Friday, April 24, 2009

Myst 3 design: Narayan









These look like preliminary drawings for the last age, Narayan, which Seth also designed. He did the page of masks (maybe more), but then I don't think he ended up using them at all. As I said, it's been quite a few years since I played this game, and at the time I wasn't comparing the actual game with his drawings.


But it's clear, from both his sketches and from the photo of the room, that this was always intended as a room composed of twisted and sinuous ropes or branches of material, very organic in a surrealistic way. The final room is not nearly so complex as Seth's drawings. In designing a game--as well as designing architecture--it is not enough to make places that are beautiful and interesting; in this case the spaces also have to accomodate the puzzles and the story that takes place in the room. Everything must fit together.

3 comments:

Gareth said...
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Gareth said...

I always forget that Seth had done this - a game I still haven't played (though I have the first one). I'll have to get a copy.

Was he just design artist on this, Vicki? What was the process involved?

Vicki said...

Oh Gareth, the game takes a very long time to play (at least for a non-gamer like me) so I don't recommend it unless you have quite a bit of free time. But it is a beautiful and haunting place to spend your time. During the time I played it (it took me 6 months or so) I used to have dreams about it.

Seth was a design artist. There were other people who did the color, others who turned his drawings into 3D pictures, and then other people did the technical parts. The artist did not only the scene design, but he also designed the puzzles for the particular ages that he worked on. So if you do decide to play it you will find that each age has its own flavor of puzzles.