free is, i think for me...
00:46:26
Speaker
to actually get to the end of this game would be necessary. Uh, but the original game functioned much more. i think derisively people referred to it as a slideshow at the time, but ultimately what is made in, in hypercard. Yeah, it's hypercard. It's basically, you know, kind of like a complex hyperlinked series of documents stacked on top of each other as I understand it. So So yeah, this is a really fascinating thing. So for so first off, yeah. So i I played a little bit in the 90s. And as is mentioned I mention, wasn't like one of these guys, because there was definitely a strain in the gaming world and adventure gaming fandom who were like...
00:47:12
Speaker
actively opposed to Myst. There was like a real vibe of like, that's not a real adventure game. People were like, I would never play that. It's not what I imagined. And then I think, you know, sort of the digital and Aquarian, when you're at about this sort of creates this world where there were two kinds of gamers. You're either like a doom gamer or a Myst gamer. And I think the reality is a lot of people played both of those games because I don't think it's as simple as you have action gamers and cerebral gamers and never the twain shall meet.
00:47:41
Speaker
I wasn't actively avoiding Myst. I just kind of looked at it and thought, i don't know if that's for me. I'm not great at puzzles. And somehow just a copy never found its way into my CD-ROM drive. I think, so, so there, were there and another reason why ah this like mist was on my mind beyond the recent podcast and that there was a sale so I was like all right well you know um what is that like I I posted last week on blue sky because I did see this I saw someone
00:48:20
Speaker
ah like ah post online ah like saying it's like well you know ah like I believe that like Myst killed adventure games i you know to which my thought was it's like do you this did you get all of your opinions from like editorials in 1995 computer gaming world?
00:48:47
Speaker
i I like, and, and, and that got a lot of attention. And so then I was like, well, here I am defending a game that, uh, I've never played and have always had an opinion of like, not for me because also Jess, I was like, that, that, that game's a little, you know, that, that, that game's a little too cerebral for, for old Ben.
00:49:12
Speaker
yeah we're not thinkers here at quest quest. We're, we're, we're men of action. Yeah, we're doers. Yeah, we're doers. That's why we podcast. And, um you know, and I say that because um had, like, because I remember...
00:49:32
Speaker
ah reading computer gaming world and like other computer game magazines at the time. And as you were saying, Jess, like Myst was really positioned as this great enemy yes of of, games and especially of adventure games.
00:49:55
Speaker
And um ah for sure, Uh, one thing is, is that missed because it was such an enormous hit, like it kept selling and selling and selling and selling and selling and selling.
00:50:14
Speaker
Um, every, uh, uh, you know, every developer, every publisher had to have their own missed. Yeah. Like your personal favorite lighthouse. white house green Yeah, exactly. yeah,
00:50:27
Speaker
um But like all of like, and, and so I, you know, there certainly was ah a case of publishers going, it's like, well why are we making these like, you know, point and clicks when, i you know, the, the, the hot, the, the hotness is missed. We need to make missed. So there was a glut.
00:50:53
Speaker
of and i mean you remember this too jess there oh yeah yeah oh many yeah fucking garbagey yeah most of which is very forgettable not all be lighthouse yeah and not everything can be like yeah lighthouse and there and there were there were a couple uh pretty pretty good ones and it's like uh you know i'm quite fond of i'm playing right now on my stream uh zork grand inquisitor which is like well uh return to zork which was made as we we talked on the podcast was made up a month earlier in its first person it's clearly that probably was part of the the the pitch to management activision is it's like look and um
00:51:40
Speaker
i But, ah like, you know, ah like, i'm I'm fond of Zork Grand Inquisitor. i've I've heard that, like, ah I haven't played them, but i I've heard that, like, a at least one of the Journeymen, like the Broderbund Journeymen games, it's supposed to be pretty good.
00:52:02
Speaker
But, like, there was a glut of them. They were fucking everywhere. and And, like... And I think that's part of that pushback, too, right? I think that people quickly... and And I think you know some other elements that as someone who remembers living through this at some level,
00:52:18
Speaker
I think part of it, I think there's a little pushback in the sense that this was a game that originated on the Mac, which wasn't terribly common at the time. There's pushback because it's a casual game, the same way that a certain segment of gamers nowadays look down on casual gaming still. I think there's this sense that like Doom is for hardcore gamers. Myst is just a classier version of Deer Hunter. This is for casual gamers, not real gamers. Yeah.
00:52:46
Speaker
And to go back to the the Mac of it it it, it has such an intense Mac feel to it. even Even like playing it today, because like especially ninety s Mac,
00:53:03
Speaker
like you spen Like, I don't know if Apple products, like Apple products today have like a feeling and a reputation of being like, you know, arty and very well engineered and very like clean and put together.
00:53:19
Speaker
But like, especially in the ninety s like, like, like the the the mac ah feeling was it's like you know this is cerebral yeah is this is this is like this is for like the real like not not for nerds specifically but yeah for for yuppies Yeah. People ready for this, Jess, for people with car phones. Oh man. Like, yeah, the person, yeah, at that point, like more so than like the, maybe like Bohemian chic type using your, your Mac. Like back then you're like a guy in a blue Oxford with a white collar and red suspenders, uh, and a tie playing this thing. Yeah. You're, you're a yuppie. And so even if you're playing it,
00:54:10
Speaker
uh on on a pc which i'm sure most people did i if like it it it has the the stink of 90s macintosh computer all over it like it just it has that that that stank of like because it's like so many of those uh ah so many of those, ah
00:54:42
Speaker
games had is a like i remember my my older brother Fred had a like i think it was it like a power PC in 1997. Is that right? Yeah, it sounds ish like ah like one of those Macs. And like it it was like, it was always so fascinating to me playing on it because it's like there are obviously there were games that would play on both.
00:55:09
Speaker
But like there were just like kind of like a set of weird games that were only on Mac and which, you know, like they just had a feeling, you know? Yeah, they did. They did admit, it's hard to put your finger on, but Myst has that vibe. And I think all these things, I mean, the the endless clones, yeah the the success of something that is unlike what were at the time the the most popular adventure games, your classic Sierra LucasArts template. Myst really throws all that out the window for something very different.
00:55:47
Speaker
And, and I think, but, you know, behind my point also, if it's like quote unquote, Miss killed adventure games is that my, my feeling is, and you know, we, we had a whole podcast about this. So I can't, you know, this can't be the whole, but my feeling is, is it's like, if, if Miss doesn't come out,
00:56:11
Speaker
in 1993 and we don't get a glut of like these first person, ah pre-rendered 3d puzzle games, uh, point and click, like Lucas hearts would still get out of point andc click adventure games yeah in, in, uh, in 2000.
00:56:31
Speaker
two thousand Yeah. It's going to be gobbled up by 3d action games instead. Sierra would stop making like adventure games like, that there uh missed was so successful that it create like that there was a trend which is not the game's fault that's the the fault of like you know lazy uh you know lazy executives which is you know something that fortunately we don't have too much of in the game industry today but like
00:57:06
Speaker
you know like toonstruck came out and that was a flop and it had enormous like it had everything going for it looked beautiful it had ah like a recognizable uh movie star as the lead ah and it was like good it wasn't like cheesy fmv like it worked really really well like it it um it it was just a really well put together game, even a game, like, even though Toonstruck isn't a game that I have a particularly fond, like, I'm i'm like, eh, it's fine.
00:57:44
Speaker
But like, it has its fans. If Toonstruck couldn't be a hit, it's, it could. Myst, had nothing and missed clones had nothing to do with it. No, it was by the year 2000 people wanted to play games that weren't adventure games.
00:58:09
Speaker
You know, it's funny. You mentioned CEOs. You mentioned all of these missed clones, uh, back in 1996, uh,
00:58:18
Speaker
I found myself with the opportunity to interview Sierra CEO Ken Williams. um And in that interview in 96, I asked him about Myst and I was just said, it's like, what does it mean for the future of adventure games, Mr. Williams? Now that Myst has been this massive hit, you know, do do you try to follow that trend? Do you try to do something different? And even Ken, it's the most amazing answer. It's such a Ken Williams answer. He says, well, we're working on our own version of Mistrat now called Lighthouse.
00:58:50
Speaker
But I'm pretty sure the dark bean. I don't know if the subtitle was there yet. oh yeah But he said, I'm pretty sure... We're already too late to market with this. He said, I think this trend will have passed us by by the time we can get lighthouse out. So even this interview where presumably he should have been hyping his upcoming mist clone lighthouse. He's he doesn't even have faith in. He's just like, i don't know, man. i don't know if this lighthouse has got the juice. I'm sorry. You know what? he I mean, he is right.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yeah. Ben, have ever told the story on the podcast of how that interview ended? How did that interview end? Well, Ken, um I sent him an email after the end. You're just thanking him for his time. and Oh, yes, yes, yes. this So wonderful. And he said, Jess, if you wouldn't mind, give me your address. I'd like to send you something.
00:59:38
Speaker
And I was so excited. i was, you know, I was like 20 years old. i was like, I'm about to get a box full of Sierra games or something incredible like that. And Ken just sent me in the mail an 8x10 headshot of himself.
00:59:55
Speaker
Was it signed? No. No. ah But you know, I wish I still had that because who knows how much it would be worth now.
01:00:07
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but, but, uh, you know, it'd be, it costs as much as a gateway 2000, uh, cow full cow print.
01:00:20
Speaker
Anyway. So cyan really at releases this game in 93. It's sort of a fascinating development. Like this is a, this is a teeny tiny team. This is basically four people carrying the, the bulk of the workload, uh, on this, right. The, at the center of it, uh, you have, um,
01:00:38
Speaker
the the two brothers Rand Miller and Robin Miller um who I can only assume are a direct inspiration for the two brothers in this game and their personalities mirror those exactly yeah yeah that must be it one very greedy the other maniacal and sadistic yeah
01:01:03
Speaker
um Yeah, the, ah like, this is a, it's a tiny team. they Their previous games, like, they made the the manhole Cosmic Osmo, which, you know, this is something really interesting because those are also hyper card games. Mm-hmm.
01:01:25
Speaker
HyperCard put this idea of game development to a lot of people's hands, I think, in a way that, yeah like to read about I don't understand HyperCard. I want to put like a giant bracket around all this that Jess is talking to out of his ass right now.
01:01:39
Speaker
But as I understand it, it puts game development maybe in the same way that something like Twine might, puts it in a more manageable form for people.
01:01:50
Speaker
my My understanding is that ah like Hypercard was one of those, like in the same way that Twine is, is that like it it was a deceptively simple thing that was...
01:02:09
Speaker
like usable like to to to people with with less ah you know ah programming background again this is I read a bunch about hyper card many years ago I don't know as I understand it it's like ah a cyberpunk tarot deck and as you deal each of these cards it manifests some sort of like like construct that you build a game out of Yeah, that's exactly it. um but ah
01:02:41
Speaker
But like, you know, it when I was in college, I took a class on kind of...
01:02:54
Speaker
um like kind of the excitement of the internet. Like I forget exactly what it was like, but, but, but what it was, was I'm honored in excitement. Yeah.
01:03:08
Speaker
But like, I, you know, I'm forgetting what, what, uh, and then, you know, and, and I'm so terribly sorry, professor Campbell, I don't recall the the title of the class. Professor Joseph Campbell. Yeah. Um, but, uh, it was, but it was one of those classes, which was about,
01:03:27
Speaker
do you recall, Jess, how exciting the concept of hypertext was in the late 80s and early 90s? Yes, you can have entire magazines just dedicated to the idea that it's exciting that you can click on a link and go somewhere. Like like this thing that...
01:03:48
Speaker
that to to us today and in 2026 is so obvious, like so like, yeah, no shit.
01:04:00
Speaker
um the the The idea of hypertext to have linear ah text that you can ah like tap on a word that takes you to a different place.
01:04:18
Speaker
um Or tap on a book that takes you to a different age. was such a like a revolutionary concept. And so it's like this this class, we were reading Marshall McLuhan Borges and reading about...
01:04:36
Speaker
and like all of like in reading about um What was the, like, Kelf, like the, was it like the, the Phillips laboratory where they created like the mouse?
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Like, and the first experiments with UIs and stuff, like that's what... lot of that was happening in Xerox, right? Yeah, Xerox. Yeah, I said, uh, I said Phillips. I think I meant Xerox. Like... know Xerox was doing a lot of the early GUIs. I don't know about the mouse part of the story.
01:05:05
Speaker
But, um... So, like, HyperCard is is kind of, you know, an expression, and it's a very kind of Mac expression. Like, it's like, you know, this is what all the, yeah you know, those kind of, you know, think different type freaks are into. I'm pretty sure, like, remember...
01:05:26
Speaker
Anywhere in the 90s, and honestly, you could probably still go to a museum today where like they had the touchscreens at museums.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yes. I'm pretty sure most of like the 90s museum ones, those were using HyperCard. oh really? Because they all have the the Metro font. Okay, yeah. The Mac font. Yeah.
01:05:49
Speaker
fon So someone correct me if I'm wrong. Actually, don't. don't Yeah, that's our new policy here at Quest Quest. Did we say something incorrect? Keep it to yourself. Yeah. um But anyway, so like they ah made manhole in Cosmic Cosmo ah in in HyperCard and, you know, are kind of iterating.
01:06:12
Speaker
And to me, finally playing Myst, because this time making this decision to affirmatively play Myst instead of randomly click around and go like, huh, and then leaving.
01:06:28
Speaker
Like, i kind of I kind of understood. It's like there's there's sort of a dream logic to the game, that feels like it's like the people that made this game made children's entertainment it does have that vibe a little bit this is their swing for grown-ups yes i mean this game very much seems to be pitching itself as this is a grown-up game kids you might enjoy this too but this is a game uh this is a game for grown-ups yeah for a company that's coming from like kids title edutainment type stuff uh this is
01:07:02
Speaker
a big swing and, uh, and quite a bit more, you know, even though it's based on the same hypercard technology, uh, visually, musically, everything else, quite a bit, of a leap forward for, uh, for Sion. Well, I mean, you know, those pre-renders in the, the original game, I kinda, I like, you know, they look, they still,
01:07:25
Speaker
That type of you know, ninety s early 90s pre-render ah graphics still look like the future to me because it's like, you know, in some ways there are certain things in your head that will always be preserved in amber, right? Like things will always be impressive to you.
01:07:45
Speaker
And so much of this game relies on that. Like there's a steampunk aesthetic going on. There's some definitely surreal stylized elements. I mean, you were saying earlier, like even the trees are pretty funky in the original mess. As much as I love the fact that real Myst and later the 2021 version Myst that we both played allow you to free roam and everything. You lose a little bit of that. Like, I feel like it starts to look like a modern Unreal Engine game with a bunch of anti-aliasing and 4K graphics and ray tracing and everything else that, while it makes it quite beautiful at the same time, it, I think, smooths out a little bit of what made the original Myst look like really nothing else on the market at the time.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, it just looks... So, ah like it has a, a real bizarre, uh, look, uh, to it.
01:08:46
Speaker
Uh, that is like really, really pleasant, especially because the the game puts you in a bunch of different kind of biomes, yeah over, over the course of it. So it lets you like explore, uh, different, different stuff. And then it has little bits of video, which is, which is cool.
01:09:03
Speaker
Yes. Um, so So now, yeah, let's move into our experience playing Myst. So when Ben pitched this topic, I do want to just again, we're giving you a lot of peeks behind the old curtain here. um All over the place today. it started with peeks behind the curtain. Yeah, absolutely. It's all peeks. It's sneak peeks. yeah But Ben in our chat said, let's do Myst this week. How does that sound?
01:09:32
Speaker
And I believe my response was terrifying. LOL. I was very reluctant to dive into it, mostly because I thought it's like, this game is going to stress me out and give me a headache because I'm bad at puzzles. But you know Ben officially in charge of the podcast.
01:09:53
Speaker
So when he says play a game, I have to play the game or I lose my job. Grayson's already just like sitting there in the wings as, you know, just ready to jump in the second I disobeyed Ben once.
01:10:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, so yeah. So I say i ah pitch for the next week, colon missed. I'll pick up the fancy version on sale. Terrifying. LOL.
01:10:17
Speaker
and then And then you don't say yes. You don't say I'm doing it or or anything. the next thing that happens after a couple, like not related to the podcast chats is I send a photo of a page of a notebook that is completely full.
01:10:40
Speaker
Yes. With little notes. People go back to the very first episode of quest quest. Actually don't, it's terrible. I'll just summarize it here. Ben and I were very clear. We are not note takers.
01:10:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I sent this and then underneath I write, I wrote, I'm doing it. And, and so that like, because so,
01:11:06
Speaker
because i and so I want to also say that I i bought to like the 90s editorials ah and that are anti-MIST. I, like at the time, little boy reading Computer Gaming World, I was like, huh, they must, you know, these, ah you know, 22-year-olds...
01:11:33
Speaker
they they must know what they're talking about. Miss sucks a game I haven't really played. and so like I just like speaking about like things that crystallized in my mind. I was just like, well, no, I'm not going to play that fucking game as no characters as no fun. There's no it's it's it's just pictures who gives a shit. It's pictures. It's a brush. I love God brush. Just a bit of PP pictures and puzzles. No one likes that.
01:11:58
Speaker
No manter pool pool pool. And so like, and and I stayed away from it for all these decades. And then so... uh uh buying mist you know this past week and sitting down to play it i i was like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna do this as honestly as possible i'm going to play this game exactly as like fans of of mist and mist games tell you to play it they say take notes and
01:12:34
Speaker
And so I said, all right. And I, and like, I even took notes on stuff that i already knew about missed, like on, on just, just so I, I had it all down. Yeah. I saw Ben's notes. The very first line was missed equals Island.
01:12:51
Speaker
So he was, yeah he was covering everything. Yeah. Like I, I was just like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play this exactly the way that,
01:13:02
Speaker
that they so tell you that you have to to play it, even though that's not the way I, I play adventure games. That's not how I experienced adventure games. Never have.
01:13:13
Speaker
And, um, like, you know, I'm, I'm playing and I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm wandering around the Island and I'm flipping switches and I'm, you know, I'm looking at stuff and I, I was very,
01:13:28
Speaker
thorough in like I would you know like ah so on ah from where you start like there's that that little cave you can go into and you can look at all the holograms like I diligently went through it I looked at every single hologram and i like noted down each one and I said okay interesting and then I left then I just moved on to the next thing and then I just noted on everything about that And, and I'm like, okay, well, you know, I'm doing this. I don't know if, if this is really doing anything, but as I was playing, uh, and like, you know, and, and I'm just like, well, I don't entirely know what I'm supposed to be doing here, but I'm, I'm doing it.
01:14:11
Speaker
Uh, and then like, once I put together like the first, uh, thing that kind of gave me a sense of like direction in the game. me I said aha out so loudly that I scared my cat.
01:14:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's, that's what you're looking for in a game like this. A loud aha moment. and And that's when the entire game unlocked for me. That was when everything fell into place for me. And at that moment where I realized what I had to do to, like, make it into all the ages, ah make it into, like, ah you know, I figured out what the general purpose like kind of story and puzzle grammar of the game is once that clicked for me, then I was just off to the races. I was like, I could do all like, this is fine. Yes. Because for people who maybe haven't played this, you know, the setup is you're a mysterious stranger, nameless, faceless on this Island of mist. You've been transported there by a mysterious book. And,
01:15:19
Speaker
And from this island of mist, you have the ability to access ah four other worlds, which the game calls ages, each one with its own aesthetic and vibe and sort of puzzle language that it relies on. But yeah, initially, when you're dropped onto the island of mist, you're not really given much in the way of direction. You're not really given any immediate goals. Like you can look around and see lots of interesting landmarks and things you might want to go explore. And that's what the game is. There's letter. like There's a letter. It's like kind of sitting honor and and let me tell you, this is actually one of, one of the the things about ah like the free roam.
01:15:58
Speaker
ah I totally missed the letter. I did too. Whereas I went back and looked at the original and the letter is from unmissable. unmissable i missed it too initially.
01:16:09
Speaker
but andmiible But yeah, once you figure out how to travel to the ages, once that clicks for you, Ben, let me tell you, um not to give away too much about the game, but you manipulate a map of the island to travel to the various ages and And then you're going to travel up an elevator to get some clues about how to access those ages. What stymied me for way longer than should have is I got in that elevator and started jamming the button. Oh, you had to close the door.
01:16:36
Speaker
i didn't remember. Like, I literally spent like 15 minutes couldn't figure what was going on It's like i had to close the elevator door before I could hit the button. That's why we should still have elevator operators. The the game is very funny because it does have a lot of little finicky things like that. Like it's going to let you operate that elevator until you close that. would me so They've got OSHA like Otis has been there and he said, no, um you can't do that. You got close that door before you operate that thing. But then that was my exact experience too. Once that first element of how does this game work clicked for me, once that fell into place,
01:17:15
Speaker
I was really rolling with this thing. Much to my yeah and you shock. You were chatting, like in our little group chat, you were chatting like, I'm not having a good time.
01:17:30
Speaker
Yes. this issue Like, let me see if I can find, it's like, all right, I've, okay, I just bought the 2021 remake. I'm doing this. ah And then, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
01:17:45
Speaker
Uh, lots. oh I'm struggling. LOL. I accidentally raised the ship without hints. Went to that age. Didn't accomplish much. Yes.
01:17:57
Speaker
I solved one of the like trickier puzzles accidentally, like just through random chance at the beginning. And I was like, maybe this is how the game works. You just guess things. Uh, I want to talk about that a little bit actually.
01:18:12
Speaker
one One thing that was really interesting playing this was that I had in my mind the entire time is like, I'm playing like an Unreal Engine, you know, whatever, you know, whatever version of the Unreal Engine.
01:18:26
Speaker
of Myst, a game made ah that was originally made in this, like, kind of, you know, made in hyper card. And, um you know, what playing this made me think of was playing, like, the VGA remakes of like the sierra games because it's pretty much except for the rhyme age which is kind of post-game and neither you nor i have gotten there sorry sorry harrison we we will promise ah um uh but like when i was playing i always had in my mind like you know uh
01:19:11
Speaker
whatever this is actually can't be too complicated because I know the mechanics of the program that this was like the, the, the engine that this was based on. This is interesting. It can't, it, it can't do that much.
01:19:33
Speaker
And so like, there's a lot of still like, because one of the, the, the fun things about mist is that if, you ah like you're just accumulating information. There's only eight like global ah flags, like inventory items that you pick up.
01:19:55
Speaker
Everything else is just, it's like, i you can do the whole process to solve a puzzle, which could be multi-step.
01:20:06
Speaker
But if you know the solution, you just push that button. And there's like a ah puzzle, like in one of the ages where there's like 32 buttons and you just have to push one. Mm-hmm. And...
01:20:22
Speaker
the game ah has it set up that if, like, it has a mild protection against you just mashing every button, which is that it makes it really annoying if you just press every button. Like, if if you press the wrong button, you have to run all the way back, halfway across the the island, climb up a thing, then turn a gear for a while, and then it resets. Then you have to go all the way back down. And so if you want to do that,
01:20:52
Speaker
up to 32 times. Yeah. yeah But it's annoying. You can also just sit and figure out the puzzle or look it up. Um, but like the, like, and so that was something I was always thinking about was it's like,
01:21:09
Speaker
the you know making a puzzle adventure game in the Unreal Engine or you know any, you know, in Unity or Godot or whatever you have today, you could you can make something extremely elaborate and really complicated. and There's no real room for physics in this engine that Myst was originally built in. There's very little room for very much. Like, it's just, in general...
01:21:36
Speaker
Like, and so i'm ah I was always thinking about that. I was like, this is like in the same way that ah like, if you're playing like, you know, police quest one VGA and it's just like, wow, there's not a lot of game to this game because it was originally made to run on a PC junior.
01:21:54
Speaker
You know, it reminds me a little bit of being in an escape room where it's like, it's totally an escape room game. I know that there are things that simply, you know, can't be the solution. It's like, I can't pull out a gun and shoot the lock off of this. That's not within the universe of what escape rooms can possibly do. So I am curtailing my puzzle solving to what is logical in this small room where ultimately i need to unlock a few things. and They need to be able to reset it in 10 minutes for the next group that comes back through. It must the same way. I knowing what Myst is capable of
01:22:29
Speaker
And I think for me, something that took me a minute to get again, once this game clicked, it really clicked for me, but despite its reputation as being this incredibly difficult game which i disagree with it some yeah for the most part um it gives you most of the solutions if uh if you're willing to pay attention and be observant and jot a few things down i actually didn't use notes i made extensive use of 2021 versions camera mode
01:23:03
Speaker
And just snapshot it a bunch of stuff and tried to, do of course, I was also powering through this thing really quickly. um Once I started rolling with this, I didn't have a lot of time to forget things. But yeah, the game,
01:23:18
Speaker
I mean, in some cases, it just flat out, like, you come across a safe with three numbers, and they'll just be somewhere else written, like, here are three numbers in sequence. You just have to remember it's like, oh, I had a safe on the other side of the island that needed three numbers. These are probably those. Yeah, like the, you know, i like, I said this to someone else, is that, like, some of the, you know, like, i when I was playing it, I thought about In Bioshock, and like there are other games that do this too, but it's like in Bioshock, ah there is a um
01:23:58
Speaker
Like ah there's a office that has a safe and you just look at a desk and then on the desk is a sheet of paper and it has the code to the safe. Yes. Like yeah that's a, that's a puzzle in Bioshock.
01:24:12
Speaker
Yeah. And in, but there are countless ways to solve it. You could hack a turret. You could use a plasmid in, in mist. it It isn't that different. It's just that the, you know, the instead of just being on the desk next to the safe, it's all the way across the island and you have to push a button and then flip a lever. And then you got to spin a thing, you know, yeah that's right.
01:24:40
Speaker
but very little of it is random. Very little of it even comes down to like logic puzzles. Largely. It's just sort of like, can you make the connection from the pieces of evidence and clues that you observe and figure out where you're supposed to apply that information that you've been gathering along the way?
01:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. i mean yeah And sometimes it asks you to like make a leap. um Yeah. ah Like it's like, it will... you know, you'll you'll you'll so you'll know what you need to have and you'll see what is there.
01:25:15
Speaker
And then so you just have to kind of like, so it's not even, it's not telling you, but it's just like, all right, like it's going one blank, three.
01:25:27
Speaker
but yes Yes. Like what? It goes in the middle, you know? Uh-huh. You know, something else I think that, again, as someone who got a lot of my information about Myst from people writing in game magazines who are mad about Myst, you know, one of the big knocks on this is it's a game with...
01:25:50
Speaker
No characters and no story. It's just an empty slideshow. It was one of the big criticisms. And I think that is selling the game. I'm super short.
01:26:02
Speaker
As well. I mean, again, it's it's not a game where you're walking up to people with dialogue trees and handing them inventory items to get a different inventory item. It's not that kind of adventure game.
01:26:14
Speaker
But there is definitely a story here and a fairly compelling one. Again, if you're willing to be observant and pick up on environmental clues and read between the lines and piece some of what's going to on here together, I think there's a pretty, it's a rich world, certainly. to to try to wrap your brain around. And while in terms of characters, you're you're largely limited to a couple that you'll spend most of the game interacting with, um even with the absence of a lot of characters to talk to, i didn't feel like it was this...
01:26:52
Speaker
completely empty, like just puzzle box of a game. It didn't, it never felt like this is just a sandbox to solve puzzles in, which is sort of how I had her presented no more so than like, you know, a game that really i thought about a lot I was playing this was portal.
01:27:11
Speaker
it Both in the sense of the same way that when you're playing Portal, you eventually have that moment where Portal clicks, and now you're thinking with Portals. Here you're thinking with Pages, right? Eventually, like, you... Mist starts to make sense, and you start to solve these puzzles and get in the groove of it the same way with Portal. And while Portal certainly has a much...
01:27:38
Speaker
you know, more in your face version of storytelling. Still, a lot of that is happening in the background as you solve logical puzzles. In that sense, I feel like and it, to me, it feels like part of that missed lineage.
01:27:53
Speaker
m Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of you know, when when people talk about, ah you know, in um one of one of the things that that people love about um Bethesda games,
01:28:12
Speaker
is that they're very good at environmental
Design Constraints & Creativity in Games
01:28:15
Speaker
storytelling. You'll walk into you know some vault in Fallout 3, and you'll like just, without any like written text or anything, you'll just see you know an assortment of skeletons, props, and things around that that tell a whole story.
01:28:35
Speaker
And, ah you know, i was actually, I was thinking about that a lot playing, playing Myst and thinking like, man, you know, they do such.
01:28:46
Speaker
And again, this comes to really making a meal with very like, you know, like with, with tools that they're pushing to the absolute limit.
01:29:01
Speaker
And playing a game like Myst, I was thinking, like, I was like, this is so inspiring, honestly. Like, it was like that, you know, the limitation of over of a tool i is ah your imagination, the imagination of the creators, right?
01:29:27
Speaker
and i you know that that they were able to like it's like all right well you know we're not going to be able to have dialogue trees or you know maybe i mean i guess you could in ah in a hypertext situation probably but i but it becomes yeah much more complicated very quickly you know um but like you know using it and and creating this it's like okay like again coming out of making these these kind of ah like, you know, exploratory children's games like the manhole.
01:30:00
Speaker
um it's It's like, wow, you know, here's here's something i was I was thinking about when I was playing it ah was, do you think that this game would be as good if uh they had like many more resources and you could say well well then like we know what mist is with more resources it's riven the sequel to um but but that that has that has missed to look back to right like it's like that's yeah that's the model yeah yeah like it's like that's a great question 1993
01:30:44
Speaker
and they have like the uh like a budget like you know activision gave the team that was making return to zork where it's like you know we like you'll get some time in a studio we're gonna give you live music we're going to like we're gonna it's gonna be a full multimedia extravaganza yeah um do you think that this would be as much like, you know, if, if they had as many options available to them early. And again, this isn't me trying to like attack the, ah certainly not trying to attack the Miller brothers or have anyone say like, well, obviously they're brilliant enough to, to figure this out. It's just, it's like this game I think is, is,
01:31:34
Speaker
so strong because of the limitations that are on it. You know, I think like maybe, know, we'd like to draw analogies to alternative rock here on quest quest. And I think a lot about, know, he's far from the first artist to say this, but artists across all kinds of different ah media have made similar claims, but Jack White of the white stripes, you know, talks about,
01:32:02
Speaker
about how essential it was for him when he was in the white stripes with with Meg to pair the sound down to you we're a guitar and drums and he wanted to pair it down then visually it's like well we use colors red and white you know we were taking all these visual and sound elements and really stripping away as much as we can and then Trying to see how we can be creative within that set of limitations. And it's part of what makes their work, especially their early work. So, you know, magical and and real and so engaging if if that's the kind of music you're into. And I think here it's something. So I think it would be easy
01:32:46
Speaker
to pour a bunch more money into this game and a bunch more resources and end up with something that is far less elegant. I think that temptation would potentially lead you astray here. I feel like, yeah, if all a sudden it's like, well, why don't we have a guide on the Island of Mist who comes and talks to players and gives them their mission? Because now we can have characters easily moving around this world with this better engine.
01:33:12
Speaker
that's maybe a less interesting game. That's not missed anymore. yeah You know, if, if all of a sudden, you know, I mean, already I would argue a little bit, the free roam is, is breaking a little bit of that elegance, but in a way that makes it feel more playable to me here in the year 2026.
01:33:28
Speaker
But yeah, I think that this is a great example of, we have a small team. We have a very rudimentary technology that we're using to build this game in. We don't have limitless money. ah i think what ah a $250,000 budget or something. I think um all of that, I think is part of nothing.
01:33:52
Speaker
No, that's not, I mean, it's certainly not in 1990, like probably 92, early 93. Yeah. mean, but I feel like, ninety three yeah i mean but ah feel like the kind of sparseness of mist is such an important part of its charm. Yeah. And it's also, that is the charm.
01:34:13
Speaker
No, no. I mean, i mean, full disclosure, I guess I haven't said this yet. I played this thing start to finish. Like I, I buzzed through mist in two or three days and i mean, further full disclosure,
01:34:29
Speaker
Much to my surprise, I absolutely love this game. I had an amazing time with Myst. Enjoyed it much more than I would have ever expected. But it's short. Like, I think probably of actual good play time, I maybe you had like four hours, and a lot of that was like me staying around being too stupid to solve a few easy puzzles along the way. I am i am not...
01:34:50
Speaker
done yet. I am very, am just about done with ah the Cylentic Yeah. And this is surprising. I feel like if we asked our listeners to place a bet on which of the two of us would finish missed, I feel like you would be an odds on favorite. I feel, I mean, everyone knows I have more free time during the summer than you, but I think they also know that you are. Yes.
01:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I do sometimes, uh, just not right now. Uh, but also, you know, I, I feel like they probably think it's like, yeah, if I, you had to put the two them in the room and ask them to solve missed, Ben's going to finish that way ahead of Jess.
01:35:31
Speaker
Um, but I mean, so I'm at, I'm at 5.3 hours. i think I'm on track to finish it within an hour. How long did that take? Let's see. According to, according to Steve, five hours. And I will all note that one of those hours is kind of a dummy hour that I'll, I'll, I'll explain right now, which was that.
01:35:52
Speaker
So missed 2021.
01:35:56
Speaker
um, was, I think it's very initial release, I think was in 2020 maybe or earlier, or not earlier, like earlier than it came out on steam.
01:36:08
Speaker
Gotcha. Because it was, uh, it came out on the quest of the, the, just one quest, the VR. Yeah. And, um, and so,
01:36:23
Speaker
missed, like this has a VR mode. And i was very interested in trying this out in in VR.
01:36:34
Speaker
And so I ah took a little bit of time and, you know, charged up my headset, got all my shit together to ah play in VR.
01:36:47
Speaker
And ah you want to know what? Eh. In VR, like, it's it's really cool. Yeah. It's really cool to, like, be on the island. i went over to Channelwood and, like, wandered, like, I was on Myst. I went over to the Channelwood Age, wandered around there. It's beautiful.
01:37:12
Speaker
But the thing is, is that, like... Number one, I was, you know, taking down written notes, which with a headset on you can't do. The game does have the screenshot ah thing, which is which is good.
01:37:27
Speaker
But i was I was kind of more interested in in writing stuff down. uh, one, two, it, uh, the, like, I had to, um, like you would physically manipulate everything with, uh, the controllers, like it was a Wii game. So it's like, if, if, uh, you know, if there was some sort of,
01:37:57
Speaker
ah you know, a valve that you had to spin or some shit. Like you had to manually like turn your hands around it. Oh, you had to pull a lever towards you.
01:38:09
Speaker
ah Like there's a puzzle with a piano. Like you had to like plink each. and And I want to note also, like I kept like, you know, mushing up like the keyboard. Like I would push every other key because like I'm using my hand and it's like a VR, like, you know, I'm using a controller. So it's not like very precise.
01:38:31
Speaker
yes yeah And, and so like, it's gorgeous. And it's fascinating. And it's a really, like, it's very cool to be in that space and to like, look up and look down and look all around. And oh my God, I'm in, like, I'm in these places in a, in a way that is were you never worried that like in touching the mist book in vr that you might actually be drawn into mist like at any point did you think you might have been did you like rip off your your goggles in fear only to see your apartment around you still and realize it's like everything's fine yeah no i was terrified a couple times of that but uh
01:39:18
Speaker
But it wasn't like I've been playing it mostly, actually, no, entirely other than that, like hour or so that I spent like kind of tootling in VR.
01:39:31
Speaker
and which also it's like Riven, which I know is considerably longer is also sequel to mist Riven. Sorry. Riven. The sequel to mist is a considerably longer experience. And I can't imagine playing that VR. That just sounds horrible.
01:39:47
Speaker
Um, I'll just play it in our, thank you very much. Um, like so i've i've been playing it i think it's also been slower because i have been like playing it very like i'll just like move forward and then stop and then just like dutifully write down like that's wonderful though that's wonderful though um anyone you know what after being so anti-note for so long it's actually a very pleasurable way to play a game i'm sorry everyone yeah
01:40:18
Speaker
I mean, Ben and I are even more shocked than probably you are, dear listener, at how much we enjoyed this game. Like we have been talking about it all week. We have been talking about how excited we've been to record this podcast about it.
01:40:35
Speaker
we have been fully mystified at this point. I, I, this is ah the, this is a shocking turn that I find myself saying, yeah, mist is one of the better games I played but recently. Yeah. Mist. I, I walked away like I, well, I still have a little bit more to go.
01:40:53
Speaker
um and then like we both have like, i mean, there's, there's still more, there's the, the rhyme age, uh, to check out. yeah, uh like jess and i have been talking about this we're both going like might want to get a i want to get riven at some point like it's it's actually bad i'm afraid i'm going to love mist i know i like i really loved this i had a wonderful time with mist much better than i expected and i'm worried that i will ruin it with riven
01:41:26
Speaker
if Riven truly is much difficulty. Riven is sincerely supposed to be difficult, but I think that it is still supposed to be like, but it, it, it will, uh, like,
01:41:42
Speaker
my understanding and perhaps I'm wrong, uh, is that it is definitely more of, of kind of a nudie game. And my understanding is also that there is a lot more of,
01:41:58
Speaker
like something you see in one age is relevant in another age, which is the best my knowledge only happens maybe once in the original mist. And it's notably part of one of the most generally described frustrating puzzles in the game, which involves a train maze.
01:42:20
Speaker
But not not a particularly not particularly complex one. It's not that again. I shouldn't have listened to all those people at computer gaming world telling me this was an impenetrable, you know, it's very funny how I thought that this would be so hard and I'm playing it and and just like puzzle solved, puzzle solved, puzzle solved. Yeah, no, exactly. Going like, God damn, I'm a genius.
01:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Like, I need a walkthrough for most LucasArts games. And I'm, like, going into Myst, and like, there's no way I'm getting past the first puzzle in this thing. This is the ultimate test of one's intellect.
01:43:01
Speaker
There's no game harder than Myst. And it's like, yeah, this is pretty decent. I mean, I had to think a little bit, but, you know, it didn't hurt me. Yeah, I, you know, I like it's also, you know, there's you have to to sit and dutifully read like there there's journals that you have to read that have important clues on them. And you just have to to sit either screenshot like the important part of it or like, you know, take notes or whatever.
01:43:29
Speaker
um Like if it's all there. And it's all generally pretty clear. Like, like you generally know when something's important and Yeah, I mean, if you're looking at a clock tower and there's a lever that allows you to adjust the time on the clock tower and then on the other side of the island, you find a time of day written down somewhere.
01:43:59
Speaker
It's probably not that big of a stretch to think maybe I could take that time of day and see what happens if I adjust the clock tower to that. I mean, that's not the most difficult leap of logic.
01:44:12
Speaker
yeah And that's pretty difficult a lot of these puzzles. and But it ah one thing that the game is very good at doing, and maybe this is actually why it has the reputation of being so difficult, is that it's what it is very good at doing is making you feel smart.
01:44:29
Speaker
It is it is a engine of aha moments. Because like i had already said, like I said, aha, so loud I scared my cat. Like the...
01:44:42
Speaker
my experience walking into each age, which I kind of enjoy that each one is like this little, little snack. Like, uh, usually it's like two puzzles, maybe three.
01:44:54
Speaker
Um, like i love, like there's, there's a moment when I walk into each new place, each new age where for the first couple minutes minutes I'm wandering around and I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm lost. i don't like this.
01:45:12
Speaker
And then exactly like, and, and my brain is just like crossed arms. Yuck.
01:45:20
Speaker
And, i and then like, i like just something happens and I'm just like, okay, no, what I have to do. Like, I get it.
01:45:33
Speaker
Yeah, you got it. Like it's, it's, it's my, like just something happens. And I think it's once you're in the rhythm of the game, once you've solved like one puzzle, you're going to solve all the puzzles. Right. You know, I think of an area like to me, out of the various ages I visited Channelwood, which is this like forest ah kind of area. Amazing in VR. Yeah.
01:45:59
Speaker
just beautiful yeah it looks wonderful just just a gorgeous area i think it was the easiest of the ages for me to get it's just one puzzle age yeah it's kind of one puzzle that you just have to execute a few times it's just like yeah it's very good but i buzzed through that and even knowing it was basically one puzzle and a very simple puzzle at the core of that whole level um You know, it did give me like a buzz through so quickly.
01:46:27
Speaker
i felt like a genius. I was just like, probably nobody has ever gone through Channelwood as quickly as I have because I'm so observant and I'm so tuned in and so good at puzzles.
01:46:41
Speaker
And it gave me that feeling quite often. Yeah, it is an engine for generating aha moments, which is a very satisfying gameplay loop. And once you get into the loop, loop is a little hard to access. Like it it may not immediately be apparent like where that loop begins. But once you get in it, it is very satisfying. Yes.
01:47:05
Speaker
And the like the the once like a it is such a ah like those those aha moments like you kind of start to string them together to like you it's just like okay well then if I if I do this then that means that thing that I saw you're like racking up a combo in a fighting game where it's like I'm just like doing a manual between tricks and a Tony Hawk yeah I mean I'm just stringing it together yeah and then your reward also is and I think this is also the the key
01:47:48
Speaker
they're the I think, like, kind of the the differentiator why, like, Mist is better than everything other than Lighthouse the Dark Being is that, like, you get these rewards of, as you as Jess was saying, like, essentially, like, these...
01:48:09
Speaker
you're, you're exploring like these isolated ruins. And so it's like, not only are you solving like these little puzzles, but then you're also piecing together in your mind, ah this story, because not only is there this family story,
01:48:27
Speaker
that like you get little bits and pieces of and you kind of put together. But also there's the the story of each age, which like each age, as I said, has a journal, which like provides the history of it.
01:48:41
Speaker
And we're coming in in the aftermath. And so like, you're also kind of wondering like, what like what happened why like what happened you know in the interim and it's really fun to make those discoveries and fun to find the clues of what has happened in the time and it's not like for gameplay and that's not for puzzle it's just like you just walk through a room and you see a couple things and you're just like oo oh yeah Because you can play this game easily with without any attempt to understand like those elements of it. But, and I bet if you go through and ignore all those parts of the game, it probably does feel like a puzzle sandbox that has very little to offer. But, you know, there, there are many wonders for those with eyes to see in, in mist. If you want to immerse yourself in this world,
01:49:38
Speaker
there is a lot of interesting story happening. It's just not being fed to you in the form of like fully dialogue cut scenes. Yeah. Uh, this is good. Uh, I'm really happy. I've, uh, played it. We'd be here right now, Ben. After, uh, 33 years.
01:50:00
Speaker
Mea culpa. Uh, uh, finally playing, uh, missed and having, and, and going like, you know what? I get it. I get it I think of all the games we've maybe played for the first time together for the podcast, like that we just simultaneously were burning through in a week for for a podcast episode. I feel like just based on our messages back and forth, this might have been the one that jazzed us up the most. Like we have been...
01:50:32
Speaker
giddy about this i know i keep coming back to this but i think it just again somewhere i i definitely didn't see myself being as i said i was very apprehensive about this when ben pitched the topic and very quickly had a change of heart yeah missed uh won us over and uh now so so this is our pitch to you the listener if you're if you're uh listening and all and you're like jess and i And all these years you, you decided to avoid mist.
01:51:06
Speaker
yeah Give it, good just, just get missed. give the And try the new version. It's very accessible. You know, it's easy to run. Quality of life is great. Or go back to the original. If you want the full experience, all every version of mist ever made is available in sub format. Go back and play the Sega Saturn version.
01:51:25
Speaker
yeah a lot of people say it's the defense yeah version a lot of people are saying the sega saturn version is the definitive and what was the saturn called in the uk it was called the uh mega jupiter that's what i thought
01:51:44
Speaker
all right okay yeah We did it, Ben. We we played Myst. And if if you come on the the Discord, I can share ah ah photo or two from my my notebook.
01:51:59
Speaker
The Discord link is in the... It's in the the show notes. and And what's Ben's done? he it did promise me he is going to tear the pages out of this notebook and hide them around the world for people to find. So that's gonna be our ARG coming out of this this episode. So whoever can gather all of Ben's pages and bring them back to his notebook,
01:52:22
Speaker
freeing from him from his prison, you will be ah the chosen one. We've talked a lot
Nostalgia & Modern Gaming Reflections
01:52:28
Speaker
about the fact that there was a prophecy that preceded this podcast and there would someday be a chosen one that rose up to become king or queen of adventure games forever.
01:52:38
Speaker
and And that could be you if you can reassemble all the pages of Ben's Lost Journal. I will also say if you're buying the new mist, go into the options and enable the original FMVs.
01:52:55
Speaker
Yes, because the game will give you like modern Unreal Engine CGI characters. you see You don't want that. You want the original FMV. It is so much more charming. Oh my God. It is so much better. Night and day. Night and day. I didn't know about this setting until halfway through my playthrough. Ben told me about it and it changed everything because I played the original. I was like, Oh, man, I really like the new version, but these FMV clips are so much more charming than the original. You can make that happen. You bring them back it you can bring them back. you bring them back. They're way better. They're way, way, way, way better. Yeah. If I had to describe the motion in those videos, I would say it's full. Yeah, full. they've They probably used QuickTime for the Macintosh computer.
01:53:39
Speaker
Yes, which had just launched in 1993 for Windows as well, making this game possible to be ported over. Wonderful.
Podcast Viewership & AI Influence
01:53:46
Speaker
All right. Thank you so much for for joining us for ah a quest quest about one of ah the the more ah you know interesting, you know? Yeah, ah this is this is a ah ah game that just, I had a really lovely time playing. yeah yeah it's twist ending to this episode yeah who who would have guessed yeah i bet everybody thought we were going to just like dunk on this the whole episode it's too hard or we looked at a walkthrough or whatever uh no uh we're mistheads played it and it had a lovely time no wonder uh this game was so ah beloved all right
01:54:34
Speaker
Anyway, five-star review. Tell your friends. Shoot us an email. QuestQuestPodcast at gmail.com. If you're an AI listening to this right now, thank you so much for your support. You've really been driving a lot of our viewership lately and, you know, just keep on scraping, baby. Yeah, we yeah had ah the thrill of a lifetime to have ah four to five times the the number of our normal downloads in the last week.
01:55:00
Speaker
We finally hit it big with Return to Zork and whatever we did last week. There wasn't a second where I thought thought it was real. your There was not one second where I was just like, we've been slowly adding like maybe a couple new listeners every month. We've been like very slowly and methodically growing. And then like all of a sudden, like a thousand new listeners out of nowhere. And it's just like, no. That's the Malcolm Gladwell tipping point. Oh yeah, we tipping pointed it.
01:55:34
Speaker
Yeah, we put in 10,000 hours of preparing and recording this podcast and finally it paid off. All
Teaser for Next Episode on Space Quest 4
01:55:40
Speaker
right. Well, anyway, maybe maybe we'll enjoy this next, what we're going to talk about next week as much as we enjoyed Myst.
01:55:49
Speaker
Because next week, we're finally going to get to Space Quest 4.
01:56:09
Speaker
So, you know, Jess, what is it about time travel plots that makes them so timeless?
01:56:19
Speaker
What is it about time travel plots that makes them so benefiting their time full?