about three years ago i tried playing this game and couldn't find the right approach to it. no doubt in part due to my inability to find catherine's letter (which also happened again here with equivalent time wasted) but i was also refusing to play ball with myst's framework. i had no desire to read the books in the library, didn't catch the impetus from atrus' message to catherine and as a result i never really found a foot in to the mystery of the island of myst, and i quickly lost interest.

this second go around i found it remarkable that once i actually got to another world, my progression snowballed and i was able to finish the whole game in two quick sessions on the same day i started it. myst is surprisingly not a difficult game, but it definitely requires that certain calibration towards it. what comes after isn't hurt in this way, it's still an incredibly charming world with a very unique aesthetic. it still has a surprisingly nuanced story effectively told entirely by exploration of environments. we read in the library of atrus the beauty of these worlds, these "ages", and what happened in them to better the lives of these people. and then you as the player see them in their total desolation and abandonment.

the remake of riven is a few weeks away at this point, and i cannot wait to continue what has started here.