The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst

> owing to the relative freedom it affords players

That's really not "true". The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything. Myst only let you move to predefined locations.

The difference is that you didn't have enemies trying to kill you all the time, or extremely difficult bosses to defeat in order to advance to other levels. Instead, Myst let you generally explore most of the game as you wished. You could explore quite far without technically "advancing" because you could ignore the puzzles. This made the game quite fun if all you wanted to do was look around.

It's kind of similar to the actual freedom in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom, where you don't need to advance in the game to explore the world.

> The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything.

In 1993? I don’t remember any full freedom games back then. Certainly nothing could begin to approach the visuals for a very long time.

There were no full 3D games in 1993. Quake was still 3 years in the future.

I think this probably depends on your definition of "freedom". If you mean freedom as in movement, then yes, 3D games were freer.

If you mean freedom as in game design, then I'm having a hard time coming up with contemporary rivals. You can reach any of the Ages from the beginning, tackle them in any order, and even leave them unfinished if you wish (though you couldn't go back and forth at will, since you had to find the exit book first). Combined with the lack of enemies you mentioned and lack of any chance of failure (until the end), it stands out among its competitors.

Possibly there were some other adventure games that rivaled its freedom. Day of the Tentacle comes close, though it's more scripted than Myst—and it's not 3D.

Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992

Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992

I remember a fully 3d game from quite a bit earlier than then! Spectre for Macintosh, from 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(1991_video_game) , and some gameplay at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-F3XISR3ME

Wolfenstein was not full 3D.

Not really 3d, the map/engine didn't support a room above another room.

This was also true for doom games, and I think hexen.

Quake was fully 3d.

Maze/Maze War, Chuck Yeager's AFT, Elite. Not as polished or fast as Descent or Quake on a Pentium chip but you'd need to redefine 3D with rather obtuse constraints to exclude them.

I mean wizardry was technically a 3d game if you just consider the way they show the geometry of the dungeon. Stuff like bards tale and some of the ultimas took that and ran with it.

Duke Nukem had some 2.5 D stuff going on that was more powerful than what doom was doing, but just barely. I think the first fully 3d game that meets your definition is probably 'Descent'

Cholo was open world 3D in 1986:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo_(video_game)