As far as remakes go, this may be the best remake I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Pure eye candy, but more importantly: it kept the atmosphere and spirit of the original completely intact. I would even say it does better than the original in many aspects- particularly in its puzzle design.
While the original was iconic and revolutionary in its level/puzzle design, the remake addresses a problem that was near impossible for the original to address: logistical consistency! So many things have been changed in the remake for the sake of the story in a way that has the player constantly in a state of realization and newfound understanding. While you more or less understood the original Riven’s spaces by what you read in the game’s texts and then recontextualizing after, the remaster does without requiring reading, through environmental storytelling and (mostly) realistic placement of important puzzle pieces that also double as worldbuilding. Everything in the game makes sense and clicks in a way that makes you intimately familiar with the game’s world and ideas; it’s like exploring an abandoned, unfamiliar building and looking around single room in it and instantly realizing the building was a school because the room was a classroom.
The game is full of connected ideas like this, naturally propelling you forward into exploration and puzzle solving. It feels as though the team at Cyan have simply just documented and recreated a real space, I truly cannot give them enough praise.
The music is, ofc, still as good as it ever was, and the sound design (in most cases straight up perfectly preserved from the original) is spectacular, and the story has been given a bit of new intrigue, but I won’t spoil anything.
The few gripes I have with the game are very minor: like the occasional visible “video gamey” geometry of specific parts of landscape- only notable because the rest of the game is photo-realistic. Not super worth pointing out because it’s just not a problem, that kind of perfection shouldn't ever be expected espicially when it is clear so much work has already gone into the game. Character models and animation fit into that for me as well, they are by no standard bad, but they are not literal real people so you notice them against the photo real world. Just unrealistic to complain about, frankly. The actual big gripe I have lies in the speed of back tracking and transition animations- You’ll hit a point near the end of the game where you revisit some areas and the second, third, and maybe fourth and upward visit of that area can become really tedious when you have to wait a minute or so for a vehicle to travel over or for an elevator to climb to a top floor. Having the ability to skip these animations like you can the ladder climbing animations would just make the last quarter or so of the game so much less tedious, the thought along of waiting for the steam powered metro-pod-thing to simply turn around is giving my arm an instinctual urge to pull out my phone. But regardless of that, I don’t know how else this game could truly be improved! Buy it! Play it! Love it!
While the original was iconic and revolutionary in its level/puzzle design, the remake addresses a problem that was near impossible for the original to address: logistical consistency! So many things have been changed in the remake for the sake of the story in a way that has the player constantly in a state of realization and newfound understanding. While you more or less understood the original Riven’s spaces by what you read in the game’s texts and then recontextualizing after, the remaster does without requiring reading, through environmental storytelling and (mostly) realistic placement of important puzzle pieces that also double as worldbuilding. Everything in the game makes sense and clicks in a way that makes you intimately familiar with the game’s world and ideas; it’s like exploring an abandoned, unfamiliar building and looking around single room in it and instantly realizing the building was a school because the room was a classroom.
The game is full of connected ideas like this, naturally propelling you forward into exploration and puzzle solving. It feels as though the team at Cyan have simply just documented and recreated a real space, I truly cannot give them enough praise.
The music is, ofc, still as good as it ever was, and the sound design (in most cases straight up perfectly preserved from the original) is spectacular, and the story has been given a bit of new intrigue, but I won’t spoil anything.
The few gripes I have with the game are very minor: like the occasional visible “video gamey” geometry of specific parts of landscape- only notable because the rest of the game is photo-realistic. Not super worth pointing out because it’s just not a problem, that kind of perfection shouldn't ever be expected espicially when it is clear so much work has already gone into the game. Character models and animation fit into that for me as well, they are by no standard bad, but they are not literal real people so you notice them against the photo real world. Just unrealistic to complain about, frankly. The actual big gripe I have lies in the speed of back tracking and transition animations- You’ll hit a point near the end of the game where you revisit some areas and the second, third, and maybe fourth and upward visit of that area can become really tedious when you have to wait a minute or so for a vehicle to travel over or for an elevator to climb to a top floor. Having the ability to skip these animations like you can the ladder climbing animations would just make the last quarter or so of the game so much less tedious, the thought along of waiting for the steam powered metro-pod-thing to simply turn around is giving my arm an instinctual urge to pull out my phone. But regardless of that, I don’t know how else this game could truly be improved! Buy it! Play it! Love it!