Game Information

Original Release Date	Publishers	Designer	Composer	Platforms	Storage Method	Game In Series
September 20, 2005	Cyan Worlds, Ubisoft	Rand Miller	Tim Larkin	Mac, Windows	DVD-ROM (three disks)	Fifth

Overview

The Era of the Point-And-Click adventure games was at an end – the genre was rapidly dying out, and Cyan Worlds, devastated from the commercial failure of Uru, knew that they couldn’t keep the series going forever. With heavy heart and burdened mind, Rand Miller decided to focus his attention on the in-development Myst Online: Uru Live (MOUL for short) and to end the Myst series with a much-needed bang. That bang was Myst V: End of Ages, the final installment of the series and the last Myst game that Cyan Worlds would ever produce, not counting MOUL. The game used new technology blended with old traditions, resulting in a strange and controversial blend that once again divided Myst fans old and new. The ending of the series itself brought together Myst fans and gamers alike in a state of mourning for the end of an era, the end of a genre, and the end of a legendary series.

Plot

Myst V: End of Ages brings the player to the modern world, taking place before Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and (supposedly) many years after Revelation. The player receives a strange letter from Atrus, calling them to D’ni (actually K’veer, where you met up with him at the end of Myst), but finds no Atrus there. After exploring the D’ni caverns a bit, the player comes across a strange golden tablet, embedded in a stony lock. After touching it, a much older Yeesha appears and tells the player that the tablet is a powerful artifact, capable of controlling a race of enslaved creatures known as the Bahro. Because Yeesha made a poor choice when she found it and thus cannot use it, she charges the player with the task. But not all is as it seems, for another man named Esher warns you that Yeesha is not to be trusted – but is he? It’s now your task to travel across four ages, unlock the mysterious tablet, and uncover the true power of the Bahro – and this time, the fate of both the Bahro and the D’ni hinge on whom you choose to trust. But beware, for enemies and friends can be both one and the same…

Characters

There are only two characters you need to focus on in End of Ages (not counting the Bahro, which you’ll encounter throughout the game). Atrus is not on this list because he only appears once in the entire game, and I’m not saying where. The first character that’s really important should be somewhat familiar to Revelation and Uru fans – Atrus’ now adult daughter, Yeesha. Now, there’s all sorts of backstory about how she’s some legendary figure called The Grower who will supposedly resurrect D’ni again and how she’s able to bend the rules of writing Linking Books, but that’s all Uru stuff and not important here. What you need to know is that she’s the first person you meet and wants you to use the tablet for a supposedly good purpose. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should trust her, as the game hints at Yeesha wanting the tablet herself. She has matured quite a bit since Revelation and even since Uru, and she has the grim disposition to prove it. Tormented by her role as D’ni’s supposed savior, Yeesha might come across to the uninitiated as whiny, depressed, and even pessimistic – but honestly, when you’ve seen a race of imprisoned creatures suffer and had to watch both of your brothers die to boot, you aren’t exactly going to be the cheeriest person in the world.

The second person you should know about is Esher. A full-blood D’ni who survived the fall of his civilization, Esher has been hiding out around the D’ni caverns even after Atrus wrote Releeshahn. He shows up a lot more often than Yeesha does, chatting you up and supposedly helping you along in your task. He seems like a nice enough guy, if not overly long-winded a la Gehn from Riven, but after your travels, you might think otherwise. Besides following you around to various ages, his lab on one age shows how cruelly he treated the Bahro, providing more than enough evidence to make any member of PETA or the ASPCA mad enough to spit. This doesn’t, however, mean that he’s necessarily the wrong choice, though it certainly doesn’t mean he’s the right one. He might come off as a bit of a stalker, due to his habit of following you everywhere, but hey – if you lived alone in the ruins of your crumbling city for decades upon thousands of years, you’d be pretty eager for any sort of company, too.

The Worlds of End of Ages

This game is the only Myst series game that allows you to explore the D’ni caverns along with other ages (Uru is a spinoff and doesn’t count). The ages hinge on using the Bahro’s power to solve some of the puzzles via the use of symbols drawn on an elaborate tablet system – each symbol causes a different effect to happen, and some symbols are unique to certain ages. The ages themselves are vastly different from the previous ages in the Myst series – some aren’t even islands!

• K’veer (D’ni/Earth): This area is only a small part of the vast D’ni caverns, and it includes the Cleft and the surrounding desert above (Atrus’ childhood home). This area is really just a starting point for the game – you don’t do much here aside from exploring a bit in order to uncover the entrance to D’ni proper, find the linking bubble that holds the golden tablet, and finish the game. It’s mainly there for the older Myst fans to get all excited over the prospect of exploring even a little bit of D’ni.
• Taghira: This age is an age of ice and snow, the only other such age in the Myst series proper. This age was created as a mass prison age – criminals would be sent here to live out the rest of their lives in the bleak, icy wasteland, and here they would also die, their bodies entombed in hexagonal, upright coffins. Despite the bitter cold, there is some life in the form of strange trees and heat-sensitive algae that is sturdy enough to walk on.
• Todelmer: This age is all about stargazing – literally! This age was supposedly fashioned as a sort of giant planetarium with which to study the stars. Apparently, we humans weren’t the only ones curious about the stars, and it must have been even more intriguing to the D’ni, most of whom had probably never saw stars in their lives prior to the creation of this age.
• Noloben: This age is the original home age of the Bahro before they were enslaved. It’s a gorgeous age of sandy beaches, soothing yellow sunsets, hidden caverns, and grassy plateaus, but it hides a horrible secret – Esher’s lab and observatory, where he experimented with the Bahro’s power in hideous, torturous ways. This is also presumed to be the place he’d escaped to after the fall of D’ni, but this is not certain.
• Laki’Ahn: Basically a sports arena age for the D’ni, this age was where great creatures, such as Pir Birds (a strange piranha-bird cross) and Laki (a whale/dolphin/shark-like creature) were pitted against both athletes and themselves. Unfortunately, not a lot of them survived, as fighting a Laki involves killing it and taking out one of its organs, which the athlete then got to keep as a sort of prize in a ritual roughly comparable to the modern-day bullfight.

Development

By now, Ubisoft had gained the rights to the Myst series, being the main developer of the games. Though Rand Miller still was not fond of the idea of yet another game in the series, he didn’t have much of a choice, and Ubisoft retained the rights to Myst and had asked for two more games, Exile and Revelation – both of which were made. Because Cyan Worlds was in such a dire financial position, they once again hired Ubisoft to make another game for the Myst series; if not for the fans, then to keep their company afloat while they worked on Uru Live. Myst V: End of Ages, which was revealed to be the final game in the series at the 2005 MacWorld Expo, was well on its way to creation. End of Ages added a new navigation method to the series that had been in use for some time but had not yet been put into the Myst series – Real Time movement. Instead of moving through pre-rendered nodes and waiting for the next to load, the player could now move anywhere through the fully-developed world. The worlds were now fully 3-D rendered rather than flat drawings on a cube, as in the previous node format. The result is a beautiful, detailed world that can be explored and seen from any angle – just like it would be in real life. Also added were several different methods of control – one was flat and moved through nodes, like the original Myst; one was fully three-dimensional and in real-time; and the final one was a hybrid of the node and 3-D real time, a little more like Exile and Revelation.

One very controversial aspect of End of Ages is the creation of the characters. Gone are the real actors in End of Ages, replaced by 3-D models that use a face-mapping technology to still allow for the sense of warmth and realism that the previous games had provided. To ensure that the models moved correctly, motion capture technology was used. As for the face-mapping, Cyan Worlds created a device that would take only the facial movements of the actors, which would then be manipulated into textures and mapped onto the models. This method definitely showed off End of Ages’ new technology, but has been a bone of content with some Myst fans, who complain that the real faces mapped onto the computer generated bodies make the characters look somewhat frightening and unknowable. Most fans, however, tolerated and even applauded the change, especially those who also played newer first-person shooters.

The music is another issue that divides Myst fans. Gone was composer Jack Wall, who had moved on to other projects and was working on producing a concert show that featured video game music (including music from Myst, Riven, Myst III: Exile, and Myst IV: Revelation), now known as Video Games Live. Needing another new composer, Cyan Worlds called on Tim Larkin, who besides having already worked at Cyan Worlds as an audio director and sound designer had also previously worked to create the music of Uru and had composed a new theme for Rime, the new age added in realMyst. Originally a Jazz composer, Larkin found it somewhat of a challenge to work with classical, non-Jazz music. Because End of Ages was a more dynamic game with fewer limitations than the previous Myst games, Larkin wanted to create a more dynamic feel with his score for the game. Due to budget constraints, Larkin was unable to hire a full orchestra to perform his music, so he instead used sampled instruments. All the instruments on the End of Ages soundtrack were sampled, save for the trumpet playing, which was his own. This return to what some critics describe as a ‘MIDI sound’ became a bit of a sore point with some Myst fans, especially older fans that had previously enjoyed Robyn Miller’s and Jack Wall’s work. Another point critics complained about was that the score for End of Ages was ‘too bombastic’, making the score seem out of place in a quiet, intellectual game like Myst V. Larkin openly admits that some fans would have preferred a musical score more like Robyn Miller’s or Jack Wall’s, but remains optimistic and believes that they will surely find something to like in his score if they keep an open mind.

Cyan Worlds was anxious that the audio would not be synched up to the video in time for its debut at E3, but the audio was finished by that time and Cyan Worlds was happy with the results. Reaction to the game’s reveal was very positive – it was even considered to be the best game there! This choice surprised and delighted Rand Miller, who was proud that End of Ages could boast such a title in the shooter-game dominated showcase. Once released, the game’s positive reviews continued, being touted as a fitting end for the Myst series – and many Myst fans agreed. Critics, however, felt that it was less immersive than its sibling game, Revelation, missing the little details that added to the immersion, such as footstep sounds when the player walks. Some critics also felt that Esher was ‘overly dramatic’ and that his dialogue was occasionally tedious. Uru fans and Myst fans alike enjoyed the game, though some Myst fans, specifically some of the older ones, felt that the game wasn’t the best that Cyan Worlds could have done. When Cyan Worlds announced that it was about to lay off the majority of its employees, fans and critics of End of Ages alike mourned the loss, though this was resolved sometime later and the company announced its intentions to go in a new direction. The result of this was the game Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, which was released in the fall of 2007 and marked the return of an old Cyan Worlds icon that had been waiting for nearly fifteen years to make a comeback.

But Who Is The Stranger?

In late 2007, Uru Live players got a startling revelation. During a live Q&A with Dr. Watson, a character in the Uru Live universe known for his great strides in D’ni archaeology, fans learned that he was the main character of End of Ages, and that they had been tracing his footsteps in the game all that time! Even stranger, it was discovered that Watson was a descendant of the original Stranger from Myst! Opponents of End of Ages jumped on this, stating that this technically made it more of an ‘Uru 2’ than a Myst 5, but the End of Ages and Uru fans chose either to ignore or graciously accept this new outcome. This created another bit of tension between the Myst fans, but was seen as more of an interesting plot twist for the most part. This seeming answer to the question of the Stranger's identity contended some Myst fans - some, but not all. Many fans created some odd and very interesting theories to explain how someone from their time could be the Stranger - perhaps the events of Myst through Revelation were somehow taking place at the same time as End of Ages and Uru were, or perhaps Atrus, being part D'ni and therefore having semi-alien blood, aged faster than normal even though he was probably still in his middle age. One of the strangest theories suggests that linking books not only transported the user to a different world, but also to a different time, therefore making the Stranger an accidental time-traveller! Even these theories, however, vary amongst Myst fans, meaning that there is no clear identity for the Stranger of Myst through Revelation. The identity of the real Stranger will remain a mystery forever, but the question of who the real Stranger is - or was - is still asked by Myst fans to this day.

Need Help With End of Ages? Try These Walkthroughs!

If you’ve gotten this far in this site, you’re probably aware that Myst is a tough series – and End of Ages is no exception. There are a lot of things about it that are different from the previous games, and the tablet itself is a bit of a puzzle to get working right! Therefore, I’ve provided two walkthroughs for End of Ages. The first is the Universal Hint System guide to the game, which is really the best way to go if you’re looking for a less spoiled experience because it only reveals what you want it to. The second walkthrough is a comprehensive walkthrough, which means that it spoils the entire game and tells you exactly how to beat it. As a veteran Myst player, I can tell you that if you’re looking for subtle, this guide is not it. If you’re absolutely stuck, however, this is definitely the best guide to go to so you don’t have to fish through all the UHS hints. It’s not exactly a matter of life and death, but just in case it is, choose your path wisely.

Low-Spoiler Walkthrough ~ Full Walkthrough