Team Revelation, September 28 2004

From MYSTlore

This interview with the Myst IV: Revelation team was held on September 28 2004.

MystoJVC (to Mary): Which one between Exile and Revelation stories are you most proud? And why?

Mary: I guess I’d have to say Revelation. Primarily because the story is so much more complex and so much deeper than Exile’s was. And because I worked with some really great game designers to get it right!

coolwind (to Patrick): There has been a lot of confusion about the Collector’s Edition. What exactly does it include?

Patrick: A NICER box!!! (big one for me! :)). The making of movies (5 of them). Playing cards (special deck). And I think that is it?

Gwenaël: Yes, the making of the intro cinematic.

Olivier: Original soundtrack?

Patrick: Yes, original soundtrack! How could I forget, that’s a HUGE one.

Jack: I should chime in here. There is 100+ minutes of music in the soundtrack. So we put some of the music in the CE.

Kha’tie: What was your favorite part of the creation process? And what was your favorite part of Revelation?

Gwenaël: It took a long time to realize, from scratch and it was very challenging. At the end, it’s not flawless but I love the look. :)

Mary: I loved being able to work in Montreal. :-) Now, looking back on it, I guess my favorite part is realizing how many of the goals we set at the beginning of the project ended up being met in the final product.

Olivier: Growing plants on Haven. Took a long time ;-).

Sebastien: The puzzle design was grrrrreat!

David: I would say that what I love most was to work with the team and feel the trust when proposing new avenues…

Patrick: Favorite part of creation was building the game structure and defining our original “Myst Comes to Life” vision.

MystoJVC (to Jack): Which orchestra did you prefer to work with: the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra (Exile) or the Slovak Radio Symphony?

Jack: I loved traveling through Europe and Montreal to record the score. Both had their pluses. I think that the best part of Revelation and the slovak radio orch was that it was sort of like being in a Myst world to record the music. It felt really right for the game! Seattle was amazing because there were some truly magical moments with the orchestra there - some I’ll never ever forget. For example, I remember when we recorded the Exile Main theme - there was this feeling when we recorded the final take where the whole room just seemed to come alive and people there were really effected by it. In Bratislava, the Revelation score has a totally different feel to it, much more ethereal with the orchestra - lots of Adagios and more emotive music at slower tempos. Great experience there!

jsm (to Patrick): There has been some argument about what exactly is in the standard edition box (# of DVD’s, etc.) Can we get an authoratative answer. Same goes for CE.

Patrick: As far a I know, 2 dvds and an instruction booklet in the standard box. And the stuff we talked about in the CE (making of, playing cards, soundtrack).

Ron: Limited Edition boxes have a third dvd, which is Exile.

Eat_My_Shortz (to Mary, David, Patrick): Uru was developed alongside Revelation. Did you get any inspiration from Uru, particularly from the character Yeesha?

Patrick: I would have to say no to that.

Mary: Inspiration for Yeesha came initially from conversations with RAWA and Cyan about how they saw Yeesha’s character. We didn’t actually speak about how URU was handling her, just how Cyan saw her character overall.

Patrick: We were too much in the early stages of Revelation and Cyan was busy putting the final touches on URU, so neither team had any time to speak with the other.

David: Exactly… we worked on our side and then, made sure that everything was ok with Cyan.

Macnbc: So far in America I have seen very little marketing, advertising, or media coverage for Myst IV. How much work has gone into marketing the game, and should we expect more prominent advertising for it now that it’s out?

Patrick: Hopefully lots! … :) As to how it will turn out, time will tell. But you SHOULD be seeing more stuff in the upcoming days and weeks.

randomos: There will be a lot of advertising that’s really exciting- a coworker saw two busses this morning with Myst Revelation banners. And, let me announce this here, there will also be movie trailers in Landmark cinemas this month! I haven’t seen the trailers yet- totally excited. We’ll post more news on that today on mystworlds.com.

The World (to Jack): from what angle did you approach writing the score for Myst 4, as opposed to writing for Myst 3?

Jack: Well without spoiliing anything… :) With Exile the score was centered around Saavedro. For Revelation, I felt that the emotion center again was at the heart of the story that Mary, Patrick and the rest of the team were working on of course. It all centers around one of the Ages and the people there. Then of course each Age has it’s own unique and original sound. I kept some of the flavor from Robyn’s Myst and Riven scores to keep it all together. One of the pieces is a 6 1/2 minute version of Atrus’ theme done with a 76 piece orchestra - it’s actually very subtle not bombastic.

Dan’ni (to Olivier, David, Gwenaël, Sebastien): What were your inspirations (and how did you manage to come up with such cool stuff) for the different Ages we’re going to visit in the game?

David: Everything was good for inpiration, but shamanistic played a very important part for one part… mechanical stuff of course… a tree behind the office was my inspiration for one of the puzzles.. and of course, the technology we were developping specifically for the game. What is fantastic about this project is that we did research for almost a year to find inspiration for the puzzles (and the rest of course)…

Sebastien: For Spire, it was electricity and sound sciences… and loneliness. For Haven, it was our whole world !! :) Also, ideas and inspiration comming from the whole team helped a lot ! We had a complete encyclopedia and many small brainteasers on the floor !

Olivier: I worked with sebastien on Haven and everything was set about this age (or almost) when i arrived on this project and i just had to make all the places in Haven look realistic.

Gwenaël: Brussels architecture was a big influence during the tomahna setup. Parts of ‘art nouveau’ were almost ripped of, I must admit. :) Metropolitain structs, facade details, paintings, furnitures, gaz lamps, etc.

Foo: Did you manage to sneak any easter eggs into the game (such as a strange pair of batman boxers or something)

Dan’ni: or Triforce? ;)

Patrick: Hey…:) No boxers, but yeah…maybe a few tiny little easter eggs… Not as much as we would have like unfortunately…:(

Chucker: Any bananaphones included?

Patrick: Hey hey… :) I don’t think there were any bananaphones, but bananaphones did help us REACH the end, so they are part of the game in some way I guess… :)

Jerle (to Jack): When you write your music, do you have the visuals in front of you or do you read the story line first or both?

Jack: Yes, for Revelation, we had alot of visuals pretty close to the beginniing of my tiime on the project. that defintiely helped alot. And then there was loads of time iin Montreal, on the phone with Patrick and Mary and then… tadaaa!!! Mary came and paid me a visit during E3 to make sure I wasn’t screwing up her story line!! :)

Jerle (to Mary): I understand that you write fanfic. Do you have a favorite kind that you still write? Do you read any Myst fanfic?

Mary: I don’t really write fanfic anymore. (Although, technically, writing Exile and Revelation WAS writing fanfic. As a teenager, I used to write Nancy Drew fanfic. And also Anne McCaffery’s Pern stories.

Lakem: What languages were used in the game and music?

Jack: I used two languages - Sanskrit for music in Spire and Serani - very much like Narani for Serenia. I’m going to start to archive all the lyric from Exile and Revelation along with translations over the next couple of weeks - on the Myst IV Journal area of my site.

Mary: English for the scripting, which was then translated into how many languages?

AdricTW: After Mr. Miller stated that he would never appear in a MYST game again, what did you have to do that made him change his mind?

Mary: Beg :-).

Sebastien: He loves Montreal!!! ;)

David: We kidnapped Yeesha ;)

Patrick: Once he saw what we were trying to do with Revelation, things went very well.

Mary: Promise that we wouldn’t make his role bigger than Exile’s, then creatively bend the interpretation of “more.” We also promised a teleprompter on set.

Kha’tie: Mary - did Rand actually end up USING the Teleprompter??

Patrick: Not really, he practised at home for 2 weeks and had memorized all the lines. He just wanted it as a security blanket.

Mary: Not really. He knew all his lines by heart. And he even suggested on the set changes to some of the dialog. But the teleprompter’s presence made him feel more comfortable./

Kha’tie: That’s very cool!

Alahmnat: will we be able to export our pictures and journal entries from the game?

Patrick: Argh! :( No, not really… Actually, no. Sorry, ran out of time for that… :( I know… I know… :(

Jack: Do I hear… patch? ;)

Gwenaël: Yes, an html export would be nice…

Patrick: Well… Patch = Yes, but not for this particular feature…

Gwenaël: Lol, Patrick, do not look at me like that. ;)

Patrick: Hey hey… :)

martin: Do you think for solving the puzzles or understand the worlds, does the game adress more to logical, technical thinking people or to creative, full-of-fantasy kind of people? or does it depend on the age? (and how simple is it really with all the help-systems etc…?

Mary: I think it depends on the age, actually.

Sebastien: Both players will be happy to find their own favorite puzzles ! They are all different.

David: The puzzles of Tomahna and Serenia are mostly deduction oriented.

Patrick: We tried to cater to all the different kinds of logic, so yes, I would say it depends on the Age and the puzzle. Not unlike the original Myst in fact… It was important to us to have variety in the thematics of the puzzle, that was an objective from the very start

David: The solutions are related to the environments

Lenin: What will be the subtitles languages? Or there will be only english? Thx.

Patrick: Once the patch comes out, ALL the languages should support subtitles… I hope…?

Mary: Pat, do you know what languages the game supports?

Mary: I think 7? Dave?

David: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese (if I remember well). But japanese will be a separate version.

Sh`aeri: When they went and made the textures for the game, did they check the sounds it made, i.e. knocking on a particular wood or metal for a sound so that way they had a touchy feely kind of thing going?

Patrick: Yeah, the sound think was decided early on and I was terrified it would be cut because it was so much work for the sound guys to not only gather this bank of sounds but to actually take the time to “paint” the hotspots (hotspots = location of the screen players can click on to activate somthing) atop all the objects in the game. But I am SOOO happy with the result, it really does what I imagined it would in my head and that is, it gives textures and physicality to the whole game. It’s also a fun thing to play around with while your thinking about the solution of a puzzle. It gives you something to do all the time and makes the exploration of the environments that much more immersive!

AdricTW (to Jack): What was the most dificult piece to compose, and why?

Jack: The main theme was particularly difficult though because it’s where I had to wrap it all up and find the core of the story. I hope that I did that for the players. It’s really about playing the game all the way through for me iin the finished state to see how it all worked together.

MystoJVC (to Mary): Is the revelation in Myst IV as intense and shocking as the ones in Philip K. Dick stories?

Mary: Unfortunately, I haven’t read a lot of Phillip K. Dick. Just Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep…

David: Don’t woory… it’s all end up the same ;)

Myst: As for the revelation in Myst Iv… I hope we’ve managed to surprise you. In more ways than one.

jamesjames: Were you given free rein (within reason) or were there certain rules that had to be abided by: re story, places we would see, the mythology?

David: The story had to revolve around the brothers…

Mary: We were given a lot of leeway to create within specific guidelines.

Patrick: We had “carte blanche”, but we didn’t want to do things which would not be true to the essense of Myst (ie, guns, or Atrus smoking cigarettes on his front porch, etc, etc). So it was important to us to know that Cyan approved of what we did.

Jack: For music, I had loads of freedom, but I made sure to keep Robyn’s original ideas alive and used them here and there to glue things together. Other than that, our feeling was that these are original worlds, so let’s get original with it.

Mary: As for me, though, I think I put more constraints on the story and characters than I was originally told to, because I feel so strongly that the story remain within specifics of the license. That is, that it stay true to what has been stated. While adding even more. And tying in old threads… And now I ramble…

Patrick: Storywise, I think the only no-nos where: don’t talk about a certain Age (you know which one) and don’t delve on the “technology” behind the Art. And don’t make Atrus more present then in the other episodes :) Although I think we managed to bend that one, no?

Mary: Which we ignored. (The Atrus thing) just a bit.

David: yes :)