4 ms·

Riven was absolutely captivating for its time. It still looks gorgeous today. They did an absolutely incredible job.

petermcneeley 8y ago
The visual quality of Riven is stunning. Making of doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 My article on riven graphics vs the latest in the myst series. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-offline-vs-realtime.html http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-of...
- mercer 8y ago
  Nice article! Putting the more technical aspects aside, I found the games after Riven to be lacking something, and I only discovered afterwards (maybe even only after the second post-Riven game) that it wasn't by the original studio/team/brothers. Uru, despite its many problems, seemed to recapture some of that magic. But I'll always wonder if that's actually true, or just because I knew the original team (or at least one of the brothers?) was involved again. (Not that the Riven sequels were bad! I quite enjoyed Myst 3)
duskwuff 8y ago
Riven was also a huge improvement in worldbuilding. The world of Myst was often rather contrived; the places it depicted didn't always seem particularly "lived in", and the puzzles were often rather contrived in nature -- in many cases, their motivation was simply that the world itself was created as a puzzle. The rocket ship piano puzzle falls squarely into this category, for instance! Riven, on the other hand, depicted a much more natural-seeming world, and its puzzles fit much more organically into that world. For instance, one early puzzle involves learning the Rivenese number system from a child's toy. Some of the Moiety puzzles seem a little artificial, but even those do have some in-game motivation (as part of a security system).
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  It also had 5 CDs, and you'd have to swap between them all the time. But it was definitely worth it!
  - MrMember 8y ago
    CD swapping, there's something I had forgotten about. I remember playing one of the Tex Murphy games and having to swap CDs all the time.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    They were pretty good about only putting the CD swaps only in major area transitions. Anytime I saw one of the magnetic rail trams, I knew it was time to get the disc box out and prepare for a swap.

The visual quality of Riven is stunning. Making of doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 My article on riven graphics vs the latest in the myst series. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-offline-vs-realtime.html http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-of...

mercer 8y ago
Nice article! Putting the more technical aspects aside, I found the games after Riven to be lacking something, and I only discovered afterwards (maybe even only after the second post-Riven game) that it wasn't by the original studio/team/brothers. Uru, despite its many problems, seemed to recapture some of that magic. But I'll always wonder if that's actually true, or just because I knew the original team (or at least one of the brothers?) was involved again. (Not that the Riven sequels were bad! I quite enjoyed Myst 3)

duskwuff 8y ago

Riven was also a huge improvement in worldbuilding. The world of Myst was often rather contrived; the places it depicted didn't always seem particularly "lived in", and the puzzles were often rather contrived in nature -- in many cases, their motivation was simply that the world itself was created as a puzzle. The rocket ship piano puzzle falls squarely into this category, for instance! Riven, on the other hand, depicted a much more natural-seeming world, and its puzzles fit much more organically into that world. For instance, one early puzzle involves learning the Rivenese number system from a child's toy. Some of the Moiety puzzles seem a little artificial, but even those do have some in-game motivation (as part of a security system).

geerlingguy 8y ago
It also had 5 CDs, and you'd have to swap between them all the time. But it was definitely worth it!
- MrMember 8y ago
  CD swapping, there's something I had forgotten about. I remember playing one of the Tex Murphy games and having to swap CDs all the time.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  They were pretty good about only putting the CD swaps only in major area transitions. Anytime I saw one of the magnetic rail trams, I knew it was time to get the disc box out and prepare for a swap.