Obduction – Myst’s Successor

I am a Myst games fan. I am looking forward to Cyan World’s new game Obduction.

Hayden Dingman at PCWorld wrote an article about Obduction having live-action Non-Player-Characters (NPC). You can see live-action NPC’s in a video of Senza PesoI (below – link), a trailer for an Oculus VR experience. If you have a VR Headset, the video is in Oculus format.

https://youtu.be/lrq0KRbRk1U

Apparently Obduction will work with Oculus and similar VR headsets. The Cyan peeps rant into the problem of how to put video of RL actors into a virtual world and not break the immersion. While some games have animated avatars (in SL we call them bots) Cyan found that outside their expertise and thus too expensive for them to do. Since this game is funded by a kickstarter project the budget is constrained. They looked for a cheaper way.

Their solution is to film with 2 GoPro gamers to create 3D video. They use a green-screen room in the basement of Cyan’s studio. The character can be placed into the virtual world. You can see that in the video above.

I think the idea is to be similar to what Cyan has done in the past. When they reach a point where they need to tell some of the story, they move to a cut scene and the NPC tells you whatever is needed by the story line. It would be rather jolting to go from a VR experience to a 2D movie. This style of video cut scene will allow them to maintain the illusion of the world they are building.

Look for more details about Obduction to appear in August 2015.

 

Obduction vs Uru Live

Obviously the Obduction Kickstarter project is an exciting thing for me. The game Uru Live is also a favorite of mine. I think this leaves Obduction and Uru Live fans wondering how Uru Live will be affected by Obduction. I certainly wonder. So, I want to take a look at a few of the factors that I think are going to affect Uru Live.

Uru Live - @2004 Image

Uru Live – @2004 Image

Obduction

With 40+ hours left (US$1,168,159) when I started writing the Obduction Kickstarter has made it’s first goal ($1,100,000) and is headed for the first ‘stretch’ goal: US$1,300,000. Making it to the next goal will add more play area to the game, adding another world to explore. If you haven’t already pledged funds to the project now would be a good time. Or if you can increase your pledge, that too would be great.  Continue reading

Obduction Update

Obduction is the Cyan Worlds’ single player game currently in the Kickstarter process.

The latest update on Kickstarter tells us that Cyan plans to place the game on Steam. If your supporting this project or just curious, jump over to steam and have look. If supporting the game, please take time to login or sign up and rate the project. It will help get work out.

With 6 days left to funding, the project has funded US$869,605 of the $1,100,000 target, 79% of the target in 78% of the allotted time. It looks like it will fund, but it looks to be close. So, help out where you can; become a supporter and pledge funds, tell your friends, and help out at Steam’s Greenlight site.

Oculus Rift & Cyan Worlds

If you have never played a Cyan Worlds made game you have missed out. They do highly immersive games with incredible graphics. When they made the hit game Myst, it pushed people to buy CD drives, which I understand were a ‘new thing’ at the time. People were blown away by the high quality graphics. Looking at the near twenty-year old graphics the game looks a bit dated.

Claire Humme Concept Art for Obduction

Claire Humme Concept Art for Obduction

Even Uru (Myst Online: Uru Live) is looking dated. But, it is great fun to play.

Cyan Worlds has their Kickstarter for a their new game: Obduction. They have just added a new incentive for people to support the project. If they go over the target by $200,000, they will add Oculus Rift support.

Considering they are using the Unreal Engine for the game, the Oculus should provide an awesome immersive experience.

I think supporting Obduction will indirectly provide support for the Oculus. If you feel this would be a fun thing, join in here: Obduction.

Quoting from the project regarding the image above:

So this fellow looks like he’s taken the long way around. He seems fairly at home in some vaguely familiar clothing, but also appears to have picked up a few trinkets along the way. Many of which were probably not standard-Earth-issue. (Like those boots… source unknown!)

Cyan Worlds Obduction 2014-44

Every so often Cyan is giving us an update on their new game. In less than two weeks the Kickstarter project has funded $628k of the targeted $1,100k. During that time we’ve now got eight updates on the project. The eighth update tells us we are already playing the Obduction game… or can be.

A previous hint...

A previous hint…

An email I received says:

Obduction has already begun! We’re not talking about the Kickstarter campaign, or even the game production – the actual gameplay has started.

Continue reading