Myst IV Revelation: Chat Event
September 28th 2004

On the 28th of September, the official shipping day for Myst IV: Revelation, Ubisoft hosted a live chat in their Uru chatroom, where the gathered would ask and tell about the upcoming game. We had a great chat and a good turnout, reaching over 60 people at one time! We also learned about some of the inspirations, and some of the secrets, in Myst IV: Revelation.

What *is* obvious is that its called "Revelation" for a reason. The whole team is excited about some big secret that will be revealed at the end. It's going to be a fantastic story, and a fantastic game. Present at the chat were:

• Patrick Fortier (Lead Game Design/Creative Director)
• David Laquerre (Game Designer)
• Mary DeMarle (Writer)
• Jack Wall (Musical Director)
• Olivier Léonardi (Lead artist on Haven PC/ Artistic director on Myst XBOX)
• Gwenaël Heliou (Technical Director - Rendering)
• Sébastien Yelle (Level Designer for Spire and Haven)
• Katie "Kha'tie" Postma (Myst Worlds Community Manager)
• And some other members of the Ubisoft team, plus some dedicated fans who helped to moderate and/or log the chat.

There were 2 chats - one in French, and one in English. Unfortunately ma français est ne bien pas so I mostly learned things from the English chat (which, incidentally was at 4AM my time!)

You can find the complete log of the chat here.

But here are some interesting things I bothered to write down during the chat:

The truth is revealed...

One of the first things we learnt was the exact details of what would be inside the different versions of the game.
The regular edition features:

• The game on 2 DVDs

The "Limited Edition" features:

• The game on 2 DVDs
• Full version of Myst III: Exile on 1 DVD

The popular Collectors Edition (for a bizzarre reason, available everywhere but North America) features:

• "A NICER box!!!" (Patrick) - many fans were disappointed with the style of the regular Myst IV box (seen here) (see the French collectors box here, here and here)
• The game on 2 DVDs
• A bonus DVD with 5 Making Of videos, including Making of the game Intro, and (I believe from reading the French box) interviews with Rand Miller and Jack Wall. It is unclear at this stage as to whether it is a DVD Video (for your DVD Player) or just movie files for Quicktime or something. (Update: Confirmed that the DVD only has video files on the disc).
• The original soundtrack CD by Jack Wall (unfortunately, a cut-down version since the 100+ minutes of music was too much to fit on a CD) (Update: It seems that unfortunately the soundtrack on the CE only features 47 minutes of music, on 9 MP3 files, which are files on the making of DVD. They didn't have time to make a full one, but it will be on sale later).
• A deck of playing cards with Myst IV Tomahna backs

Jack Wall, the game's composer (who also did the Myst III: Exile score) had this to say:

Jack: 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.

And for fans of cool archaic languages being used as choral lyrics, he told us:

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.

We've already seen heaps of footage and pictures from Achenar's prison world of Haven, but haven't learned anything at all about Sirrus' prison Age, Spire. Sébastien Yelle, the designer for both Ages, gave us a small insight, that Spire was inspired by "electricity and sound sciences... and loneliness."

I also asked the team if they were inspired by Uru, particularly in the character of Yeesha. They said:

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.

We learned that a patch is already in the works. Patrick Fortier, the lead designer, when asked about multilingual subtitles, said:

Patrick: Once the patch comes out, ALL the languages should support subtitles...

We know that with Exile, Presto came up with the lesson age concept, and the plot relating to Saavedro, on their own. However, it was surprising to learn that in Revelation, Cyan had actually given the order that it was to be about Sirrus and Achenar:

David: The story had to revolve around the brothers...

Later, as part of the same response, we learned (as we had suspected all along) that Releeshahn, the Age we had worked to hard to save in Exile, would not be a part of Revelation, due to a restriction by Cyan:

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.

We also learned that, while Rand Miller had been reluctant to reprise the role of Atrus, he succumbed to the begs of the team, when they made an agreement not to include Atrus more than in the previous games. Luckily, they said they were able to bend this agreement ;)

Well, that's all I have for you. Be sure to read the whole chat log here, logged by Amon-re (thankyou!).

And look for Myst IV: Revelation in stores worldwide from October 1st.