HoboForEternity
sunset tequila
Gosh i am too tired to figure out the villein numbers. Gotta try again tomorrow. Fu. Game though. Although i have to look up on which rocks are laser-able
Obduction review
Myst opportunity.
Myst's spiritual successor offers a lot of the same delights as its 1993 forbear, but is hampered by litany of technical issues.
It's a strange thing to think about now, but there was a time when Myst was the best-selling computer game of all time. Shifting more copies than even the almighty Doom, Cyan's enigmatic puzzle game about a series of peculiarly crafted islands stirred up feelings of awe, reverence and curiosity. Much of this was due to Myst's extremely abstruse premise. It contained no immediate backstory about you being a hero on a quest to save such and such. It didn't offer an exposition dump grounding you in its pristine world. And it didn't offer much in the way of character interaction. It simply dropped players on a surreal island of monuments - a rocket, a Greek palace, a contemporary lodge - and asked them to have at it until a more recognisable story came into focus.
Comparatively, Obduction's intro leaves a little less to the imagination. It begins with narration, for one (though it's intentionally unclear if this is spoken by the player character or someone else), and it grounds the story in a more mundane setting: earth. Set along a starry campsite, your character encounters a floating seed that whisks them away to an alien landscape that resembles a desert ghost town surrounded by clumps of levitating rock. It's eerie, as one might expect being teleported to an alien planet to be, but not creepy. The bright desert canyons bathed in a the warm violet glow of an otherworldly sky offer a calming, serene sort of wonder.
In fact, the most unsettling aspect of this place isn't the unnatural scenery - because we expect that sort of thing from a genre video game - but rather the more man-made finds. This is a world that's littered with the remains of a thriving earthly civilization that's all but vanished for reasons unknown. It's up to you to uncover what went on here. Think Stargate meets Gone Home.
Pro-tip: Change the options to 'always run'. It will make life a lot easier.
It's hoaky, but that isn't really a problem as Obduction's endearingly sincere about its aspirations. This is the fantasy of every geeky adolescent who grew up in the late 1970s. It feels like vintage Spielberg - or at least late-era Spielberg trying to recreate his glory years with questionable success.
Indeed, trying to recapture the feel of Myst in the 21st century is like trying to recreate Star Wars or Indiana Jones. At worst you get Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and at best you get something like The Force Awakens that hits the same notes, but can't help but feel derivative in the market its predecessor spawned.
Obduction falls somewhere in the middle then: probably ending up being better than you feared but less than you hoped. Aside from its more concrete opening and free-roaming first-person movement system (though there's an option for purists to use the classic Myst point-and-click system, which I wouldn't recommend), Obduction feels of a piece with its predecessors.
Thankfully, both the views and the puzzles are tantalizing enough to carry the adventure. The move to full 3D was an initially ugly gesture when Cyan first started experimenting with it around the turn of the century, but modern technology has finally allowed players to lose themselves in the strange terrain the studio has specialised in since its inception (there's even a PSVR mode coming as a free update). Always too sedate to really be imposing, yet offering fleeting glimpses of something sinister, Obduction's world(s) are a joy to drink in. Not leaning too far in any one direction, Cyan's varied palette offers subtle tonal shifts from tranquil rural country towns, to lush tropical forests, all peppered with shimmering alien artefacts. In a game where the core delight in solving a puzzles stems from the the environments you'll get to lay eyes on, Obduction's artistic achievements offer a worthwhile carrot at the end of the stick.
Cyan has always been skilled at varying the sorts of mental challenges it tasks players with, asking them to do a lot more than just shift gears and decode cryptic languages. One of Obduction's smartest designs it to make it not only challenging to solve its puzzles, but often obfuscate what even is a puzzle. Simply tinkering around with its various machinations, trying to draw connections between seemingly remote objects, is a pleasurable process in and of itself before you even really start cracking the underlying code.
And cracking that code? That's where Obduction is at its most divisive. Like Myst before it, Obduction is a slow game. Compare to The Witnesses' plethora of panel puzzles and Fez's dozens of collectible cubes, progress in Obduction can be glacial. Sometimes this adds to its appeal; having to takes notes, stop, think, experiment, stop, think, have a eureka moment and try something else, is the core appeal of puzzle solving. The problem with Obduction's mechanical enigmas is that they can require a lot of mindless traversal to put into practice.
Some of this trekking almost becomes charming to a point; it's fun to fantasise about a potentially successful solution and these lengthy hikes offer time to build up that giddy excitement of putting it into practice. And when it works? Oh boy is that a treat! But when you're still in recon mode trying to sort out how switch A affects mechanism B, it can be a chore to hoof it across Obduction's sprawling terrain.
Obduction charmingly brings back Myst's use of live-action actors. Contextualised as holograms and screen recordings, these weirdly fit the aesthetic.
Worse is that Obduction features some of the most intolerable load times of any game I've ever played. Transitioning between environments can leave you stranded in (admittedly very stylish) loading screens for upwards of a minute. These horrible hitches are strewn about with alarming regularity that really ratchets up in the late game. By its later stages this drudgery nearly unravels all the goodwill Cyan earned throughout the rest of the game. It's not often that I listen to podcasts whilst playing a game, but Obduction all but requires some sort of extracurricular distraction.
Outside of the loading screens, Obduction is otherwise technically amateurish. The PS4 build crashed on me several times and the framerate frequently took a hit as the game would stop and stutter in busier areas. Occasionally the controls would cease to function as intended, making certain switches impossible to flip without shutting the game down and rebooting it. For such a serene game devoid of any combat and few moving pieces, it's somewhat shocking that it was released in this state of affairs.
Ultimately, Obduction is a game about wanting to return home, just as for Myst developer Cyan it's about trying to recapture the glory days of when its obscure puzzle adventure was the most prestigious product on the market. And in its best moments, it absolutely nails what made the Myst series so special: the wondrous vistas, the clever logic puzzles, the calming pace. But the needle has shifted in the near quarter century since Myst. We've had The Witness, Fez, and The Talos Principle grappling with similar terrain in ways that feel new. Slowly punting about an unearthly terrain solving mechanical puzzles and piecing together a dime store fantasy plot isn't nearly as novel in 2017 as it was in 1993. While Obduction proves that you can't go home again, you can at least have a pleasant time visiting. There's some comfort in that.
Obduction Update!
We’re constantly tweaking and fixing Obduction, but this update has a bit more than just tweaks and fixes. We’ve included a few extra places to explore -- places that fill in a bit more of the story. It’s a perfect time to play Obduction again, get a bit further, or maybe even try Obduction in VR. Make it home.
(And if you haven’t checked out what’s happening at Cyan lately, you might want to link on over to http://myst.com and http://firmamentgame.com )
Enjoy!
is it patched? i dropped it for the same reason. low FPS and First person makes my head hurts physically. also at some point, it just wont load stuck at the beginning loading time for like 5 mintues then i just ctl+alt+del and had to end task from the task manager.I finally picked this up again thanks to some thread about an all-in-one Myst collection reminding me of it. I dropped it at release because its performance was hot ass and it crashed on the regular, but it seems fine now on max settings aside from intermittent loading stutter, which the developers announced on their forums isn't something that can ever be fixed. I suspect that using Unreal 4 to construct such large, detailed, and seamless areas was a bit much from a technical standpoint.
It's great so far, and scratches the same itch any Myst game (and many text adventures) would typically scratch.
This just went on 80% sale on GOG. Is it worth buying, considering I like quest/adventure games, but I haven't played anything from the Myst family?
Last Chance for Firmament and other Obduction news!
Posted by Victoria Almond (Collaborator)
Since you supported Obduction we feel like you’ll really be interested in Firmament, too.
We wanted to let you know that our Kickstarter for Firmament has only a couple days left.
Firmament is an amazing visual and narrative adventure with a steampunk vibe, that will be playable on a PC with a monitor or with VR - and Mac and PS4 support have also been announced. We’ll be taking everything we’ve learned from Obduction (including your comments and feedback) and using it to make Firmament an amazing experience.
Click here to learn more about Firmament and help make it happen!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/firmament?ref=4cyrk4
Obduction News
As we’ve previously mentioned, we have an update planned for Obduction across all platforms. It’s filled with optimizations, bug fixes, and speed and memory improvements. More information is coming very soon - watch for details and timelines.
In the meantime we’re happy to announce that in addition to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive support, we’ll be updating Obduction will also support the Rift S and the new Valve Index!
The Rift S is Oculus’ update for the Rift, and the Index is the new VR Headset from Valve. We are excited to bring Obduction to these headsets and continue to support the evolving VR experience.
Thank you for all the continued support.
it used to run badly even on gtx 1080, and it used to make me feel like puking after an hour or so.Can't play it; wanted to, but it quickly causes painful simulator sickness.
I recently finished this. My only real gripe is the swap seed puzzle(s), due to the long loading times they are no fun at all. Otherwise I enjoyed my time with Obduction very much.
Can't play it; wanted to, but it quickly causes painful simulator sickness.