Myst III: Exile - Development

Development

Cyan, Inc. and Mattel (then the owner of the Myst and Riven franchise) offered the task of developing the sequel to several development companies; according to Game Developer, interested parties developed proposals including story concepts, analysis of the first two games, technology discussion, and technology demonstration. A core team from Presto Studios held discussions which analyzed Myst and Riven, then set out specific goals for the third game. According to Presto founder and producer Greg Uhler, these goals included visual variety in the Ages, a satisfying ending, and a way for players to gauge their progress during the game. The progress goal was very important for Uhler, who stated: "Players who had failed to complete Myst or Riven did so because they were unsure of how much remained of the game and what their goals were." Initially, Presto prepared three possible storylines for the game to follow; a meeting between Cyan, Presto, and Mattel yielded a completely different plot, which explored some of the loose ends hinted at in Myst. Presto spent millions of US dollars developing the game, using the studio's entire staff to complete the project. Development took two and a half years, of which nine months were spent on design and pre-production.

Pre-rendered environments, like those in the earlier Myst games, were used, providing what producer Dan Irish described as the "photorealistic ability to present the world in a convincing way. The 360-degree camera view also allows you to experience it in a way that makes it feel real." Particular attention was devoted to strong visual styles and mechanics, which a critic described as "a collaboration of Jules Verne, Rube Goldberg and Claes Oldenburg".

As in Myst and Riven, the developers used live-action sequences instead of computer-generated actors and props; Irish stated that using computer graphics would have reminded players they were in a game, "which would wreck the immersion that is so critical to the Myst games". Live actors were filmed on a blue screen and then placed in the digital environments using chroma key technology. Before any shooting could begin, all the sets were constructed and filled with props the actors could use, costumes for all the characters were fashioned, and each scene was plotted out by storyboard. Rand Miller returned to play Atrus, a role he had filled since the first Myst game. Brad Dourif, a professional actor, agreed to play Saavedro because he was a huge Myst fan. Dourif noted that acting for a game was much more difficult than working on movie sets, as he could not see the player or interact with the game environment. Other actors included Maria Galante as Atrus' wife Catherine, and Greg Uhler's daughter Audrey in a cameo as Atrus' daughter Yeesha. Preparation for the video shoots took four months; filming the scenes took just seven days. Uhler noted that the video was one aspect of Myst that Presto "did wrong"; because high-definition video cameras were not used, the resulting video was not as crisp as developers had hoped.