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Myst (series): Difference between revisions
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** Most of what Yeesha does, having learnt from the aforementioned Bahro.
** Her mother Catherine was also good at this. In the Novels she's mentioned as having written "Torus", an stable doughnut-shaped Age, which features a huge waterfall that falls through the planet's core, turns into rain and gets carried back by clouds to refill the Ocean, that in turn, feeds the Waterfall. Atrus' reaction to first seeing this was that until then, he had thought it ''impossible'' to do such things with the Art.
* [[Big Screwed
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: All the games to some extent, but especially Riven and Revelation.
** If the player chooses to {{spoiler|[[Video Game Cruelty Potential|leave Saavedro stranded after retrieving the Releeshahn book from him]]}}, ''Myst III: Exile'' can also [[What the Hell, Player?|fall under this]].
*** Even if you get the best possible ending instead, Saavedro has still lost twenty years of his life, including his daughters' entire childhoods. Makes the homecoming pretty darn bittersweet right there...
*** To say nothing of the fact that he's become a psychopath, easily capable of snapping and killing someone with little provocation. What kind of rehabilitation does he have ahead of him?
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* [[Endless Daytime]]:
** In ''URU'', Teledahn's sun moves horizontally across the sky, never dipping beneath the horizon as it circles.
* [[
* [[Face Heel Turn]] - {{spoiler|Veovis.}}
* [[Featureless Protagonist]]: All games, except for ''URU''.
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* [[I Did What I Had to Do]] - There are a few. Gehn in Riven, {{spoiler|Esher}} in Myst V, {{spoiler|Sirrus}} in Myst IV.
* [[Insurmountable Waist Height Fence]] - Especially in Uru to block off unfinished areas, but examples of places that seem like they should be accessible but are not abound throughout the entire series. A notable exception is in Riven, where you can simply crawl under a locked gate.
* [[
* [[
** Myst: Go to D'ni without the white page (a type of [[Unwinnable]] situation), or bring all of the pages to either brother so you get trapped in the book yourself.
** Riven: Forget to rescue Catherine (cue [[Downer Ending]]), open the fissure before trapping Gehn (Gehn escapes and kills you and Atrus), trap yourself in the prison book (if you do it in the Rebel Age, they burn the book), etc.
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** ''Revelation''
*** There are 46,656 possible codes to unlock the door {{spoiler|beneath the old Memory Chamber.}} This code is randomized.
* [[Magic
* [[Meaningful Name]] - Gahreesan (Garrison); in the books, {{spoiler|Tehrahnee (Tyranny)}}.
* [[Messianic Archetype]] - Yeesha {{spoiler|Subverted. She fails to fulfill the role due to her own pride.}}
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*** Furthermore, forgetting ''one lousy thing'' in Exile but remembering everything else locks you into the best ending - that would be {{spoiler|picking up the Tomahna book in the Narayan outpost instead of opening it like every single other linking book in the game}}. You have no choice but to {{spoiler|let Saavedro go after that, if you want to get to the book without him killing you}}.
* [[The Multiverse]]
* [[Mundane Utility]]: The D'ni have some incredibly advanced technology, the cornerstone of which is their ability to connect to other universes, specifying any type of universe they want with any contents they want, and travel to them at will. They use this ability as a ''[[What Do You Mean
* [[Nostalgia Level]] - Atrus' study in ''Myst IV: Revelation'', the Myst library, and K'veer in ''Path of the Shell''. The Cleft might count, although it had only ever appeared in novels before. {{spoiler|''Also, the ruins of the original Myst in the bad ending of Myst V. It's worth getting the bad ending just to see it.'' }}
* [[Novelization]]
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** Many D'ni words are merely English words with a strong accent. Gahreesen, for instance, is a garrison.
* [[Redemption Equals Death]] - {{spoiler|Veovis, Achenar, ro'Eh ro'Dan.}}
** ''Myst IV: Revelation'' almost beats you over the head with this trope. The effectiveness of the message is tempered by how well you remember [[Big Screwed
** Averted in ''Exile'', however, in which not only does the player reconcile with Saavedro and allow him a happy ending, but in a bad ending where you drive Saavedro to suicide Atrus yells at you about it. Of course, Saavedro's most serious crimes were arson (no one was hurt,) theft, and plotting bad things-- and he did so for understandable reasons-- so the game killing him to redeem him would have seemed pretty disproportional.
* [[Renaissance Man]]: Atrus
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** According to [[Word of God]] (Richard A. Watson, the end-all authority on all things D'ni), the cleft was always in New Mexico, the novels got it wrong. He also states that trap books as shown in ''Myst'' and ''Riven'' don't exist; the brothers were always trapped in prison Ages (as shown in ''Myst IV''), and that the trap books were simply a simplification made by Cyan for gameplay purposes. It should be noted that he wrote about this as early as 1998, so it wasn't something that was changed for ''Myst IV''.
* [[Reality Warper]] - the Bahro, and to an extent {{spoiler|Yeesha.}}
* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]] - Sirrus (Blue Oni) and Achenar (Red Oni), though the Books they're trapped in have the opposite colors.
** Interestingly, {{spoiler|the worlds within the books}} have the opposite colors from their covers.
* [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent]] - The Bahro fear the snakes of Noloben.
* [[Rewriting Reality]] - The explanation for how the Art (of linking to other universes) works. With the proper ink, paper, and language, of course. What do you think this is, magic or something?
** Well, technically, it's not rewriting reality, and a whole section of a couple of the stories is dedicated to making this clear, thanks to a few characters who started to think they were gods. As stated above, it's linking - writing a linking book simply creates a door to a world that already exists somewhere, if the theory of infinite possibilities is to be believed. It also points out that writers have to be ruddy careful, as the link is established to a moment when the world is ''exactly'' as it is described in the linking book. It doesn't matter if the linked world destabilizes into a hellish inferno after that moment - the book will still link there. Thus the existence of a guild dedicated to approving books as safe to use.
*** However, there have been times, like with the Age of Stoneship, where Atrus uses the Art to change the contents of a world. [[Word of God]] states it's sort of a quantum-uncertainty thing; you can't change things, but you can specify things which [[
* [[Scenery Porn]] - Sufficient, said many critics at the time, to solely justify the first game's record-smashing sales. You can probably buy the first three sequels with that excuse, too.
** The Garden Ages, the Kadish Gallery and Ahnonay in ''Uru''.
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** ''Exile'': The Age of Narayan.
* [[Unobtainium]]: Nara, deretheni, firemarbles, powermarbles, etc.
* [[
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: {{spoiler|"No, you fool! My performance was perfect!"}}
** {{spoiler|You ... IDIOT! Moronic lump of filth! You are nothing! Puh! AHHHHHH! I needed the power! I needed it! D'ni needed ME! You threw it away to this witch and her legion of scum, the demon slaves! You have released the slaves as masters! You've turned the small to great! Curse the Maker ...}}
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* [[Sequel Hook]]: The good ending contains several blatant ones for ''Riven''.
* [[Shout Out]]: The never-seen Osmoian Age, mentioned in the Channelwood journal, is a nod to Cyan's earlier game ''[[Cosmic Osmo]]'', which was set in the Osmoian solar system.
* [[Sound
* [[Take a Third Option]]: {{spoiler|Do you trust the brother without the more obviously 'mad' and 'evil' attributes, or assume it's some sort of misleading trick and trust that one? The answer is to trust neither.}}
* [[What the Hell, Player?]]: Atrus doesn't react well to your stupidity if you {{spoiler|go to D'ni without bringing the missing linking book page}}.
=== Tropes found in ''Riven'' ===
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* [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]]: Non-time-travel variant; Gehn isn't a particularly good linking author, so the quantum-uncertainty thing the linking books have going on makes the Ages he links to dangerously unstable. Atrus is much better at writing linking books than his father, and reckons he can use those same quantum-uncertainty shenanigans to salvage Gehn's Ages, or even undo the damage Gehn caused; but it's a very time-sensitive endeavor because Ages don't stop deteriorating just because you're not in them, and some are beyond saving already.
* [[Villains Out Shopping]]: The supplemental booklet for the soundtrack contains extra pages from Gehn's journal where he discusses some of his hobbies.
* [[What Happened to The Mouse?|What Happened To The Squee?]]: You don't hear from Gehn after {{spoiler|he is imprisoned. Does he mend? Does he die unreformed? Is he lost in the library fire?}}
=== Tropes found in ''Exile'' ===
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* [[Drop the Hammer]]: Another reason why you shouldn't anger Saavedro.
* [[Follow the Plotted Line]]: The lack of any obvious goal in Edanna, combined with its confusing layout, brings this trope into play. As a result, you find yourself simply solving all the puzzles that present themselves to you, without ever knowing why. In case you're curious, what you're trying to do is {{spoiler|free the Grossamary bird from the giant flytrap, then call it from a cage in the swamp to have it come pick you up and take you to the location of the symbol}}.
* [[Hey
* [[I Lied]]: Saavedro offers to return Releeshahn to the player freely at the end of Myst III when it turns out he can't return home without help. {{spoiler|If you take up his offer directly, he gleefully tosses the book into an abyss and scampers off home.}}
* [[
* [[Press X to Die]]: Using the Tomahna Linking Book anywhere that Saavedro can physically reach it at the end of ''Exile'' will not end well for you, or anyone else.
* [[Ridiculously Cute Critter]]: Saavedro subsisted on little squirrel-like creatures called Squees. No relation to [[Squee]], a trope with [[
* [[Tagline]]: ''The Perfect Place to Plan Revenge''
* [[Video Game 3D Leap]]: [[Downplayed Trope|Sort of.]] You still click from screen to screen, as you did in the original Myst and Riven, but each "screen" is now a cycloramic (cyclorama=360 degree panorama) view that allows you to look freely in all directions.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Once you finally manage to turn the tables on Saavedro.
** [[Big No]]
** [[Rapid
* [[What the Hell, Player?]]: If you decide to {{spoiler|leave Saavedro trapped}} at the end of the game, Atrus calls you out on it in the epilogue. The official hint guide also gets in on it.
{{quote| Q: "I {{spoiler|trapped Saavedro and he gave me the book}}. Can I go now?"<br />
A: "Sure. After all, {{spoiler|Saavedro hasn't suffered yet. Twenty years is nothing, really.}} Think how much fun it would be to {{spoiler|leave this tormented fellow stranded with the knowledge that his civilization (and perhaps family) thrives just out of reach...}} It might be interesting, in a clinical sort of way, to see how he reacts. You heartless cad." }}
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