So, to begin the game and start experiencing the story and environment, you boot up your CD-ROM and click on the Myst icon. You see the logos of the various companies who helped put this CD-ROM together (quite like the credits of a movie). You then see an animation of a man falling down towards you from the lip of a crevasse. The figure disappears, but a book continues falling down into the darkness. As it falls, credits continue to roll and a disembodied voice intones:

As the voice-over ends the book lands and you can pick it up. You are at the beginning of this new chapter; the Myst book has fallen into your hands. You open the book and see a picture of an island. If you point and click with your mouse/hand on the picture in the book, the screen fades out with a zooming noise. The screen fades back in and you are standing in the picture. You are on the island. Standing on a dock by the waters' edge, the narrative has begun anew.

From this meager introduction the reader/player is left to puzzle through the story. Essentially, it is a mystery. You are trying to figure out what has happened to Atrus and Catherine and their two sons, Sirrus and Achenar. As the reader, you are the sleuth in and of the tale. You are an active participant, navigating the hypertextual links, or better yet, walking around the island, exploring. The story does not progress until you have figured out the next puzzle as you puzzle together the story. The story only comes from your pointing and clicking your way through the haunting worlds into which you have fallen.

The tense of this narrative is twofold. There is the immediate story of you, the reader/player, trying to solve the game, and there is Atrus' story that occurred in the recent past and that you are presently working your way through. You spend the vast majority of your time walking around empty, haunting rooms and landscapes. You see and hear atmospheric phenomena, but you spend most of your time alone, trying to "solve" the story. The point of view is quite interesting because, in a sense, narrator and audience collapse into one. Or to be more specific, you are the main character of the current discovery of the past story narrated by Atrus and sons. The storyline does not advance unless you figure things out. Unlike a book, where to get to the end you just keep reading, the "game" of Myst can only progress if you start solving the puzzle. You, the reader, are the impetus behind the narration.

After working your way through the story and "winning" the game (there are three or four possible endings depending on the player's decisions), the narrative experience shifts from the hypertextual interactivity of Myst to the linear experience of the three Myst novels and then the Myst comic book.

The story grand does return to hypertextuality again in Riven. Readers are now a players again, participants in the narrative, puzzling through the story as they point and click around the new worlds. A new twist to the medium is added though. In Myst, you basically spent your whole time alone, searching for what has happened. In Riven, there are characters who you can talk to and ask questions, and they will answer you, some truthfully, some not. The puzzle aspect is even more integrated into the story. You decide whether to believe a character based on your knowledge of the story so far. So, puzzling through the story is even more a part of the immersive experience. Once again, you are an active part in the development of the story. The narrative is waiting for you to figure it out.

The experience of the story grand of Myst is a hypertextual one in itself. It consists of the immersive environments of the CD-ROMs and the linear story in the novels and comic book. As a reader of these mediums, you make the links between each of these storylines and narratives. Reading the novels and comic book and engaging with the CD-ROMs is how you experience the story grand of Myst. The narrative is associated between the mediums. What hypertext lacks is made up for in the novels. A fair critique of this phenomenon is that a quality story should be able to exist on its own in whatever medium. Presently, no one working in hypertext and multimedia has developed a masterpiece comparable to those in literature and art. But, the medium is still in its infancy and is still retrieving from older mediums. Given time, a masterpiece may be developed that fully utilizes the unique capabilities of hypertext and multimedia and does not have to rely on supplementary novels and comics. The question is whether or not people will keep trying in this new medium, which realizes the audience's role in creating a story, or will they find that to realize a theory of reading is too self-recursive to be of much use or interest. Time and experience will tell that story.

I still find it useful to look at how a narrative can develop across mediums. The story grand that is related in Myst could not have occurred in one medium. You would lose the unique qualities of the combination of the mediums if you used only one. The novels gave you linear structure for storytelling. The comic book illustrated a world for you. The CD-ROMs put you in the story itself, puzzling through the narrative. Combining the narrative across these mediums gives you a story in which you are not only a reader, but a "co-author, theater goer, movie goer, museum visitor and player, all at the same time" (Miles 4).