MOULa or CC?

Kinoss · **Joined:** Tue Aug 19, 2014 1:00 pm **Posts:** 3

Hello, me and my wife have started playing through the Myst franchise. She is not much of a gamer, but has enjoyed playing Myst and Riven so far. We just finished Riven and are now reading BoA, BoT, and BoD before continuing on to Exile. I've played all the games, including CC and the first Myst Online, but I've never read any of the books.

Anyways, to my real question... Once we get to playing URU which version should we play? I know MOULa and CC are different, at least when it comes to "To D'ni" and "PotS." I haven't played MOULa's version of the two expansions, but I have for CC. I really enjoyed them in CC, and I've read they took out the big tree surrounded by stars in MOULa. Though if MOULa's version is better then I'll go with that. Does anyone have a preference for playing one way or the other? Is there a site where I can compare differences or even see a walkthrough for MOULa to find them myself?

veralun · **Posted:** Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:13 pm

Shorah Kinoss. Welcome to the forums!

Jeffrey made a good walkthrough for Moula. You can find it here
Also you can find more information about Moula in this MOUL Manual

westar · **Joined:** Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:01 pm **Posts:** 44

Hello Kinoss.

I think the best thing would be to perhaps play both CC and Moula.

In CC you could enjoy the great tree puzzle, and in Moula there are additional ages that aren't in CC. If you had to choose one I would say Moula for the additional ages.

dgelessus · **Posted:** Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:49 pm

I assume you've played through Uru CC completely? If you have seen the three ending screens, then you have completed the main game and both expansions. The following list may be somewhat of a spoiler if you haven't yet completed the game, so open at your own risk

[Reveal] Spoiler: "Differences between Uru CC and MOULa, with some CC spoilers"

You get to Relto before going to the Cleft.
There are two Relto pages in the cleft, one of which is very important and will make you very angry if you missed it.
The rest of the hand journey is almost identical, though some of the puzzles can be solved differently with more than one person.
To D'ni is basically nonexistant in MOULa, since your original task has already been fulfilled.
You can still collect markers, calibrate your KI, and even create own marker quests once you're done.
The end of To D'ni is easily reachable very early in the game.
Path of the Shell is similar, but not the same. The tree floating in the stars is still there, but no longer important.
Some of the PotS content requires cooperation with at least one other player.
No more fifteen minute waiting!
Five new ages that you have never seen before!
Other people!
Community!
Physics glitches that can be fun to play around with!

My opinion? Fully agree with westar. Both games have things that the other one doesn't, you really should play both for the full experience.
Just so you know, the official timeline of things is Myst 1 through 4 -> big gap of time -> Uru CC -> Myst V -> MOULa.

Marten · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 12:06 am

I have been involved in Uru since early 2004 before the original Prologue shut down...

And I also agree with what has been said above. Complete Chronicles has its own versions of city content, the Great Tree/Watcher's Sanctuary, and the Ages of Er'cana and Ahnonay. It represents Uru as it was in 2004. MOULa represents the cavern four years later in 2008. You will find some things are the same and some have changed. My recommendation is to play through CC and then get into MOULa to experience the same thrill of confusion and discovery that others did when revisiting puzzles and learning how they had changed.

Whatever you do though will not be a bad choice. 8D

Charura · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:14 pm **Posts:** 1773

Marten wrote:

My recommendation is to play through CC and then get into MOULa

I 'grew' up playing all the myst games and found/find them so intriguing that I play them everyday and yet I find MOUL(a) more fascinating because of the opportunity to interact with others to complete the ages that are different than CC.

korovev · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 12:58 pm

The Tree in the Watcher’s Pub is still there, but the door and the mechanisms are disabled.

You can still access the Tree with MagicBot, but it might be better to play through all of MOULa first.

And if you want an exhaustive list of differences, here it is

TOOO · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 3:31 pm

My understanding has always been that MOULa is canon and Uru:CC isn't.

dgelessus · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 4:13 pm

As far as I understand it the plot of Uru CC is that many people are feeling called to the D'ni cavens, each player of the game being one of them. You just never meet each other because the To D'ni and PotS plot takes place after the cancellation of the original Uru Live and the restoration is officially suspended.

So if you want to be exact, the timeline looks like this:
Book of Ti'ana -> Book of Atrus -> Myst -> Riven -> Book of D'ni -> Myst III -> Myst IV -> Uru ABM/original Live -> To D'ni -> PotS -> Myst V -> GameTap MO:UL -> MO:ULa

Untìl Uru is somewhere in between ABM and MO:UL, but since (as far as I know) there was no story, so it isn't relevant to the plot. You could probably consider UU equivalent to Uru CC, since they are almost the same, except for UU being multiplayer.
Correct me if I'm wrong about the UU things, I never got to play that iteration of Uru Live.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:04 pm

If you played the original Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, the reason you didn't see anyone is because you hadn't yet earned the links to get to them (online in Prologue) - which was exciting! In Uru: CC, it's been reworked so that you enter the cavern after the DRC have left - which was sad.

The Age of Myst was written after the Age of Riven; D'mala was Cyan's shard at the end of Until Uru and that's where the story picked up leading into GT-MOUL, so here's your revised timeline:

Book of Ti'ana -> Book of Atrus -> Riven -> Myst -> Book of D'ni -> Myst III -> Myst IV -> Uru ABM/original Live -> To D'ni -> PotS -> Uru:CC -> Myst V -> D'mala -> GameTap MO:UL -> MO:ULa

Kinoss · **Joined:** Tue Aug 19, 2014 1:00 pm **Posts:** 3

Thank you everyone for your responses. We will play Uru:CC first.

As to the timeline... I don't think Riven should come before Myst because you arn't talking about when the ages were created, but when the events in the game took place. Otherwise To D'ni would be first since D'ni existed long before anything.

Anyhow here is the order in which we are playing/reading

RealMyst Masterpiece(Done), Riven(Done), BoA(In Progress), BoT, BoD, MIII, MIV, URU:CC, MV, MOULa

Sound about right?

Also I know technically one should read BoT and then BoA first, but then that would ruin the "stranger in a strange world" experience when first playing Myst, as it should be. I like to imagine that after playing Myst and Riven the stranger returns to Atrus, who tells him the history found in BoT and BoA. Kinda like how one should watch the original Star Wars Trilogy first before watching the prequels, if they had never seen them before.

AlanD · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:36 pm

I approach your question from the perspective of someone who played Uru ABM->toD'ni->PotS solo for many years until I discovered that MOULa was open, and then devoured it wholeheartedly.

The standalone game is a full experience, but slightly compromised by the adaptions forced on Cyan by Ubisoft to allow the solo version to be released, most notably Ahnonay and Er'cana.

Playing standalone, I always felt that Ahnonay was a multiplayer puzzle as the convolutions required to finish it seemed obtuse and forced. It would be very interesting to follow a group of virgin explorers (who had not experienced Uru before) through the MOUL Ahnonay and see how they fared - but to my mind it cries out for a group, seeing things from different parts of the age, as the changes are set in motion, to solve it logically. Without such a perspective, the leaps of imagination you have to take are extreme.

I would go for playing Uru CC up to the end of To D'ni, but then playing the PotS in MOUL, and assembling a party to play Ahnonay and Er'cana. Then backfill by completing PotS in CC, just to appreciate the differences.

The biggest difference is, of course, the presence of other people in MOUL, and the social networking interaction that follows on, especially after you've completed the puzzle elements. There can be very few communities that have lasted as long as ours with no new content.

TOOO · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2014 9:56 pm

There's another way of looking at this. As I understand Myst canon, the standalone games (and I think the novels) were based on Catherine's journals, with a lot of "artistic license" thrown in. In Myst V, the protagonist was Dr. Watson himself, which suggests that particular game is based on his recollections.

Also, remember that a lot of "canon" exists mostly on websites. For example, to my knowledge, the story of the discovery of the cavern in 1987 exists only on the DRC site in a post from Dr. Watson. The story lines of Prologue, Until Uru and the GameTap years exist mostly in chatlogs.

It would be nice if we could get the "Definitive" version of What Really Happened published somewhere.

Magic88889 · **Joined:** Tue Sep 19, 2006 4:33 am **Posts:** 91

TOOO wrote:

It would be nice if we could get the "Definitive" version of What Really Happened published somewhere.

I would love to see that, having missed pieces of it over the years. At the very least the Uru parts would be nice. Maybe somebody should write a book!

As for MOULa or CC, do CC first, the MOULa. That's the way it was released, and I think that is the way it should be played. There's definitely enough differences to make it worth your while.

Ainia · **Posted:** Fri Aug 22, 2014 3:40 am

TOOO wrote:

It would be nice if we could get the "Definitive" version of What Really Happened published somewhere.

Are you thinking of something more detailed than the Heritage Documents? Or officially sanctioned by Cyan??

MOULa or CC?

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