My favorite puzzle game has a Peter Gabriel intermezzo you can’t skip

There is a real community theater, a backyard cinema, serious about Cyan’s Myst games, starting with Mysteryin which the founding developer brothers Rand Miller and Robyn Miller played all the characters themselves in full-motion video. Cyan is known for using FMV in its games, but even after Mystery And Split became box office hits, the closest the Myst franchise has ever come to a famous actor is Brad Dourif’s (The Lord of the Rings) turn as the villain in Myst 3: Exile —which he didn’t get through a casting call, but because he was a fan of the series.

But there’s one major celebrity moment in the Myst franchise that’s also the most astonishing music choice I’ve ever witnessed in a video game: Myst 4: RevelationThe unskippable Peter Gabriel cutscene.

On paper, there’s nothing good about the Unskippable Peter Gabriel Cutscene. For one thing, it’s unskippable. What’s more, it comes out of nowhere — Myst, the steampunky FMV puzzle adventure series, is emphatically not a “voiced, English-language pop song interlude” franchise. The cutscene’s visuals, while clearly a work of bespoke animation, are filled with so many shapes spiraling out from the center of the screen that it inevitably calls to mind a Winamp VisualizationAnd it all leads to perhaps the worst puzzle ever put into a Myst game.

And yet… I unironically love the Unskippable Peter Gabriel Winamp Cutscene. For the joy of theater.

Peter Gabriel, in a really obscure Myst game? you may be wondering. Peter Gabriel, the prog-rock frontman, world music advocate, militant human rights activist — you know, “In your eyes“? That Peter Gabriel? How?!

Well, in the nineties, Peter Gabriel got… Real in CD-ROMs. He produced two interactive musical experiences/games, Xplora1: Peter Gabriel’s Secret World And Peter Gabriel: EvaAnd if you were a person in the 1990s who was interested in the possibilities of CD-ROM technology, you were a person who Mystery And Split.

Image: Real World Media/MacPlay

In other words, Gabriel was a fan, just like Dourif.

“When Mystery “When I released it, I thought it did a good job of creating a sense of otherworldliness where mystery and imagination were the compelling elements rather than the usual action-packed shoot ’em ups,” said Gabriel in a 2004 IGN article. “I think there is some similarity to the way I try to create worlds of sound. I really enjoyed working on Myst IV Revelation.”

Mystery 4 was always going to be an odd addition to the series, made at a time when Ubisoft — hard at work producing mainstream games like Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia — had the rights to the franchise. Narratively, a direct sequel to Mysteryit was the first time Ubisoft Montreal made an adventure game with pre-rendered graphics, and that shift was apparently a real dragThe end result was a fascinating hybrid product. A custom game engine delivered pre-rendered graphics with animated wind and water, and real-time features like lens flares and focal length, allowing Mystery 4 the most cinematic and immersive game in the franchise. Yet the game still contained over an hour of FMV, with live-action, costumed actors playing the characters.

The core of the game’s story begins when Sirrus and Achenar (Atrus’ wayward, adult sons, each of whom was trapped in a different alternate world, or Age, at the end of Mystery) break out and kidnap their much younger sister Yeesha. It is up to you to explore their prison worlds and confront them in a final Age, Serenia, where Mystery 4 will not only be a strange part of the series, but also a very, very interesting part.

If there is one consistent mechanism in the Myst games, it is puzzle anthropology. The clues to the puzzles are found in records and cultural artifacts from alternate worlds, usually worlds that have been exploited and destroyed by the terrible relatives of Atrus. Mystery 4 is the first game in the series that doesn’t just have something more complicated to say than “Don’t do colonialism” (instead, Mystery 4 is about prison reform, but that’s another story) — it actually practices what the franchise preaches.

Serenia is the first time that the culture you study is not separated from the people within it. Unlike previous games, the natives not only appear but are not afraid of you, speaking to you in a language you understand and personally welcoming you into their most sacred practices. There are certainly still some The inhabitants of this land, so in harmony with nature, so wise There are no stereotypes here, but for a Myst game this is a stratospheric leap in evolution.

Your search for answers eventually leads you to the Priesthood of Serenia, who offer to help you find what you seek in their sacred Dream Realm, guided by your own personal elemental spirit (The inhabitants of this land, so in harmony with nature, so wise). A priestess in a robe leads you into the sacred chamber. As she directs, you lie down on the stone slab and she places a carved stone above you with two holes that represent “the eyes of the ancestors.” As she gives her final instructions, soothing but boppable music begins to play, soft percussion and high-pitched synths. And then, as you start to trip…

…Peter Gabriel starts singing about curtains.

Congratulations: You’ve reached the unmissable Peter Gabriel Cutscene, featuring a roughly three-minute version of “Curtains,” originally the B-side to his 1986 single “Big Time.” Things don’t get any less weird from here!

Once the cutscene ends, your spirit guide, in the form of Peter Gabriel’s disembodied voice, introduces you to… a color puzzle. You’re surrounded by colored balls and your goal is to get all of them white (“Lend the ancestors your energy” or something). If the game thinks the way you’re touching the balls is too erratic, it will play a disapproving sound and randomize some of the colored balls.

Not only that, but this color puzzle is a sticking point. If you’ve gotten past it, it’s probably because you’ve completed everything you possibly can. Until you get past it, this is the entire game. No machine to understand, no notebook to flip through, no numeric system to decipher. A tone-setting cutscene with a Peter Gabriel jam, and then Peter Gabriel ASMR with colored balls.

It’s tonal nonsense. It goes against the core philosophies of the franchise. It’s a huge swing that doesn’t work. And I still love it, because Myst games are — listen to this — a little bit like theater.

Even though these are not role-playing games, Cyan has still extended an invitation to the franchise for the player to participate in creating the reality of the game. Mystery And Split start with serious notes advising you to put on the best stereo headphones you own, dim the lights in your room, and calibrate your screen and audio for the best immersion that ’90s computer gaming can provide. Cyan also maintains a charming kayfabe with its community, with the Myst franchise being based on real events, gleaned from archaeological discoveries in the American Southwest and the personal history of Atrus’ family.

These attempts to maintain the reality of Myst only serve to illustrate how imperfect that illusion is. The seams are there before you: the amateur artists, the limits of exploration in a pre-rendered 2D environment, the long animations to wait for, the live-action images superimposed on digital environments. Myst games ask for your patience – with frustrating puzzles and by making you wait – and they ask you to accept their reality, because a small independent studio like Cyan is unable to create a perfectly convincing illusion on its own.

In that context, what is the “Curtains” cutscene and Peter Gabriel’s (honestly really very good) act as the player’s spiritual guide? It’s inviting a fan to come on stage and contribute to something they love. On a stage, all the seams are visible: the hatch lines, the microphones stuck to the actors’ cheeks, the Winamp-like animation, the song that comes out of nowhere, and the stupid color-matching puzzle.

But you complete the circuit with your own mind, and the stage becomes another reality instead of a platform on which people recite their lyrics. Mystery 4‘s Unskippable Peter Gabriel Cutscene is made entirely of real visible seams. But it also feels like a genuine creative choice by someone personally involved in the work.

Rand Miller, who insists he hates acting, played Atrus in Mystery of efficiency and necessity. And since then he’s stuck repeating his amateur performance, because fans won’t have it any other way. It just wouldn’t be Atrus without the awkward vibes! And if I’m here for Rand Miller’s Atrus, how can I turn my nose up at Peter Gabriel’s spiritual guidance? How can I love Myst games and not their biggest risks? I’m already on the stone slab. It’s not at all difficult to complete the circuit with my mind and have a relaxing time flying around in this Winamp visualization while a boppable song plays. This is the Zen of Myst games.

Anyway, the color puzzle is still a mystery.