I reinstalled Myst 4 last week and I've been off and on playing it. I'm at the most FRUSTRATING puzzle in the game (damn monkeys), but I've been practicing so I should be able to get it.

And it got me thinking about the crappy game of Myst 5, where they really screwed up the story. You start out in Myst where you learn about Atrius and his family, and get to decide which of his sons is responsible for imprisioning him. And if you get the wrong person, it sucks but you backtrack to a previous save and fix it. The second game, you help Atrius save his wife. The third game, you go and visit him and his wife, see his baby daughter, and then end up helping him resucue an important Age because he's been injured. And the fourth one, you save Yeesha, his daughter. There's a very clear connection to his family through all four of those games. And yeah, I know, they're just computer game characters, but they did a wonderful job making them full characters and you kinda get attached to them. Not in 5. You get one rather depressing letter from Atrius, written just before he dies, and have occasional contact with a grown up and bitter Yeesha. That's it. There's some plot with the D'ni, but it's not really memoriable. Hell, I didn't even finish the game, that's how disappointed I was with it. And it got me thinking what would've made a good storyline for it. Say, you go to visit but Atrius is missing and you have to help Yeesha find him (maybe she had a fight with him, overprotective father and all, but still, he is her father). You lose contact with her at some point so you have to search several Ages for various clues and puzzles, yadda yadda, and at the end, you meet with Yeesha in the Age where he is. You find him only to have the bad guy turn on you, and Atrius ends up saving your life (for a change), only he ends up dying in the process, but not before he and Yeesha make up. I would probally have been bawling at that point, but that connection would've been there and would've made the puzzle solving worth-while. And of course, it would've been a logical ending to the series because Atrius is dead. He was your connection through all 5 games, so it would've made sense to stop there.

Anyhoo, just random thoughts. I should really reinstall Uru someday and see how that goes. It was an interesting concept, and I'd like to see just what the purpose of it is. I never played it long enough to really get what exactly you're supposed to do, beyond getting into D'ni.