A structure that struck me as nicely rounded was to feature 3-5 ages every season. one of the ages would always be a complete, faithful, and *exact* recreation of a preexisting age from one of the original games or Uru... Another age would be an age we all are familiar with, but to show some new area of it we never saw before, (like the now infamous village in Eder Gira) and a third age would always be completely new in every aspect. (with the others being whatever that particular saga demands)

I mean, new ages are always well and good. But part of the original Myst and Uru concept that even cyan themselves got away from in later years was to hint at whats to come through the use of locked doors, broken machinery or pathways, expansive vistas, or vague cliffhangers that only make sense in the next tale

I want to reintegrate both of these types of adventures into the world of Myst once again... the anticipation of whole new worlds, and the eagerness of going back to an already completed age when something like a broken lever is repaired. Sending you on a whole new adventure to another corner of that world that you thought had little else to reveal.

Dangerzone wrote:

With each season a new group would get thrown into the mix... Season one would just be the people lost in the world and their internal conflicts, season 2 introduces the remnants of the DRC, season 3 the D'ni, season 4 would be tapestry characters like yeesha and her gang, and then the bahro in the 5th and final season... along with some more contemporary and original heroes and villains spread throughout some of the worlds they explore throughout the seasons

Don't mean to sound weird here, but that sounds exactly like Lost

Dunno, how about a simple televised version of the games? Each one in the form of mini series and all seen from the perspective of the mysterious Stranger that you never show the face of but he/she will be watching the stories unfolding in real time, in detail and all. Could attract any kind of Myst fan, hardcore or not, and the curious casual viewer more than any other version, imho always.

And yea, disappointing as it is to wait until you can start working based on what someone else did before, maybe it's better to wait until the movie is finished, or anyway it's moved any forward than where it is right now.

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adi KI#04439197
~proud member of Greece's Hood~

Yeah I think it would be neat if certain stories like Watson/The stranger would be told verbally by the characters, or shown in the various journals scattered about... then flashback at some later point and visually show the story, and there is almost always more to a story than what is told

But first things first: What will happen for our first episode? It really is no good planning an entire series without knowing how to kickstart it.

Well... of course it begins at the cleft, an unknown period of time after Uru. Zandi is long gone and the property has gone into escrow. when a surveyor, geologist, and archeologist are sent to the site to appraise it, they find the mysterious Whark skeleton buried in the sand... As they start digging they uncover the route to a civilization hidden beneath the earth. With technology beyond belief and doesn't take to kindly to visitors.

Or at least that's one idea... but it gives a steady enough intro for people new to the franchise, and plenty of opportunities to throw some fun cameos and references in that will make long time fans smile

Are we thinking that D'ni has been restored and collonised?

Partially yes, but the new colonizers have built equally mysterious structures of their own in some places. Also the questions of "who are these people?" and "what are they doing here?" will dominate most of the first season... The ages that the main cast visit over the course of the season will slowly reveal the truth to these questions and more.

But most of the stories are subplots contained within the individual ages, some of which deal with freeing their oppressed inhabitants from the second civilization, others deal with world shaking events occurring in long abandoned ages, and some are more whimsical and just plain fun...

Perhaps one of the indigenous peoples from a D'ni Age became as sophisticated as the D'ni were, and took over the Cavern, forcing out the explorers?

(I take this question in the spirit of pure dream-spinning.)

There are roughly three strains of SF/fantasy TV that are popular these days. There's the Big Problem show (this includes dangerous-enemy plots like Stargate, but also trapped-in-space plots like Stargate Universe); the Mission show (Warehouse 13, Buffy, Supernatural -- the plots are organized around an ongoing goal but there's no sense that it'll ever be finished); and the Big Mystery show (Lost). I know I'm oversimplifying -- does Eureka really have a show-level mission? and then there was Caprica, which was intentionally none of those strains, quite possibly the reason it wasn't popular -- but that's to get started.

The problem with doing Myst as Big Mystery is that so much of the story and backstory has been published already. If you were starting fresh in 2002 you could do Yeesha and the exploration of the cavern as a Lost-style mystery, but that wouldn't fly today, because any viewer either already knows that material or can Google it.

So running that sort of show would require inventing completely new material. And of course inventing a Big Problem would be the same, because there aren't any good candidates right now.

A mission show of "re-open the cavern" might be workable, but that's not enough plot there -- plots are about people. So again, this is inventing new material. Mind you, I'd have no problem with that. I just want to be clear about what would be required.

(If this imaginary show were real, Cyan would be involved in the conception to some degree, as they are with the Mysteriacs movie. Or, you know, if somebody decided to write epic-length fanfic... well, do that and I'll read it. :)

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Andrew Plotkin (KI#00102725)
Uru Newcomer's Guide and Answer Sheet
-- http://eblong.com/zarf/uru/newfaq.html

Yeah I was aiming more towards the "big mystery" deal... only with like 5 big puzzles composed of smaller intricacies that each take an individual season to solve. But as you said that is simplifying it, my concept has some quite complex storytelling techniques.

In either case I am only planning 5 years, and if cyan gives the go ahead I am going to make this the final volume in the Myst/URU saga... No matter what happens in or to URU, (which may live on forever) these seasons will be final chapters in the story after ours ends.

What sort of puzzles are you planning?

the "big" puzzles are all mythological... telling stories only hinted at until now, and each season will fully resolve one of the 5 main groups still present in-universe

every age they visit will also have smaller physical puzzles of their own... such as making machines work, or dealing with natives, some will be exploration based, and others will be old school adventure game puzzles (having to find object *A* to use on object *B*)

If we were to have the stories told from the point of view of the Stranger, then the voice would have to be VERY androgynous.

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...then it crapped the bed and stackdumped.

The Time-Traveling Stranger.

Unless the characters found the Stranger's journal, and one of them read it out...

I know that the stranger was once actually identified by cyan, although many have forgotten who they named... still, it would be a fun reveal to reveal the identity of the stranger in flashback at some point in the show

I actually kinda also loved the idea of each season having a separate series of flashbacks that takes place before the previous season

The fate of the explorers> The story of Atrus> The fall of Dni> The Rise of D'ni> The fall of Gaternay> and the series finale flashback being how the art of linking came to be eons ago

meanwhile the present day story nicely parallels those flashbacks

The second Civilization> The Return of the DRC> The discovery of a D'ni refugee age> The Bahro strike back> The cavern finally collapses and D'ni is lost> and the mirroring finale story shows the ultimate fate of the MYST universe