Riven - 2024

Myst, for many years the bestselling PC game of all time, has been subjected to like a dozen remakes with more and more realistic graphics, but the core experience doesn’t marginally improve because the world is not meant to be seen in that high fidelity. Its visual design and aesthetic fit nicely with the rendering capabilities of a 1992 workstation. Why is there a rocket on the island? IDK, it’s mysterious. And it has a piano in it, who cares. The rocket that does nothing and the giant gears that do nothing and the pirate ship that does nothing do not need 10,000 polygons from Unreal Engine.

Real heads know that the real prize is Riven, the 1997 sequel that takes the raw creative breakthrough of Myst and refines it into a thoroughly considered, expertly rendered, beautifully scored experience. Where Myst is basically a collection of escape rooms, elevated by sheer power of vibes, Riven introduces a large, interconnected world, thoroughly alien at first but slowly revealing itself through exploration and experimentation. You spend most of the game pondering your vague objectives, and fiddling with the systems of the world until the whole thing falls together in your mind, a Swiss watch of intricate and exacting design.

I bought Riven as a school-age child and didn’t manage to finish it without considerable help, but “beating” it was not super high on my priority list. You go to Riven to hang out. There’s shady jungle paths and cool roller coasters and golden elevators emerging from the water. THIS was the experience I wanted to see enhanced, one that looked so good in the late 90s that one of my friends was convinced it was shot on a set instead of rendered.

Returning to this world, fully rendered in 3D, I expected to feel elation, but that’s not it exactly. It was more like a feeling of peace, my mind sighing in relief, validated by all of the gaps it filled in between static slides. This game knows how much anticipation there is to fully explore every nook and cranny of the tropical islands and various other locales, and rewards exploration at every turn. The greatest joys come from peeking around corners you couldn’t previously access.

The entire team returned for this remake, after scooping up a fan effort that spent like 10 years trying to rebuild the world themselves (the original 3D assets were lost, which is one reason why it took so long). I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not a dogmatically faithful re-render of the game but that the experience has been redesigned, in ways big and small. A major redesign (lore and mechanics) of the mysterious spinning domes that dot the islands make the mechanics of a big puzzle more clear, and make backtracking easier. The core puzzles of the game have been tweaked, making them more accessible and intuitive, without losing the magic of having to synthesize multiple sets of clues across 5 islands to know how to solve them.

Riven’s puzzles remind me of a Souls game. You can’t brute force them, you have to sit with them and forget about them and go salsa dancing with your confusion while your mind connects the dots as you ponder the shape of a leaf or something.

As someone who constantly wishes I could Eternal Sunshine myself to play this game fresh, I was grateful to have some new things to chew on. The Moiety puzzle now incorporates a doohickey of sorts that you pick up early on, and I was not a big fan at first, but it really won me over after several hours discovering the hidden messages from a rebel faction. I know from repeat visits to the original game that I’ll be back, because even once the puzzles are solved, starting over to marvel at the production values and the design and the art and that fucking golden elevator is always a worthwhile experience.

The only complaint I have is that the CG characters are a major step back from the full-motion video of the original, but thankfully they don’t look nearly as bad as the ones in the most recent Myst remake. If that’s the tradeoff to get everything else fully 3D, I’m on board.