Obduction ®

So there.

I'm an old fan of Myst and Riven and this is just what I was hoping it would be.

Obduction is a beautiful experience that is marred by game breaking bugs. I was enjoying this fascinating world until the cart got stuck and I had to start a new game, where the cart got stuck again (this time at the very start, in the elevator!). I do not recommend this game because of this game-breaking bug. The worst thing about bugs in puzzle games is you may initially think the bug is just part of the puzzle - making it extra hard... nope, you just wasted hours on an unsolveable puzzle that is simply bugged. This completely sapped by confidence in the game, knowing that there may be other bugs in the game that would prevent further progression later. Search for "obduction cart stuck" - you will get a lot of results. Really disappointing that the developer didn't fix such an easy reproducable, progress-halting bug. The reason I am giving 3/5 is the game is beautiful and I enjoyed it up until I got very disheartened by the unfixable cart bug.

It doesn't have the magic of prior Myst titles. One of the biggest problems is the writing, it's bad. It focuses around a conflict-related plot that didn't need to happen. They could have instead gone with a plot based around the four races presented by the game using too much power, which has damaged the structure of the artificial reality they found themselves in, and then having to go into suspended animation to reserve what they have left. With a handful of 'remainers' sticking around to fix up the place. With the ending being that all the races get to go home, though some choose to stay and try to repair all the harm they caused. A meaningful choice for the player then might have been whether they want to stay or go. It would be a lot of work to repair all of the damage, but they'd prefer to stay in this incredible place surrounded by wonder rather than returning home. Or they're homesick, and tired, and they just want it all to be done with. And they'd have company, since some people were even born there and they'd want to stay, too. Instead, no, it was all about evil aliens. The ending was about the goody two-shoes getting to go home to dullsville, away from all that terrible alien stuff, back to terra firma familiar. It felt xenophobic and a little unsettling, and completely out of place in a Cyan game. On top of that? The characters in the game are flat, rather than round, which is to say they're all one-dimensional and presented in very black & white tones. They only really exist to info-dump. The humans are all always goody two-shoes that want to do right by everyone, with no variance. No one's greedy, or selfish, or shows any actual human traits to speak of. Compare this to the intrigue and more grey tones of the DRC in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and you'll see what I mean. The next issue is the locations. Instead of focusing on bizarre, atmospheric, strange, magical places steeped with unknown history and filled with alien technology, with peculiar animal life pitter-pattering about? You know, the sorts of things that made Myst famous? The first area you find yourself in, the only area that's actually got any size to it? Well... It's New Vegas. The aesthetic of the first age (and it is the only area with any size to it) is that of New Vegas. It's a junk world in a desert... And while some aspects of it are executed better, I feel that the commonness of the concept did it no favours. I feel that this focus on humanity and an overly familiar junkworld setting was a cowardly appeal to a soporific mainstream. That doesn't work though, and they've ended up pulling a Sunset Overdrive. A game which is still too fantastic for the mainstream, but not remotely fantastic enough for their fans. The alien ages, by comparison, are so small they feel almost vestigial. They're just barren, with no alien animal life to speak of (compared to the vibrant alien animal life in every age of Uru). There's also very little trace of what kind of life the sapient aliens there lived. And that's a real crime because the alien races who inhabited these worlds sounded so wondrous in concept, I'd have loved to learn more about them, their home world, and their ecology. And if it were written better, I would have. If it were written better, there could have been fun politicking between the races about power usage; Who's using the most, and who's not being transparent enough about what they are using. We could have learned more about the alien races and how they think that way, as they all struggle to survive. But no, it's about fightin' them aliens and winnin' them wars! How utterly banal and... just disappointing. And that's what Obduction is. It's a disappointment. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's an uninspired, boring game that feels half-baked. I'd never have expected that from Cyan. You give me brilliantly alien races and then next to no chance to learn about them! The little focus that even occurred within this game (with its profound lack of depth always showing) was spent on the humans. Whoop-de-doo. I have other games that focus on humans, Cyan. I play your games to experience something truly alien. And it's in this way in particular that Obduction is such a total let down. Conclusion: This was a game someone else could have made. Not a bad game, but certainly not a Cyan game. And a Cyan game is what I bought it for.

I bought this game expecting more URU. Graphics are fantastic, gameplay a little daunting, but if you keep notes, it is playable. I found the plot a little weak though. What I didn't like about this game was that the ending was completely predictable. The game did not offer any alternative endings.