Great Shaft - Some Ideas?

[GPNMilano]

As far as Direbo, the age was meant purely for rest. Until now we've been under the assumption that the rest houses in Descent were simply that, rest stops on the way to the surface. However, other than the beds, there's no seating of any kind there. Just beds. However Direbo would make sense being that while people would sleep in the beds in Descent, if they were just taking a break from the walk, they'd then be able to use the Direbo book, lounge out underneath the tree in Direbo, soak in the sights and sounds of the age, relax their feet for awhile and then head back to Descent to continue the walk. It was clearly meant as a contemplative rest stop for traveling D'ni. While the Eder Tomahn's were meant for sleeping.

Again we run into somewhat of an issue with Direbo. I agree that a rest house would make sense to not only have beds and what-not but to also have a rest Age. I see 2 problems with this however.

1. If we follow your above example where the D'ni installed Nexus terminals in preparation for the Council's decision they would be planning on adding a Linking Book to a rest Age (which may or may not have been Direbo originally but that is besides the point). However with everything being powered down and Nexus Books being taken with the advent of Ti'ana finding D'ni then they would take Direbo with them too.

2. As mentioned above, the D'ni are very secretive with their stuff when it comes to outsiders. Had a connection to the surface been made then the tunnels and Great Shaft would have become a busy "road" from D'ni to the surface. I'm not convinced the D'ni would leave Linking Books lying around for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to use. Especially given the fit they pitched when they discovered Ti'ana had used one of their Books.

Oh I agree completely. I don't think Direbo was in place in the Shaft at the time of the fall. Direbo was in place during Myst V because it was the age intended for placement in the Shaft during DIRT/MUDPIE and eventually URU. I think Cyan added it to the Shaft cause thats where its intended place was meant to be. Lore wise however I don't think it was in place during the fall. Neither were the Nexus books and or other KI related equipment in the Shaft. The D'ni would not want outsiders using them, on this I agree completely. One could probably make the argument that the books were placed along the shaft after the initial cavern closure by someone I'd guess Esher. They were then removed by the DRC when they returned in 2007. This would adequately both explain why the books are at first not present, then present during Myst V then taken down. I myself would lean towards Esher placing the Direbo books in the Great Shaft considering his rantings of the marvel of the Shaft and Direbo during Myst V. Plus we know it would more than likely not be Yeesha that placed the books in the Shaft because of the futile efforts of the DRC removing Yeesha and Bahro related objects in the past. But I don't believe the books were ever present during Tiana's traveling to D'ni, nor before the D'ni fell. They were only there during Myst V cause of outside actions. However the age, as recounted by Esher, was meant as an age for resting while traveling down the path to D'ni. It was written by the D'ni for this goal, as the D'ni often would only write links that had an express purpose in mind.

[Sirius]

I'm not going to write a long post about what might or might not have happened to all these books and thingies. I'll be frank: to me, it seems Cyan simply stopped caring about such details in Myst V and Uru, which means these details got totally screwed up when switching between all versions from Ages Beyond Myst, DIRT, Until Uru, MOUL, Myst V, etc.
I'd say they chose the more convenient way of doing things. For instance, using Direbo and the elevators to travel to each side of the Shaft, while in every Myst books every character had to climb using the stairs.



This, though, is an interesting challenge:

Of course you are right that those two versions of the Shaft are an issue, but the proper solution - in my eyes - would be to merge them to have one age.

Let's see... how could we do this ?
We could give the Myst V version the same Age name and ID as the current Descent. Then use a Python script to dynamically load the Uru or Myst V version, if it's installed.

Then make a new special page, containing Watson's journal and sparkly that would be loaded with the Myst V version, so that the To D'ni extension is solvable.
Finally, it would require making the fixes to the Shaft easy to apply to all users: which means updating Drizzle with my fixes.
It also means I would have to fix remaining issues in all 6 other Ages, since I couldn't stand having a tool to fix them and not use it.

Problems:
- some people surely like the current version of the Tiwah, since it's darker and more dramatic than the Myst V version (which I totally understand, and I don't want to force people to accept such changes).
- I never worked with Java (though it is close enough to C++), and there aren't many people working on updating Drizzle nowadays.
- I could try to have a look at Drizzle's code, but it would require some time and motivation. And I seriously doubt it's worth my time when I look at the number of downloads and replies on this thread.

[Tweek]

Oh I agree completely. I don't think Direbo was in place in the Shaft at the time of the fall. Direbo was in place during Myst V because it was the age intended for placement in the Shaft during DIRT/MUDPIE and eventually URU. I think Cyan added it to the Shaft cause thats where its intended place was meant to be. Lore wise however I don't think it was in place during the fall. Neither were the Nexus books and or other KI related equipment in the Shaft. The D'ni would not want outsiders using them, on this I agree completely. One could probably make the argument that the books were placed along the shaft after the initial cavern closure by someone I'd guess Esher. They were then removed by the DRC when they returned in 2007. This would adequately both explain why the books are at first not present, then present during Myst V then taken down. I myself would lean towards Esher placing the Direbo books in the Great Shaft considering his rantings of the marvel of the Shaft and Direbo during Myst V. Plus we know it would more than likely not be Yeesha that placed the books in the Shaft because of the futile efforts of the DRC removing Yeesha and Bahro related objects in the past. But I don't believe the books were ever present during Tiana's traveling to D'ni, nor before the D'ni fell. They were only there during Myst V cause of outside actions. However the age, as recounted by Esher, was meant as an age for resting while traveling down the path to D'ni. It was written by the D'ni for this goal, as the D'ni often would only write links that had an express purpose in mind.

Yeah thats my bad, I get a little to caught up on where Direbo was originally because I always felt its existence in the Great Shaft felt wrong


Sirrus - Oh yes the lore has been messed up several times. It gets even worse when you know how things were supposed to be in the game before storylines were changed due to time constraints, game bugs, licensing issues, etc. I liken it to seeing a moment in time and seeing all possible outcomes but because of this your view becomes muddled and it's hard to see which is the "right" outcome.

Please don't misunderstand the dialog between Chloe and myself, we are both very big on retaining D'ni lore and "cleaning" the "muddied waters" so-to-speak.

The only thing I don't like about Myst 5's Great Shaft (which I feel is the superior one) is the support beams. I feel that somewhat undermines the scope of D'ni engineering and rock working. The fact they made this vast well of rock without any support is awe inspiring.

[GPNMilano]

I'm not going to write a long post about what might or might not have happened to all these books and thingies. I'll be frank: to me, it seems Cyan simply stopped caring about such details in Myst V and Uru, which means these details got totally screwed up when switching between all versions from Ages Beyond Myst, DIRT, Until Uru, MOUL, Myst V, etc.
I'd say they chose the more convenient way of doing things. For instance, using Direbo and the elevators to travel to each side of the Shaft, while in every Myst books every character had to climb using the stairs.



This, though, is an interesting challenge:

Of course you are right that those two versions of the Shaft are an issue, but the proper solution - in my eyes - would be to merge them to have one age.

Let's see... how could we do this ?
We could give the Myst V version the same Age name and ID as the current Descent. Then use a Python script to dynamically load the Uru or Myst V version, if it's installed.

Then make a new special page, containing Watson's journal and sparkly that would be loaded with the Myst V version, so that the To D'ni extension is solvable.
Finally, it would require making the fixes to the Shaft easy to apply to all users: which means updating Drizzle with my fixes.
It also means I would have to fix remaining issues in all 6 other Ages, since I couldn't stand having a tool to fix them and not use it.

Problems:
- some people surely like the current version of the Tiwah, since it's darker and more dramatic than the Myst V version (which I totally understand, and I don't want to force people to accept such changes).
- I never worked with Java (though it is close enough to C++), and there aren't many people working on updating Drizzle nowadays.
- I could try to have a look at Drizzle's code, but it would require some time and motivation. And I seriously doubt it's worth my time when I look at the number of downloads and replies on this thread.

Or..alternatively we just import the two Descents into a 3d modeling program, make the required fixes and changes in keeping with the correct established lore, and export a new age to replace both versions of Descent and only have one Descent that's complete and fits with the canon, and the content we already have. Plus we'd now have access to a Descent that could be added onto and finished over time and expanded to it's fullest intended potential.

Oh I agree completely. I don't think Direbo was in place in the Shaft at the time of the fall. Direbo was in place during Myst V because it was the age intended for placement in the Shaft during DIRT/MUDPIE and eventually URU. I think Cyan added it to the Shaft cause thats where its intended place was meant to be. Lore wise however I don't think it was in place during the fall. Neither were the Nexus books and or other KI related equipment in the Shaft. The D'ni would not want outsiders using them, on this I agree completely. One could probably make the argument that the books were placed along the shaft after the initial cavern closure by someone I'd guess Esher. They were then removed by the DRC when they returned in 2007. This would adequately both explain why the books are at first not present, then present during Myst V then taken down. I myself would lean towards Esher placing the Direbo books in the Great Shaft considering his rantings of the marvel of the Shaft and Direbo during Myst V. Plus we know it would more than likely not be Yeesha that placed the books in the Shaft because of the futile efforts of the DRC removing Yeesha and Bahro related objects in the past. But I don't believe the books were ever present during Tiana's traveling to D'ni, nor before the D'ni fell. They were only there during Myst V cause of outside actions. However the age, as recounted by Esher, was meant as an age for resting while traveling down the path to D'ni. It was written by the D'ni for this goal, as the D'ni often would only write links that had an express purpose in mind.

Yeah thats my bad, I get a little to caught up on where Direbo was originally because I always felt its existence in the Great Shaft felt wrong


Sirrus - Oh yes the lore has been messed up several times. It gets even worse when you know how things were supposed to be in the game before storylines were changed due to time constraints, game bugs, licensing issues, etc. I liken it to seeing a moment in time and seeing all possible outcomes but because of this your view becomes muddled and it's hard to see which is the "right" outcome.

Please don't misunderstand the dialog between Chloe and myself, we are both very big on retaining D'ni lore and "cleaning" the "muddied waters" so-to-speak.

The only thing I don't like about Myst 5's Great Shaft (which I feel is the superior one) is the support beams. I feel that somewhat undermines the scope of D'ni engineering and rock working. The fact they made this vast well of rock without any support is awe inspiring.

There's alot of stuff I don't like about Myst V's shaft. The support beams are a big one. I'm not a fan of having two elevators in the shaft, when it was clearly meant to be a walking trip. However from a gameplay mechanic I understand the necessity of having them there, which is why I'd suggest limiting it to only one, from the top of the shaft to the Tomahn. Where you'd get a KI light and continue on by foot down the smaller walking trip. I'm also not a fan of the extra node door on the first Node. That door was clearly meant to go through to the tunnel but it never was completed and instead Cyan just cut a whole in the node and tunnel for access. Makes no sense as thats the only damage, with the exception of the shaft itself, that's present within the age.

[Ehren]

Again, done at the behest of lazy writing. There never was supposed to be so many links to Direbo in Descent. There was only ever one, and not on the Nexus Station. That would have been a Nexus book. (Indeed it was a Nexus book originally.)

My point was merely that it could be said to be reasonable (canon?) to put a Direbo book in Descent now BECAUSE it's what Cyan did, not that I necessarily liked the initial decision by Cyan themselves. As opposed to things like the links to MOULs areas through bahro stones on pedastals in Deep Island's city that Cyan never made anything even similar to (non-canon?) and doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose.

Again, the way things are now, and that you've become accustomed to. Was not the original intention of that contact. The Nexus was intended as a mass transit system to get players around the city and to their invited ages. However it was to be treated like Relto. You'd need to be sent an invite to get to an age, you'd need to collect a Nexus Station link to get to that area etc. It was during MOUL that all that went to hell with lazy writing by Cyan, and was unfortunately carried over to the offline KI cause no one seemed to want to disable the links in the Nexus before being picked up.

I will say that I wouldn't have liked it if they had KEPT adding even more permanent links to the City Locations tab, as I think they did reach the reasonable limit for those. But I didn't think there was anything wrong with just having a few other permanent links along with "Ferry Terminal". "Watcher's Pub" especially makes sense as it is at least relatively close to the city. "Kirel" does feel a bit odd I guess, since it is really far away compared to the other City Locations.

"K'veer" in MOUL does at least follow the idea of having to get the link first. As for Uru CC though, I think it at least makes more sense to have the K'veer link in the Nexus automatically than it does to have a stone link in the city pub, but that's because we can't do things exactly as they were intended in MOUL here. (which was getting to K'veer through Yeesha at the Cleft) That's just my opinion of what would blend better with CC.

In regards to Ehren's concerns. The likelihood of Cyan adding stuff to Uru is very slim (them adding new Cyan content that is). I see no reason why we can't add to their Ages, in fact there are a lot of issues with Cyan's content that the fans could fix and straighten out. As for adding stuff to Cyan's Ages to expand on the lore? I would trust about 3 or 4 people in the fan community to handle that in a logical lore friendly fashion, and one of those people is myself.

I didn't mean new stuff that Cyan would actually make in the future, I was referring to the stuff that Cyan made in MOUL that was then (by fans) ported over in some way to work in CC. I just meant that it made/makes sense to add those.

Unfortunately MOUL introduced a lot of (understandably) laziness. Yeesha/Bahro Magic was a fix for a lot of stuff that should have been handled in a more lore-friendly manner. Bahro stones which were once a bit of a rarity got plonked down anywhere to get around the no inter-age linking rules to make things easier.

This makes the assumption that Yeesha/Bahro magic and Bahro Stones being common aren't lore friendly... Bahro stones were once rare, so there should never be a point for them to be more common? Heck, maybe that had even planned on that sort of thing all along? Even if not though, they still are in charge of what "works" for their own story as they are the "owners" of it.

Of course you should feel free to say you disagree with something Cyan did with their story, I just find it odd when people argue that Cyan's own additions to Uru are non-canon to some degree, and that they know better than Cyan about it.


When PotS came out, I remember some people didn't like the alternate Kadish vault, they though that Cyan made that area for PotS just so that they could copy/paste a lot of stuff that was already made for Kadish, and then just alter it some (mostly by removing stuff) to make the altered version. They felt that it didn't even make any sense with Uru's story at all.

However, I would say later on I've seen enough evidence to suggest that Cyan had ALWAYS (or at least since even before the first Uru Live) intended an alternate Kadish vault in some form or another, and that even though it seems weird at first, it does make a lot of sense with the storyline once you hear some ideas about the story that some rather clever people managed to figure out.


My point is that I feel some people jump too quickly to the idea that something had to be a last minute/unthought-out addition that has to be "corrected" in some way. I'm sure Cyan has done plenty of lazy shortcuts, but I don't like people assuming they know how it "should" be done, and that they should actually work to change it in the current version of Uru that we have.

[GPNMilano]

Again, done at the behest of lazy writing. There never was supposed to be so many links to Direbo in Descent. There was only ever one, and not on the Nexus Station. That would have been a Nexus book. (Indeed it was a Nexus book originally.)

My point was merely that it could be said to be reasonable (canon?) to put a Direbo book in Descent now BECAUSE it's what Cyan did, not that I necessarily liked the initial decision by Cyan themselves. As opposed to things like the links to MOULs areas through bahro stones on pedastals in Deep Island's city that Cyan never made anything even similar to (non-canon?) and doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose.

Let me explain. No one is arguing that a Direbo book doesn't belong in Descent. Tweek and I agree that the D'ni did not place Direbo within Descent before the fall. I think we agree that they wrote Direbo to be a rest age on the journey to the surface should the path have been unsealed. So they renovated Descent in anticipation of that, like they renovated Gahreesen in anticipation of the public using it to get their KIs. However nothing was turned on in Descent and no books placed prior to the fall. Then during Myst V someone, I argue Esher placed the books in Descent, and the DRC removed them prior to reopening the cavern in 2007. But all of us, I believe agree, that Direbo's linking book was meant for Descent. There's just been some disagreements along where exactly that book should be. It should not be on the Nexus Stations and should have it's own pedestal. As far as the Bahro stones on pedestals. This is canon, Cyan introduced the pedestal for a Bahro stone in MOUL with the link from Hoods to the City.

Again, the way things are now, and that you've become accustomed to. Was not the original intention of that contact. The Nexus was intended as a mass transit system to get players around the city and to their invited ages. However it was to be treated like Relto. You'd need to be sent an invite to get to an age, you'd need to collect a Nexus Station link to get to that area etc. It was during MOUL that all that went to hell with lazy writing by Cyan, and was unfortunately carried over to the offline KI cause no one seemed to want to disable the links in the Nexus before being picked up.

I will say that I wouldn't have liked it if they had KEPT adding even more permanent links to the City Locations tab, as I think they did reach the reasonable limit for those. But I didn't think there was anything wrong with just having a few other permanent links along with "Ferry Terminal". "Watcher's Pub" especially makes sense as it is at least relatively close to the city. "Kirel" does feel a bit odd I guess, since it is really far away compared to the other City Locations.

Again just a misunderstanding on how the Nexus links should be added. No one's arguing that there shouldn't be so many. There can be as many as we want. The tab originally was Cavern Locations, not City Locations. It was meant to store all of the links to areas in the cavern. But the KI documentation makes clear, the reason they were meant to be added was that you were supposed to use the station to register the link in the Nexus. This functionality was removed during MOUL and Cyan just started popping the links in whenever they wanted to open up a new area. They got away from this and started to go back to registering the link when Kveer was released.

"K'veer" in MOUL does at least follow the idea of having to get the link first. As for Uru CC though, I think it at least makes more sense to have the K'veer link in the Nexus automatically than it does to have a stone link in the city pub, but that's because we can't do things exactly as they were intended in MOUL here. (which was getting to K'veer through Yeesha at the Cleft) That's just my opinion of what would blend better with CC.

What would better blend with CC IMO would be to remove the existing Kveer and simply replace it with MOULKveer to be honest. But then you have to fix a bunch of other links like to Myst to do that. So instead we used a bahro stone.

Unfortunately MOUL introduced a lot of (understandably) laziness. Yeesha/Bahro Magic was a fix for a lot of stuff that should have been handled in a more lore-friendly manner. Bahro stones which were once a bit of a rarity got plonked down anywhere to get around the no inter-age linking rules to make things easier.

This makes the assumption that Yeesha/Bahro magic and Bahro Stones being common aren't lore friendly... Bahro stones were once rare, so there should never be a point for them to be more common? Heck, maybe that had even planned on that sort of thing all along? Even if not though, they still are in charge of what "works" for their own story as they are the "owners" of it.

Of course you should feel free to say you disagree with something Cyan did with their story, I just find it odd when people argue that Cyan's own additions to Uru are non-canon to some degree, and that they know better than Cyan about it.


When PotS came out, I remember some people didn't like the alternate Kadish vault, they though that Cyan made that area for PotS just so that they could copy/paste a lot of stuff that was already made for Kadish, and then just alter it some (mostly by removing stuff) to make the altered version. They felt that it didn't even make any sense with Uru's story at all.

However, I would say later on I've seen enough evidence to suggest that Cyan had ALWAYS (or at least since even before the first Uru Live) intended an alternate Kadish vault in some form or another, and that even though it seems weird at first, it does make a lot of sense with the storyline once you hear some ideas about the story that some rather clever people managed to figure out.


My point is that I feel some people jump too quickly to the idea that something had to be a last minute/unthought-out addition that has to be "corrected" in some way. I'm sure Cyan has done plenty of lazy shortcuts, but I don't like people assuming they know how it "should" be done, and that they should actually work to change it in the current version of Uru that we have.

I think that it's rather easy for canon knowledgeable people to go through Uru now and pick out what was a last minute afterthought addition, and what was not. Cyan got lazy at the end, there's no doubt of that. They've even admitted so publicly. I don't see an issue with fixing these things so long as it keeps with Cyan's original vision of those areas, and doesn't violate existing canon. Cyan of course violated their own canon and never corrected these issues. I don't see the harm in fixing mistakes they made, that they admit they made as they were rushed and needed quick fixes. I liken it to fixing up the code in Plasma. An excellent example of this is the Bevin.Hood issue. Cyan knew that they screwed up, however they didn't want to devote the man hours to fixing these issues in MOUL as they were on a set timetable and wanted to ensure MOUL's survival through new players and content.

We are not perfect either. Several mistakes were made in integrating the MOUL and Myst V stuff into CC. Some of those mistakes were rectified. However some still exist. Fixing these mistakes are our responsibility. But seeing as how we're in the files making the fixes, the argument is should we fix the mistakes Cyan also made so that everything lines up with the established canon and rules outlined by Cyan throughout their lore.

[Ehren]

I think that it's rather easy for canon knowledgeable people to go through Uru now and pick out what was a last minute afterthought addition, and what was not. Cyan got lazy at the end, there's no doubt of that. They've even admitted so publicly. I don't see an issue with fixing these things so long as it keeps with Cyan's original vision of those areas, and doesn't violate existing canon. Cyan of course violated their own canon and never corrected these issues. I don't see the harm in fixing mistakes they made, that they admit they made as they were rushed and needed quick fixes. I liken it to fixing up the code in Plasma. An excellent example of this is the Bevin.Hood issue. Cyan knew that they screwed up, however they didn't want to devote the man hours to fixing these issues in MOUL as they were on a set timetable and wanted to ensure MOUL's survival through new players and content.

We are not perfect either. Several mistakes were made in integrating the MOUL and Myst V stuff into CC. Some of those mistakes were rectified. However some still exist. Fixing these mistakes are our responsibility. But seeing as how we're in the files making the fixes, the argument is should we fix the mistakes Cyan also made so that everything lines up with the established canon and rules outlined by Cyan throughout their lore.

The Bevin issue was handled amazingly poorly...

Bug fixes are good, but I still think people sometimes misjudge things as non-canon even though it is actually be fine.

In other words, overcompensating for the mistakes Cyan made and correcting things that weren't wrong. I suppose I disagree with the statement "it's rather easy for canon knowledgeable people to go through Uru now and pick out what was a last minute afterthought addition".

Then again, at this point, I can't think of what sort of thing one might even want to change in an existing Cyan age (excluding general bug fixes; example: like when the Er'cana bakery elevator was fixed because it could make the age unfinishable).

[GPNMilano]

I think that it's rather easy for canon knowledgeable people to go through Uru now and pick out what was a last minute afterthought addition, and what was not. Cyan got lazy at the end, there's no doubt of that. They've even admitted so publicly. I don't see an issue with fixing these things so long as it keeps with Cyan's original vision of those areas, and doesn't violate existing canon. Cyan of course violated their own canon and never corrected these issues. I don't see the harm in fixing mistakes they made, that they admit they made as they were rushed and needed quick fixes. I liken it to fixing up the code in Plasma. An excellent example of this is the Bevin.Hood issue. Cyan knew that they screwed up, however they didn't want to devote the man hours to fixing these issues in MOUL as they were on a set timetable and wanted to ensure MOUL's survival through new players and content.

We are not perfect either. Several mistakes were made in integrating the MOUL and Myst V stuff into CC. Some of those mistakes were rectified. However some still exist. Fixing these mistakes are our responsibility. But seeing as how we're in the files making the fixes, the argument is should we fix the mistakes Cyan also made so that everything lines up with the established canon and rules outlined by Cyan throughout their lore.

The Bevin issue was handled amazingly poorly...

Bug fixes are good, but I still think people sometimes misjudge things as non-canon even though it is actually be fine.

In other words, overcompensating for the mistakes Cyan made and correcting things that weren't wrong. I suppose I disagree with the statement "it's rather easy for canon knowledgeable people to go through Uru now and pick out what was a last minute afterthought addition".

Then again, at this point, I can't think of what sort of thing one might even want to change in an existing Cyan age (excluding general bug fixes; example: like when the Er'cana bakery elevator was fixed because it could make the age unfinishable).

The Great Zero book in the neighborhood is one example that comes to mind. Another is the bahro stone in Tokatah Alley.

[Deledrius]

My other concern with this (which came to mind earlier as I am currently re-reading the books). The D'ni originally wanted to make contact with the surface, yet are extremely xenophobic and protective of their culture and definitely of their Ages. Now if this is the case, why would Nexus terminals be installed where any surface dweller could stumble upon them. Sure without a KI they would be stuck but if they left Direbo for people to visit too that seems rather reckless for the D'ni.

Naw, it's fine. Direbo's a perfect place to let people go; it's got those great little gates that are entirely insurmountable to keep interlopers from bypassing the shaft. The D'ni were ingenious craftsmen.

However, I would say later on I've seen enough evidence to suggest that Cyan had ALWAYS (or at least since even before the first Uru Live) intended an alternate Kadish vault in some form or another, and that even though it seems weird at first, it does make a lot of sense with the storyline once you hear some ideas about the story that some rather clever people managed to figure out.

Care to elaborate? I'd love to hear details on this.

Then again, at this point, I can't think of what sort of thing one might even want to change in an existing Cyan age (excluding general bug fixes; example: like when the Er'cana bakery elevator was fixed because it could make the age unfinishable).

I can think of several. The biggest one is the completely wrong scaling in Ae'gura. The rest involve restoring/reworking things like the Watcher puzzle, or making the Pod Ages not so obviously rushed and lazy both artistically and gameplay-wise. As for bug fixes, there's a long list... here's two off the top of my head: the non-animated flag in Jalak and the broken/absent reflections of the awful-looking billboards in Dereno (which also should be fixed or removed -- they were copy-pasted directly from the concept art and used in the wrong places anyway). Cyan's Ages are not remotely perfect. However just like Tweek I would trust very few people to be able to actually improve them.

[Ehren]

Naw, it's fine. Direbo's a perfect place to let people go; it's got those great little gates that are entirely insurmountable to keep interlopers from bypassing the shaft. The D'ni were ingenious craftsmen.

As sloppy as just putting the Direbo books in the Nexus pedestals was, I would still guess that, storywise, it was supposed to have been Nexus books on those pedestal back before D'ni fell. And that Yeesha or maybe someone else replaced them later on with the Direbo books. Just because Myst 5 has the Direbo books there doesn't mean the story of it has to be that the D'ni always had it like that.

Care to elaborate? I'd love to hear details on this.

I'm not sure if I'll be very good at telling the story. Keep in mind that I'm mostly trying to paraphrase stuff that other people came up with/figured out. I'm going to end up saying things like "Yeesha", "version", "alternate", and "vault" annoyingly often...

Show Spoiler

The general idea is that Yeesha revived Kadish (or more accurately put: saved Kadish's life in an alternate timeline of Tolesa that she wrote her way to) to show off her powers and brag to Kadish about being the real Grower.

Remember the note Yeesha wrote on in the regular vault, she wrote "Could he [Kadish] ever realize such failure? What kind of end is this?" It's clear Yeesha was thinking about how Kadish's died, maybe even feeling a bit sorry for him? At any rate, she decided to work at writing a book to a time with Kadish still alive in his vault and save him from just simply dying there with all of his belongings.

In this alternate vault Yeesha left a note bragging about how she can change the stream of time and how she saved Kadish (one of her exact lines on it "I've saved his life" could only be referring that). She is prideful and boasting about her power.

Kadish didn't particularly like Yeesha, and he still wanted to be thought of as The Grower himself. At some point he tries to kill Yeesha, but her life was saved by her close friend (lover?) sacrificing himself to protect her. (Can't remember his name right now... or the details about how he first met Yeesha, that's getting into another story anyway) Yeesha was angered and then killed Kadish in retaliation.

Later on, Yeesha went back to the alternate vault, and tore up the note she had written in disgust of how prideful she had been. Since someone so close to her was killed by a selfish and greedy person she had gone out of her way to save, she wasn't proud of herself anymore. It was after this point that Yeesha became a vastly different person than she was before, and soon after that became much more interested in the Bahro and their plight.

The bahro cave speeches support this idea, where Yeesha talks about how she was prideful of her power, and only DEATH could concur pride so strong

As far as some tech proof of the Yeesha Vault being an idea for a long time: the one I remember best off the top of my head is that even the original release of Uru, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst had the SDL variable: kdshYeeshaVaultLinkBook for turning on and off the alternate vault book, even before any of the content for the Yeesha vault was in game. At the point of making/releasing URU:ABM Cyan would have still thought they'd be going forward with Uru Live, so I feel like this is a pretty strong suggestion that it was a long thought out story idea, rather than just invented for tPotS.

Not to say there weren't any small changes from their original design for the alternate vault and its story. Just that it clearly had been planned as an important thing for awhile.