If Myst was the influential yet forgotten game, marrying cutting edge visuals with clever puzzles, then Riven was the hidden masterpiece showcasing the Platonic ideal of environmental storytelling (despite selling millions of copies). Now, in 2024, Riven has returned for a modern audience to show the world that it is still an unparalleled achievement.
In the remake, you now walk (instead of click) through the broken islands of Riven, making your way through the dense environments while figuring out how everything on the island works and eventually how to defeat the megalomaniacal Gehn. If in 1997, the pre-rendered visuals were absolutely beautiful and (sur)realistic, here in the real-time remake they are equally so. You can look everywhere in this world and be rewarded by beautiful vistas, of oceans crashing down the shorelines, buildings and structures hanging on rocks and trees, and steampunk gizmos shining and steaming away. Looking everywhere is in fact key, as hidden pathways and secrets dot the landscape, the finding of which are necessary to progress.
In contrast to this beautiful world however, the world is not peaceful and cozy. For a developer who has espoused non-violent gameplay, the atmosphere of Riven is cutting and hostile. The Rivenese, the indigenous population of the game world, are hiding from you. Gehn’s colonialist influence is felt everywhere, from him fashioning himself as a godlike being, to his D’ni culture and architecture imposed everywhere on the island, down to the D’ni numbering system barging on the Rivenese numbering system.
Even in 2024, the marriage of gameplay and storytelling in Riven is so effortless it still feels like the entire gaming industry isn’t just catching up, it has actively put up its ears in dismissal. You aren’t merely exploring the island and solving puzzles. You are actively engaging and learning about the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized on the island. You are solving genuine secrets the two cultures are keeping from each other. The remake puts this in sharper focus thanks to retooled puzzles, which smooth out the more oblique tendencies of the original game. The old (and quite frankly inaccessible) Moiety animal sound puzzle has been replaced with a new visual Lens of Truth-esque puzzle. The animals are now signified with the Rivenese numbers rather than the D’ni numbers, showing a stronger cultural resistance from the Moiety.
Walking through Riven 2024 shows how far we’ve come, but also how embarrassingly little we have progressed. In 1997, Cyan showed how you can use cutting edge graphics to tell novel and challenging stories, unlike anywhere else in any other medium. Circa 2024, most trrrriple-Ayyy video game companies have merely used cutting edge graphics to tell safe, Hollywood-cosplaying stories with gameplay that at best has to actively circumvent the cutting edge graphics with yellow paint in order to be readable and playable and at worst feels significantly lessened in comparison. Considering that Cyan itself isn’t even the economic juggernaut is once was, but now a relatively small indie developer which still managed to pull this off with Unreal Engine 4, Riven dares everyone to take a leap of faith in the starry expanse.
In the remake, you now walk (instead of click) through the broken islands of Riven, making your way through the dense environments while figuring out how everything on the island works and eventually how to defeat the megalomaniacal Gehn. If in 1997, the pre-rendered visuals were absolutely beautiful and (sur)realistic, here in the real-time remake they are equally so. You can look everywhere in this world and be rewarded by beautiful vistas, of oceans crashing down the shorelines, buildings and structures hanging on rocks and trees, and steampunk gizmos shining and steaming away. Looking everywhere is in fact key, as hidden pathways and secrets dot the landscape, the finding of which are necessary to progress.
In contrast to this beautiful world however, the world is not peaceful and cozy. For a developer who has espoused non-violent gameplay, the atmosphere of Riven is cutting and hostile. The Rivenese, the indigenous population of the game world, are hiding from you. Gehn’s colonialist influence is felt everywhere, from him fashioning himself as a godlike being, to his D’ni culture and architecture imposed everywhere on the island, down to the D’ni numbering system barging on the Rivenese numbering system.
Even in 2024, the marriage of gameplay and storytelling in Riven is so effortless it still feels like the entire gaming industry isn’t just catching up, it has actively put up its ears in dismissal. You aren’t merely exploring the island and solving puzzles. You are actively engaging and learning about the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized on the island. You are solving genuine secrets the two cultures are keeping from each other. The remake puts this in sharper focus thanks to retooled puzzles, which smooth out the more oblique tendencies of the original game. The old (and quite frankly inaccessible) Moiety animal sound puzzle has been replaced with a new visual Lens of Truth-esque puzzle. The animals are now signified with the Rivenese numbers rather than the D’ni numbers, showing a stronger cultural resistance from the Moiety.
Walking through Riven 2024 shows how far we’ve come, but also how embarrassingly little we have progressed. In 1997, Cyan showed how you can use cutting edge graphics to tell novel and challenging stories, unlike anywhere else in any other medium. Circa 2024, most trrrriple-Ayyy video game companies have merely used cutting edge graphics to tell safe, Hollywood-cosplaying stories with gameplay that at best has to actively circumvent the cutting edge graphics with yellow paint in order to be readable and playable and at worst feels significantly lessened in comparison. Considering that Cyan itself isn’t even the economic juggernaut is once was, but now a relatively small indie developer which still managed to pull this off with Unreal Engine 4, Riven dares everyone to take a leap of faith in the starry expanse.