A clumsy successor to Riven
I was a fan of Myst, and I consider Riven to be one of the finest adventure games I've ever played, so I had high hopes for Obduction. I wouldn't say it's a bad game by any means; it features some lovely visuals and some interesting world-building, but coming almost two decades after Riven it feels like a disappointment. A lot of the puzzles feel like retreads of that game's puzzles, but lacking the same artful deftness.
Riven, for example, had a great puzzle where you slowly came to the realization that Rivenese people's number system was based around the number five, and that helped you to solve greater puzzles and understand the world as a whole better. It was a very organic puzzle, and made me feel smart, like I was roleplaying an anthropologist. Obduction has a very similar puzzle, wherein an alien race has a number system in base 4, and...the game literally gives you a worksheet which tells you this, and how the numbers work. Obduction isn't an easy game, by any means, but it still feels like the developers don't have the same faith in the player that the first two Myst games did.
And that's to say nothing of the load times. Every time you enter a new world, the game takes about 20-30 seconds to load, which wouldn't be so bad on its own, except for the puzzles that involve switching back and forth between worlds. Remember the 90s, when you had to swap 5 CD-ROMs to play Riven? Well, now it's a game mechanic.
I really wanted to like this game, and the story was compelling enough that I managed to finish it, but I found its resolution confusing and unsatisfying, and it was an exhausting experience overall. If you're starved for a new Myst-esque experience, this is about as good as it's gonna get, but if you haven't played Riven before, I'd recommend that a million times before this.
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