Review for Firmament
Firmament is a much-anticipated entry into Cyan World’s catalog of remarkable adventures. Starting with Myst in 1993, which inspired multiple sequels, Cyan has generated a large audience eager to explore gorgeous environments, speculate about enticing oddities, and solve multi-stepped, logical puzzles. Myst was my introduction to adventure games; I have played nearly everything that these developers have released over the years. In short, Firmament has generated great expectations and the question hovering in the minds of dedicated fans: does this recent release live up to those exalted assumptions?
As the game begins, you awaken in an underground room strewn with boxes and machinery. Seated before you is the ghost-like figure of a young woman. Speaking with a charming accent, she informs you that she has died just as you opened your eyes. She points out that you have much to accomplish and claims that her spirit will accompany you as you set out on your journey through The Realms. You are a Keeper, and you will eventually realize what that means. She points to a nearby device, called an Adjunct, which will fit on your arm and interact with various sockets in the worlds you will be traversing. As her image fades, you use the Adjunct to open doors and at last you are outside, viewing a frozen world full of secrets waiting to be unveiled.
It soon becomes clear that The Realms have been mostly abandoned for years, and much of the maintenance machinery has shut down or otherwise deteriorated. Your job is to find a way past the closed barriers, dead electrical switches, crusted-over sockets, etc. The Adjunct can be upgraded a few times, but you must identify the right locations for accomplishing this.
The Realms – Curievale, Juleston, and St. Andrew, plus a hotel-like hub called The Swan -- are now accessible. The Adjunct allows you to travel between them using metal pods filled with glimmering rainbow shards. You encounter colossal arches; snowy, rock-strewn cliffs; bright yellow mounds with colorful, tiered pools; dusty passageways and banisters wrapped in leafy vines. Every exterior area of the three Realms is breathtakingly striking with realistic details in stone, metal and glass. Interiors are varied -- some contain massive pillars, gold-etched windows, and classical-style statues. Others are grungier with grimy staircases and weird debris.
Movement fills the realms -- trams speed along soaring rails; banners ripple in the breeze; mist slowly drifts by; lights blink off and on. They are also full of sound – the clank, putter and chug of machinery; the roar of the wind; birds chirping or water gurgling. Voices chime in – announcements from loudspeakers with messages that encourage but also stifle. Your ghostly companion’s voice, now generated from a swirling cloud, occasionally explains the history of the worlds. The background music adds to a sense of yearning: eerie electronic melodies, single tone vocals, and intense reverberations. Near the game’s end, when you uncover a chunk of the narrative mystery you’ve been investigating, cheeky techno music resounds for the first time.
Firmament features a science-fiction-ish and “out of this world” atmosphere, but there are a few obscure earthly associations. Certain locations feature books or journals that add to the narrative and heighten the mystery. You’ll also come across lists of maintenance chores and (near the end) a newspaper article and explanatory readouts. The ending was satisfying to me, partly because I had begun to sense what was actually going on and it was exciting to have (some) of my guesses confirmed.
I played the PC version (standard, non-VR mode) and used the WASD keys to move through the first-person, 3D worlds, holding down the left mouse button to interact using the Adjunct. Climbing ladders and opening books and journals required a simple click. The game has two save slots and an autosave. I often wished for more save slots.
Many of the challenges in Firmament are tricky (though readers will be relieved to hear that there are no labyrinths). The puzzles nearly always involve locating an Adjunct-compatible socket, and while most sockets are easy to locate, others are not. A few of the pathways through the locales are also easy to miss, as are some of the linking or docking platforms. Partly this is due to the intricate environments – so much detail that it’s easy to blow right by an inconspicuous path or a socket that’s hidden in an unexpected location. Because the puzzles are often multi-stepped, even if you locate a socket, it frequently can’t be used until you manipulate an object that’s elsewhere; what and where this may be is dicey to discover.
Though you spend plenty of time wandering about on foot, there are also vehicles and other machinery to operate. There’s a spider-like robot transport, a rotating bridge with cab attachments, and a diving kit for navigating pools. It’s entertaining to experiment with these mechanisms, but one of the downsides is that they restrict your view. You spend a great deal of time looking through a windshield or a diver’s mask, which makes it even harder to locate sockets. Once a socket and a matching interaction have been identified, it may be necessary to use trial and error to move a device into a precise position – a janky task in a 3D environment. Now and again a screen pops up within the Adjunct/socket display which gives you an idea of where the device should be in relation to a specific location. Sometimes I found this to be helpful; other times, not so much. Usually the overall goal was less than obvious. The inclusion of an in-game, step-by-step hint system would have been a virtual (and real) gift.
It took me nearly thirty hours to reach the intriguing ending. I relished exploring the surroundings -- stopping to look at jaw-dropping cliff views, strolling down paths to admire artistic details, getting up close and personal with delicate flora and wily tinkering. But much time was spent while stuck and desperately looking for what I must have missed. In previous Myst-style games I’ve occasionally had to glance at a walkthrough, but with Firmament I hit the wall (so to speak) a lot. My walkthrough consultations became embarrassingly frequent.
Delving into Firmament’s Realms was captivating, and it was a blast to noodle out the truth behind the scenes. Some of the complex physical barriers were exciting to overcome, but others were hard work. Visually, auditorily, and narratively Firmament delightfully exceeded my expectations. The difficulty of the challenges also exceeded my expectations, leaving a trail of frustration as I look back on the overall experience.
