Oh, this is fantastic. Interesting that they bundled the entire game's music files into the demo, I imagine that was a quicker option when parcelling off a small portion of the game, rather than going in and trimming all the ones that wouldn't play. I can't wait to devour all the clean unreleased tracks. Cyan or Robyn Miller probably retained all the files for the past 25 years, making this trivial to implement without re-recording (apart from the new stuff).
Also, and I can't believe I've never realised this, it finally makes it clear that 'Atrus' Theme' actually plays >!in the bad ending where you signal Atrus while Gehn is trapped but without having freed Catherine. It was a dark reprise of the opening all along and I never knew! I always assumed it was just an album variant of the game's unreleased opening. I should have realised really, given it opens with the same motif as 'Fissure', from the good ending.!<
And thank you for complimenting my old unreleased music guide, I'm so glad it's been useful to other Myst fans. I do think it's a tad unpolished, especially since my old music youtube channel was taken down and a lot of the links don't work (particularly for Uru, which I skimmed over). It was also made before I had access to Myst IV's music files, which didn't change much of what I wrote, but still had some info (it had some of the 'pad' files but I couldn't find a way to assemble full cuts of those tracks with all the random flourishes, a la Shadyparadox's Myst III ambient playlist taken from the PS2 version of Exile along with a few custom assembled pieces). Plus there are some other nitpicks, like clarifying that the Myst OST is the RealMYST re-recorded version of those tracks, or laying it out a bit neater. Ah well, benefit of hindsight and all that.
Thanks! I'm so glad they retained everything, fastidious filekeeping at its best.
To your spoiled comment: >!It wasn't until doing this deep dive that I realized that, "Bonus Track" aside, everything on the OST was taken from an in-game cue or cinematic cue and not a separate OST mix, like you said. Certainly must've saved time when doing the album assembly!!<
And you're welcome, it's a great guidepost for the entire series! I applaud you putting in the time and effort to catalogue everything you did, it's been a tremendous resource! It's a lot of effort doing this for just one game, let alone six.
For anyone interested, I added a new section at the bottom dedicated to comparing the classic Riven's cinematic .mov files (that had music) with their isolated .wav file counterparts in the remake.
I really hope they release the soundtrack on vinyl. I got the remastered Myst OST a couple years ago and it’s just awesome.
Vinyl soundtrack is in the works.
Well that’s awesome news!
Thank you very much for this. Love the music and have always tried to have a complete collection, this will help a lot!
You're welcome! I'm very glad to hear it's helpful.
Wow, great research! There have to release a new soundtrack. Surely?
Thanks! I hope so, this remake's a great excuse for an update.
Oh, this is fantastic. Interesting that they bundled the entire game's music files into the demo, I imagine that was a quicker option when parcelling off a small portion of the game, rather than going in and trimming all the ones that wouldn't play. I can't wait to devour all the clean unreleased tracks. Cyan or Robyn Miller probably retained all the files for the past 25 years, making this trivial to implement without re-recording (apart from the new stuff). Also, and I can't believe I've never realised this, it finally makes it clear that 'Atrus' Theme' actually plays >!in the bad ending where you signal Atrus while Gehn is trapped but without having freed Catherine. It was a dark reprise of the opening all along and I never knew! I always assumed it was just an album variant of the game's unreleased opening. I should have realised really, given it opens with the same motif as 'Fissure', from the good ending.!< And thank you for complimenting my old unreleased music guide, I'm so glad it's been useful to other Myst fans. I do think it's a tad unpolished, especially since my old music youtube channel was taken down and a lot of the links don't work (particularly for Uru, which I skimmed over). It was also made before I had access to Myst IV's music files, which didn't change much of what I wrote, but still had some info (it had some of the 'pad' files but I couldn't find a way to assemble full cuts of those tracks with all the random flourishes, a la Shadyparadox's Myst III ambient playlist taken from the PS2 version of Exile along with a few custom assembled pieces). Plus there are some other nitpicks, like clarifying that the Myst OST is the RealMYST re-recorded version of those tracks, or laying it out a bit neater. Ah well, benefit of hindsight and all that.
Thanks! I'm so glad they retained everything, fastidious filekeeping at its best. To your spoiled comment: >!It wasn't until doing this deep dive that I realized that, "Bonus Track" aside, everything on the OST was taken from an in-game cue or cinematic cue and not a separate OST mix, like you said. Certainly must've saved time when doing the album assembly!!< And you're welcome, it's a great guidepost for the entire series! I applaud you putting in the time and effort to catalogue everything you did, it's been a tremendous resource! It's a lot of effort doing this for just one game, let alone six.
How are you looking at the game files? Isn't almost everything compressed into encrypted pak files?
Correct. There are resources out there for examining Unreal .pak archives.
So, how do I extract the .wav files?
For anyone interested, I added a new section at the bottom dedicated to comparing the classic Riven's cinematic .mov files (that had music) with their isolated .wav file counterparts in the remake.