Why?

Cyan has recreated Myst three times now, what makes this worth the effort? Frankly, Cyan's past attempts have put Myst Island into a vastly different visual context. I believe that the original, prerendered look enhanced the surreal aesthetic that made people like me fall in love with the franchise, but the official remakes sacrifice that dreamlike feel for a more realistic, grounded atmosphere. Myst Island is one of the most iconic locations in gaming, but we've never gotten the chance to freely explore the original version that left such a big impact on us fans. After three remakes, I personally doubt Cyan will do anything like this. I just want to finally experience what it's like to physically stand in such an iconic place.

Where can I see this when it's done?

I will be publishing this as a world for VRChat, which is free and easily accessible. I honestly don't have the time to figure out how to port it to a standalone format. Sorry.

Will you recreate the other ages?

Probably not. This is already a side-project to my other side-projects. It would be just too much work, and I'm simply just not interested.

Will you include puzzles/gameplay?

No. This project is intended to simply be an explorable model of the island, like a museum exhibit. A big piece of fanart, sure, but not much more interactive than a painting or sculpture. I'm also not interested in getting into legal trouble with the rights holders. If you want the Myst experience in VR, purchase the game from Cyan.

* Updated 2025-01-26

I started this project in May of 2022 (one of the most hectic years of my life, I should add) but it fell to the wayside because of more important things—moving countries, learning a foreign language, finding a career, life stuff, you know? Actually, a majority of the progress happened within the first few months. I just wanted to collect all of the material into a dedicated page so anyone interested can follow along easier. The island is 50% modeled, which means I really have 90% of the work to do before it's done. Anyway, here are some highlights of what's happened with it up to this point. Future updates will be in separate blog posts.

Gallery

Fountain

Recreating the official render.
Recreating a view from ingame.

Library

Interiors in the original were probably rendered separately and spliced together, that made it hard to figure out the proper size of the doorway here.
I won't be modeling every interior, but the library is one I feel is necessary.
Another often-seen view from the game.
Figuring out the shape of the chandelier was tricky, needing to go into RealMyst to get a better view of it.

Clocktower

Pathway to the clocktower. I added the butterflies later.
The roof ornament would've been hard to figure out if Cyan didn't release a video ending with a giant closeup of it.

Forechamber

Recreating the view from the original.
Fun fact, this has been my VRChat homeworld for a while now.
A rare bit of artistic license here, but I illuminated the ceiling just enough to see it.
Custom shader to recreate the holographic water.
The RealMyst games helped me out a lot here, since the exact shape of this room is very ambiguous in the original.

Extras

The trees have honestly been the most troublesome part of this project. The way they appear ingame is very specific, probably affected by compression artifacts, and really hard to recreate and optimize in realtime.
Painstakingly-recreated ship using different viewpoints to make sure the scale was correct.