Day 3

Arriving in Relto, I go to the central piller and link through the book I find inside to be transported to The Cleft. The area around the Cleft is enclosed in a febble fence that, beyond suggesting not to trespass, would do little to keep people out, as the large number of travelers in Uru can attest to. On the way to the Cleft I pass good old Zandi, forever reclining beside his Hibatchi, reading and listen to the same Peter Gabriel song, over and over. Hey, Peter Gabriel is perhaps my favourite artist out there, but listening to the same song since I first met him a couple of years ago? No wonder the guy doesn't make any sense. Also, is it only me that is frustrated at not being able to make out what he is reading?

Zandi

Anyway, Zandi tells me she has a message for me and that I should go there, so I go to the Cleft and climb in. In case you haven't figured this out, Uru, like all the Myst games, is puzzle based. You've got to figure stuff out for yourself and I'm not about to begin giving you the answers. To get Yeesha's message to play you've got to get power to her machine. I'll leave that part to you.

Yeesha is most certainly her father's daughter. If anything, her droning far exceeds his, but in the end her message is clear. To open the door to each Age, you must find the seven journey cloths for that Age. It seems simple enough but I've got to say, if I were to rank the difficulty of all the Myst games (there's six counting Uru) this game would be at the top, sometimes frustratingly so. I will definitely point out where my frustrations in the level design lie, but for now the Cleft is actually pretty straight up and if you search carefully, thinking about objects that could be used to hide cloths, finding the seven journey cloths in and around the Cleft isn't too bad.

I know from past experience exactly where the seven lay, I raced around and then entered the journey door at the base of the tree. In the original game, I was rewarded with my Relto book here. Having started in Relto this time, I was provided with a Relto page which added a new element that I can use to personalize my Relto. You know, as a self professed Myst veteran, I found it very strange the first time I saw my avatar pick up the Relto book and attach it to his belt. I remember those times trapped in the Ages of the first Myst game searching for the ellusive book back and thought, man if you could just take the book with you it certainly make things easier.

Back in Relto, the one central pillar has been replaced by four separate pillars, each containing a linking book to the four ages of the original Uru game: Gahreesen, Eder Remo, Teledahn, and Kadish Tolesa. I decided to continue my quest in Gahreesen, but didn't progress too far before giving up in frustration with the upteenth crash thanks to my flaky modem.

It was time to really begin riding my cable company.

HC