Myst Ret-Con Annoyances

One of the things that has always bugged me (and I think a lot of other people) is the concept of ret-con. Put simply, this is something where some writer or designer didn't like how something happened in a previous chapter of a story and then either invents some way to dismiss it, or simply pretends that events didn't happen that way to begin with.

Frankly, it's a lazy way out. If you want to continue a story, use your imagination and come up with one. Don't just say something didn't happen because you have a new story that you want to tell but there is this little detail from the past that blows a huge hole in your story.

One example that jumps out at me is about one of my favorite games when I was in high school: Myst. Myst was a first person puzzle game that came out in 1993. The storyline was that a stranger had come across a book called Myst and when he opened it, he was transported to an island in a completely different world. As the game evolves, the player learns that two brothers, Sirrus and Achenar, have been trapped in books and need to have the pages of these books returned from other worlds to free them. However, as the player does this, he learns that both men are very dangerous. In the end, the player learns that they were caught in traps set by their father, Atrus, as they moved to get rid of him so that they could control everything themselves. In winning the game, the player frees Atrus from his own prison and he subsequently destroys the books that his sons were trapped in (presumably killing them).

This theme was continued in the sequel Riven. In that game, the player goes on a quest on behalf of Atrus to capture his father, Ghen, in a prison book and then free Atrus' wife Catherine.

The third game, Myst III: Exile, deals with the earlier actions of Sirrus and Achenar and their effects on a man named Saavedro, who had tried to stop them. It doesn't mention or use prison books.

Then comes the fourth game, Myst IV: Revelation. Apparently the game designers had been grousing for a few years that prison books didn't actually exist (despite creating two games where they were central plot points) and finally implemented this thought. In the fourth game, it is revealed that Sirrus and Achenar were not caught in prison books but in prison ages (small worlds that didn't have any linking book out of them). The storyline then follows the effects of Atrus, Catherine, and their daughter Yeesha of their attepts to contact the brothers and their possible release if they had reformed. The storyline is somewhat weak in this game and the game designers ret-con of the prison books throws everything out of whack.

If there was nothing special about the books that trapped the brothers in the first game and they were just links to other worlds without exits, then there is not much point to the game. There would have been no need to collect pages from other worlds because if pages were missing from the books, they wouldn't have worked (this is how they trapped their father in the world called D'ni). Likewise, how would the player have known anything as communication with the brother in their books is a key element in how the player learns both what to do and who to trust in the end.

The idea that prison books don't exist also blows Riven completely out of the water as well. The whole point of the story is to capture Ghen. There is a key point in the game where Ghen is close to falling into the trap but he has the player go into the trap first. This idea fits with his personality as developed in the game. When the prison book concept is used, it works well because the prison can only hold one person. If you go in, you're trapped until Ghen uses the book. Then he is trapped and you are set free. But if the concept of prison ages is used (as discussed in the context of Myst IV), the game is a dead end. The player would go to the prison age while Ghen follows. Both would be trapped (Ghen would probably kill the player in a fit of rage) and Catherine would still be imprisoned. With the disappearance of Ghen, it is likely that Ghen's followers would assume that the rebels had killed him and kill Catherine in retaliation. Not exactly a good ending to a game.

This is perhaps an extreme reaction but it was something I recently read about and it revived my old dislike of ret-cons.

/Andy Rooney mode off