Comment by gwbas1c
2 days ago
> owing to the relative freedom it affords players
That's really not "true". The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything. Myst only let you move to predefined locations.
The difference is that you didn't have enemies trying to kill you all the time, or extremely difficult bosses to defeat in order to advance to other levels. Instead, Myst let you generally explore most of the game as you wished. You could explore quite far without technically "advancing" because you could ignore the puzzles. This made the game quite fun if all you wanted to do was look around.
It's kind of similar to the actual freedom in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom, where you don't need to advance in the game to explore the world.
I think this probably depends on your definition of "freedom". If you mean freedom as in movement, then yes, 3D games were freer.
If you mean freedom as in game design, then I'm having a hard time coming up with contemporary rivals. You can reach any of the Ages from the beginning, tackle them in any order, and even leave them unfinished if you wish (though you couldn't go back and forth at will, since you had to find the exit book first). Combined with the lack of enemies you mentioned and lack of any chance of failure (until the end), it stands out among its competitors.
Possibly there were some other adventure games that rivaled its freedom. Day of the Tentacle comes close, though it's more scripted than Myst—and it's not 3D.
> The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything.
In 1993? I don’t remember any full freedom games back then. Certainly nothing could begin to approach the visuals for a very long time.
I remember a fully 3d game from quite a bit earlier than then! Spectre for Macintosh, from 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(1991_video_game) , and some gameplay at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-F3XISR3ME
I mean wizardry was technically a 3d game if you just consider the way they show the geometry of the dungeon. Stuff like bards tale and some of the ultimas took that and ran with it.
Cholo was open world 3D in 1986:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo_(video_game)
Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992
There were no full 3D games in 1993. Quake was still 3 years in the future.
Maze/Maze War, Chuck Yeager's AFT, Elite. Not as polished or fast as Descent or Quake on a Pentium chip but you'd need to redefine 3D with rather obtuse constraints to exclude them.
Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992
Wolfenstein was not full 3D.
Not really 3d, the map/engine didn't support a room above another room.
This was also true for doom games, and I think hexen.
Quake was fully 3d.
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