Obduction - Spiritual successor to Myst

Gatsuh_sl

shitlord
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Searched all forums no hit, figured i'd put it here(mostly so when it gets closer, i can get more excited). Used to love the Myst series when I was younger.

http://obductiongame.com/



What is Obduction?

Ob`duc?tion,n.1. The act of drawing or laying over, as a covering.

Obduction is an all-new, real-time, first-person adventure that harkens back to the spirit of Cyan's earlier games Myst and Riven. Obduction resurrects that incredible feeling of suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a new world to explore, discover, solve, and become part of.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of Myst, one of the best-selling computer games in history. Myst was an exploration through a landscape of dramatically realistic images tied together to create an experience that was described as "becoming your world." The Myst name is widely recognized as uniquely defining a new kind of gaming - amazingly immersive worlds where the point is to understand your environment rather than test your reflexes. The Obduction project will take what Cyan knows about creating deeply immersive worlds and apply it to an entirely new game with fantastic scenery, incredible architecture, compelling story, and exceptional challenges
Obduction will be built with the same framework that made Cyan's earlier games such a wonderful experience: stunning landscapes, deep storyline, engaging characters, dramatic soundscapes, and challenging yet intuitive puzzles. Obduction is an entirely new property, delivered using one of the most powerful game development technologies available today. Obduction is an adventure game for the new millennium that stays true to the concepts that made the genre great.

Obduction will be developed for both Windows and MacOS, with a targeted release of mid-to-late 2015.

The game is being designed with a flexible scope in mind, so that as the budget grows, the game grows. More places; more puzzles; more mystery; more complexity; more adventure!

With the generalities out of the way, it's time to dig a bit deeper into specifics. If you know anything about Cyan's worlds, you know that you don't want to know too much ahead of time. We'll try our best to whet your appetite, without giving away too many spoilers.



Story

Obduction's experience supplies what every good storyteller does: a very personal window into a much larger world. Obduction begins with... well, an abduction - your abduction. On a crystal clear, moon-lit night, a curious, organic artifact drops from the sky and inexplicably whisks you away across the universes to who-knows-where (or when, or why).

And, as anyone who ever played Myst or Riven knows, exploring everything around you allows you to read between the lines and to begin to answer your questions. Why is there an old, abandoned farmhouse - complete with white picket fence - in the middle of an alien landscape? You'll find out. From this point on the story becomes your story.



Game Design

Obduction has a few game design elements in common with Myst and Riven, and it skews into new areas as well. Cyan's basic design philosophy is simple:

Build every element of the experience to make you, the player, feel like this virtual world has become your world.
The interface should be intuitive and transparent.
The story should be revealed through exploration and not necessarily shoveled out in cinematic form.
The puzzles should range from easy to difficult, but even the toughest puzzles should be designed so that you know that all the pieces to solve it are there in front of you.
The sound and music should be balanced; they should add emotion but not become distracting or annoying.



Environmental Immersion

Cyan has a proven history of delivering visually stunning environments that immerse players in our games. We plan to continue that tradition, leveraging Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. Today's modern realtime engines have plenty of horse-power to produce zillions of bullets per second, but they can also be used to make remarkable landscapes and architecture that approach and even surpass the pre-rendered days of Riven. Unreal Engine 4 is an amazing resource that enables us to build a world that you can lose yourself in.



Why is Cyan doing this?
Very simple: It's what we love!

We love the wonder of having an entirely new world at our fingertips. We love the twisted unraveling of an unexpected storyline. We love the satisfying "Aha! moment" of solving a particularly perplexing puzzle. We love the rush of revelation when we find out what's around the next corner. We love the twinge of emotion entering a dimly lit room because we feel like this place has become our world.

And we hear from more and more people who love all of those things, too.

can even pre-order now it seems. $29.95

Waiting til it gets much closer myself to see how it's coming along.
 

Dandai

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Looks like they funded the KS back in November. I'm surprised they asked for over a million bucks.
 

Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
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Played for about 4 hours today. It is pretty good so far, about what you would expect from a Cyan / Myst / Puzzle. I like they've kept the same live action actors. There are two parts where we laughed because a millennial playing it would be like "how do you use this phone, rotary?" And the cassette player "what do you mean eject and flip the tape??' lol

Not sure of the length and haven't read any reviews but will play more tonight or tomorrow when the wife is available, she's enjoyed watching and reading along.
 

Intrinsic

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I will also add that so far the puzzles and mechanics don't seem to be anywhere near as involved or deep as Myst and Riven. Everything is pretty straightforward. It is kind of disappointing on that level, but may change, hopefully.
 

Intrinsic

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Finally got around to finishing this tonight. Overall I'd give it a 6/10 realistically but a 7/10 nostalgically because I'm happy to see Cyan do something new and want to see more, especially within this genre.

The game really opens up after you're introduced to the main mechanics of jumping between worlds. The environments are nice and have individuality but the worlds are pretty small.

Music and atmospheric sound were pretty good. There just wasn't enough music. It was nice having it pop in at key moments and change the mood, but really wanted more background ambience in some places.

Puzzles were like a 5/10. Some cool ideas but nowhere as varied as what we've seen in Myst or Riven. They do open up with the theme of each world but don't progress much past the single concept introduced in the 'example' puzzle I'd say. Lots of room to improve and I'd love to see more.

Story was as expected. Requires reading the journals and notes you can find laying around. Not sure if they'd keep playing in this world but there is room to explore.

I have 16 hours on my play through, but I bet two hours of that was junk time of afk, etc... We also spent a ton of time doing translations, taking notes, drawing things out. Extra stuff to try and keep both of us engaged rather than just me posting straight through. So depending on whether you one shot all the puzzles an initial run could be like 8 - 10 hours?

Oh the load times are horrible. I had quite a few audio glitches where effects wouldn't turn off after leaving an area, couple of game crashes / loading crashes.