Uru: The Complete Chronicles
Single-Player and History of the game

The word "Uru" means "city" in Sumerian and also has a side meaning of "deep", and, of course, anyone who knows our storyline knows it has to do with that deep city.
- Rand Miller

The official story of Uru also describes the word "uru" as a D'ni word meaning "large gathering" or "grand community".

See below for an exploration of Uru's single player adventure

Uru Product Summaries

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
Uru Expansion: The Path of the Shell
Uru: The Complete Chronicles

History of Uru

Uru began, we can assume, shortly after Riven in 1998. It was originally just called 'DIRT' or "D'ni In Real-Time". This meant that for the first time, players would explore the worlds of Myst in real-time 3D,with all the advantages of dynamic environments, swinging camera angles, and go-anywhere gameplay.

Soon, it became known to the public as 'MUDPIE', or "Multiple-User DIRT Persistent Interactive Environment", a name that would stick for most of the development, and a name that we Uruites still affectionately call it from those early days. With the announcement of 'MUDPIE', Cyan tantalised us with their vision of "One final new world... a world unlike anything previously possible... a world that will never end." (- From an early Cyan webpage).

This would be unique. Nobody really knew how an adventure game would work in the online style of play. Nobody imagined that we would get a Relto, our own personal age, or that we would be able to collect and share our own books. We just had faith that Cyan was working on something marvellous.

Here you can see some lovely old screenshots, many of which I would still classify as 'MUDPIE' shots. (Note the filenames). In particular, I think this shot was a favourite of many Uruites:

Noloben, or the "Linker's Beach" in Mudpie

Sadly, the Age of Noloben never made it into Uru. As Uru progressed, it changed names again, first to 'Parable', then to simply 'Myst Online', and finally to its official title, Uru: Online Ages Beyond Myst at the beginning of 2003.

The goal of Uru was to release an initial adventure, then to continue augmenting the game as the months and possibly years went on. Players would pay a subscription which would allow them to meet and chat with other players online, explore their Ages together, and download readily-available new content, including, periodically, new Ages.

Uru gives us the ability to essentially make a never-ending story, and I should preface that by saying that for interactive entertainment, that seems so revolutionary. We're going to make content forever. We're going to keep making content for Uru so that every time you come back, you'll find new Ages to explore; new places to go.
- Rand Miller

Then, someone decided to make Uru playable as a single-player game first, then optionally as a multiplayer game. Whether or not this optionality doomed Uru Live in the first place, nobody will know, but certainly the fact that it was a single-player game was the only thing which saved Uru from a total death. Regardless, the name was changed to simply Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, and the game was launched initially as a single-player game in November 2003.

Although Uru Live began as a beta (called "Prologue") in December, by February, it became clear to Cyan that the number of subscribers was insufficient. The project was cancelled, and luckily, Uru survived.

To D'ni was released as a free download in March, and The Path of the Shell followed in June as a purchaseable product.

Finally, on August 5, 2004, the dream of Uru was finally realised. Cyan put together a package called Untìl Uru, a modified version of Uru Live, which allowed community sites and individuals to setup their own servers and allow Uru players to connect and play the original game together again.

The Single-Player Uru Adventure

With Uru designed as a multiplayer game, many people felt that the single player was just a shell, a prelude to what never was. I believe that Uru is a worthy adventure, not as immersive or mysterious as the original Myst trilogy, but nonetheless a journey through the Ages on a grand scale.

Unlike previous games, which often featured Ages contained on tiny islands in an infinite sea, Uru features vast, sprawling Ages, only a small portion of which the player is allowed to see (in at least four of the Ages, we can easily see lands beyond the current world). Perhaps Cyan planned to add to these Ages later. We may never know, but the awe-inspiring beauty of the Ages is there all the same.

Uru shows us vast lands beyond the scope of the game world.

But more importantly than the Ages is the deep story. Myst, Riven, Exile and Revelation told the tale of Atrus and his family, and only gave a glimpse of the empire of D'ni. The Myst Novels gave us further insight, but nothing as deep as we see in Uru.

Finally, players get to explore the Ages of D'ni, including D'ni itself. Ages written by D'ni writers, and used by the D'ni. We can read books, endless tomes of information placed in the game to give keen players further insight into the worlds of Myst. For the first time, we see the light and dark sides of D'ni politics - their caste system, their wars, their struggles, and some more information about their untimely demise*.

The intriguing thing about the Uru story is that, just as promised, there are three parallel storylines: Past, Present and Future. Each of the three titles focusses primarily on one of these storylines: Ages Beyond Myst on the past, To D'ni on the present, and The Path of the Shell on the future.

The story is presented in a very unfamiliar way. Rather than exploring the worlds and reading their creator's journals first-hand, as we did in Myst, we glimpse D'ni through the eyes of two parties. The first is the DRC, a group who is committed to reconstructing D'ni. Although we don't directly get to meet any of the DRC, we constantly find their journals, logbooks, notes and histories lying around. (The typed journals are a real change from previous games!) Some of these cleverly pull you into the story of D'ni by unraveling an epic tale, then suddenly tear you back out to the "present" storyline with a comment by the translator, such as "Details are a little sketchy on this", or "This seems like a good place to stop."

We are also given a live link to the past, and to the Myst series through Yeesha, the eccentric daughter of Atrus and Catherine. She contacts you at the start, and leaves clues of her own in the form of spoken logs, and strange "journey cloths" and "link stones" which aid you on your quest. As the series moves into The Path of the Shell, Yeesha's role in the game, and in D'ni society, finally becomes clear. Although many would say the Path of the Shell story is too far removed from the rest of Uru, I would say that it ties down the very important character of Yeesha, who never really served much of a purpose in Ages Beyond Myst.

The secret to Yeesha's destiny lies within this Great Tree

The game's structure is very new to adventure gamers, and swings a little into the region of RPGs, so its easy to see why it took a long time for many players to adjust. Particularly, some elements from Diablo II emerge, with players not being able to save their game - instead returning to Relto after reloading their character, and having saved links to the places they've visited.

Many people, once again, have expressed their discontent with this system. Once again, I feel I must defend it - for one thing, the multiplayer aspect of the game wouldn't work with a "save/load" feature. But also, the game has been very cleverly designed to revolve entirely around Relto. We've come a long way from Myst in which most of the goals were trying to find a link back to Myst Island. In Uru, the player carries the Relto book with him or her wherever he or she goes, and can use it to return home at will. In fact, when in danger from falling, drowning or other hazards, the avatar automatically links back to Relto.

To this same end, many places in the game will not have any way out, and you must Relto out. To compensate for this, Uru gives players "journey cloths" (or in the To D'ni expansion, Nexus links) all over the game, which allow you to save your place. By this very free-flowing game design, many new and interesting puzzles revolve around the use of Relto and the journey cloths themselves. Since you find yourself returning to Relto once every five minutes or so anyway, there is clearly no need for a more specific save/load system. (Although personally I think it would be better if it didn't have to unload and reload an Age every time you want to Relto out and back.)

The chief complaint about Uru (besides the somewhat bothersome third-person control scheme) has been the abundance of jumping puzzles. Myst players have never been able to jump before, so with this new luxury comes a requirement that we be able to make all sorts of interesting jumps, which can be seen as good or bad depending on how dextrous you are.

Relto, the island in the clouds, is the beginning point of every adventure.

One of the strangest things about wandering through Uru alone is this feeling that everything you see has been made for a multiplayer environment. Although nothing in the single-player game actually requires multiple people, there are a number of elements throughout the game that are, either to promote Uru Live (in Ages Beyond Myst), to remember Uru Live (in To D'ni) or that were just originally designed for multiplayer and changed (mostly in Path of the Shell).

Specifically, the entire Age of Gahreesen (pictured above) seems to be built around this "training wall" - a game in which two players race to the top of a huge wall maze. This game is in the multiplayer version, but for someone who only played single-player for the first eight or so months, the Age seemed rather pointless.

To D'ni, which was released shortly after the closure of Uru Live contains some deliberate memories of Live. In the single player expansion, you'll see a list of some of the more popular Live players, an imager containing screenshots from Live, and the broken 'heek table (another mini-game, playable only in multiplayer). Not to mention all the devices you get such as the KI and Nexus, which are all designed to get around and interact with people in the multiplayer environment.

However, with that said, Uru functions surprisingly well as a single-player adventure. But its eerily lonely once you've ventured online.

Uru can be purchased in one lot called Uru: Complete Chronicles. This contains all three episodes of Uru, and can be upgraded to the multiplayer mode, Untìl Uru, for a one-time cost of just $6 US. Click here to find out more about multiplayer.

*More information about D'ni, particularly the Fall can be found in Rand Miller's second Myst novel, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana.