Michael Steffen

Myst, or Merely my Impression of it?

I was just listening to some old Moby tracks (before he went more toward Pop) and it got me thinking about Myst. Despite all the games I've played, this series is still my favorite. But I started wondering: is it really Myst itself that I loved so much, or was it the impression I took away from it and the imagination that accompanies that? Sort of like how we were probably all imagining what the Colossal Cave (in CTCS 564) looked like, even though it was a text-based adventure.
An interesting thing is that people's impressions of the Myst series vary so greatly. Some love it, some respect it but never really got into it, and some hate it. I think if the Myst series worked for everyone on the same level it worked for me, then everyone would love it. But this great variance of response to Myst makes me think that it is essential to define what exactly I loved about the series, and then expand that to the question of "what is the best way to capture the spirit of Myst (as I saw it) and bring that to a wider audience?"
I suppose what I liked best about the series was exploring fully-realized (more or less) worlds. I like doing this in real life as well--I used to take walks when at UCSD and pick a new building to explore--visit all the floors, see what I can get access to, what's restricted. The puzzles in Myst were, as Leonard mentioned in CTCS 564, mostly pointless--they were visually interesting and stimulated imagination, but otherwise there was no good reason why they were there. In the sequel Riven on the other hand, each puzzle was basically just a combination of elements in that world that each had a story reason for being there. I am very interested in the idea of experiencing a story by observing the current state of elements in a world. Also of intrigue to me in the Myst series were the superb graphics and human characters. Definitely want to keep that bar high in anything I make.
So what about the rest of you? Ever played Myst or Riven? What worked for you? What didn't?