Riven

''Riven'' is a puzzle adventure video game. It is the sequel to ''Myst'' and second in the ''Myst'' series of games. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Red Orb Entertainment, a division of Broderbund. ''Riven'' was distributed on five compact discs and released on October 31, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM on August 17, 1998, with improved audio and a fourteen-minute "making-of" video. In addition to the PC versions, ''Riven'' has been ported to several other platforms.

The story of ''Riven'' is set after the events of ''Myst''. Having been rescued from the efforts of his sons, the main non-player protagonist Atrus enlists the help of the player character to free his wife from his power-hungry father, Gehn. Unlike ''Myst'', which took place on several worlds known as Ages linked together by special books, ''Riven'' takes place almost entirely on the Age of Riven, a world slowly falling apart due to Gehn's destructive rule.

Development of ''Riven'' began soon after ''Myst'' became a success, and spanned more than three years. In an effort to create a visual style distinct from that of ''Myst'', director Robyn Miller and his brother, producer Rand Miller recruited former '' Aladdin'' production designer Richard Vander Wende as a co-director. Broderbund employed a US$10 million advertising campaign to publicize the game's release.

''Riven'' was praised by reviewers, with the magazine '' Salon'' proclaiming that the game approaches the level of art. Critics positively noted the puzzles and immersive experience of the gameplay, though publications such as ''Edge'' felt that the nature of point-and-click gameplay limited the title heavily. The best-selling game of 1997, ''Riven'' sold 1.5 million copies in one year. After the game's release, Robyn Miller left Cyan to form his own development studio, ending the professional partnership of the two brothers. Rand stayed at Cyan and continued to work on ''Myst''-related products including ''The Myst Reader'' and the real-time rendered game '' Uru: Ages Beyond Myst''. The next entry in the ''Myst'' series, '' Myst III: Exile'', was developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft. A remake of the game is in development.

Gameplay

Like its predecessor, ''Riven'' is a point and click adventure game played from a first-person perspective. The player explores immersive environments depicted through a large series of computer generated stills using mouse clicks for movement or to manipulate objects within reach. By operating mechanical contraptions and deciphering codes and symbols discovered in the surroundings, the vaguely explained goal can eventually be reached.

To navigate the world, the player clicks in the direction they want to walk or turn. The cursor changes in appearance, depending on its position on the screen and what it is hovering over, to show what effect clicking will have. For instance, if the player positions the cursor hand near the side of the screen, it may show a pointing finger, indicating that clicking will turn the view in that direction. The cursor changes in context to show when players can drag or toggle switches, or when certain items can be picked up and carried. Such items can then be examined at any time, and either reveal clues to puzzles or provide information on the game's setting and story. Like ''Myst'', ''Riven'' has an optional method of navigation known as Zip Mode, which allows players to skip to areas already explored, but may cause them to miss important clues.

''Riven'' has more complex and numerous puzzles than its forerunner and is set in a larger virtual world for players to explore. Whereas in ''Myst'' the objective of the game is to travel to different Ages to solve puzzles before returning to a "hub Age", ''Riven''s gameplay takes place on the five islands of the Age of Riven. Much of it consists of solving puzzles to access new areas of the islands, though players are also able to explore without fulfilling objectives. The volcanic landscape depicted, with its steep cliffs and crater lakes, is bestrewn with mechanical, Victorian-style artifacts such as elevators, pipes, levers and roller coaster-like transports. To solve the game, players must consider the purpose and physical principles of these artifacts as well as their role in the fictional culture.

Plot

''Riven''s story continues where ''Myst'' and its companion novel, ''The Book of Atrus'', left off. The player assumes the role of the Stranger, the protagonist of the first game and friend of Atrus (Rand Miller). Atrus knows the ancient art of creating "linking books", specially written books that serve as portals to other worlds known as "Ages". Atrus needs the Stranger's help to free his wife, Catherine (Sheila Goold; voice by Rengin Altay), who is held hostage in her home Age of Riven, which is slowly collapsing. Her captor is Gehn ( John Keston), Atrus' manipulative father and self-declared ruler of Riven. Thirty years earlier, Atrus and Catherine trapped Gehn on Riven by removing all of the linking books that led out of the Age; the last book to be removed, linking to the Age of Myst, was the one they held to escape Riven. In the belief that it would be destroyed, they let the book fall into the Star Fissure, a rift leading out of the damaged Age of Riven into a mysterious, space-like void. Catherine was later tricked into returning to Riven by her sons, Sirrus and Achenar, whereupon she was taken hostage by Gehn. Eventually, the player discovered the unharmed Myst book, leading to the events in ''Myst''.

At the beginning of ''Riven'', Atrus equips the player with a trap book—a snare that functions as a one-man prison, yet looks identical to a linking book—and his personal diary. This diary summarizes the history of events leading to the present situation; Atrus cannot explain in depth as he is engaged in rewriting the descriptive book of Riven, in an attempt to slow its deterioration. The player must enter the Age with no way of leaving, as Atrus cannot risk sending a real linking book to Riven until Gehn is safely imprisoned lest he use it to escape Riven. Instructing the player to capture Gehn in the trap book, find Catherine, and then signal him, Atrus holds out the link book that will transport the player to Riven.

Once there, the player explores the islands of Riven, eventually discovering Catherine's prison. The player also travels to Tay, the Age of the Moiety (rebellious Rivenese under the leadership of Catherine who are attempting to end Gehn's tyrannical rule), and the "233rd Age", Gehn's personal sanctuary, where the player meets Gehn himself. Gehn attempts to convince the player that his intentions to rebuild D'ni (the civilization responsible for originating the art of the link books) were honorable and that he seeks atonement for his past transgressions. Because of the decay of Riven's structure, the only way to clearly signal Atrus is to bring about a massive disturbance in the Age's stability—accomplished by reopening the Star Fissure, which Gehn had closed. When it opens, Atrus immediately links to Riven to investigate and meets the player at the brink of the Fissure. Depending on the player's actions, the ending to ''Riven'' varies. In the best ending, the player tricks Gehn into the prison book and releases Catherine. Atrus and Catherine thank the Stranger before linking back to the Age of Myst. The Stranger then falls into the Star Fissure to be taken on the path back to his world. The worst ending involves neither capturing Gehn nor releasing Catherine, which allows Gehn to kill Atrus (and then the player) and escape from his imprisonment. Other endings include capturing Gehn without saving Catherine, or being trapped in the prison book.

Development

Cyan began work on ''Riven'' in 1993, after ''Myst''s release. Before development began, when the name of the game was undecided, the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller said they wanted a "natural flow" from the first game to the sequel. As ''Myst'' proved to be a popular and commercial success, the two developers were able to expand their four-person team to a much larger crew of designers, artists, programmers, and sound designers. Development spanned more than four years, and was a much larger undertaking than for the first game; ''Riven'' had a budget of between US$5 and $10 million, more than ten times the cost of developing ''Myst''.

The design for ''Riven'' stemmed from a desire to create something different and more dynamic than the romantic style of ''Myst''. At an early point, the game's world was to be called Equiquay. The first stage of development was to create the puzzles, in an attempt to integrate them as smoothly as possible into the areas in the game. The Millers met their co-designer, Richard Vander Wende, at a demonstration of ''Myst'' for the Digital World Expo in Los Angeles. Vander Wende had previously worked for ILM, and at Disney as a designer for the animated feature '' Aladdin''. As the third member of ''Riven''s conceptual team, Vander Wende ended up contributing what Robyn Miller described as an "edgier" and complementary vision, that made the game dramatically different from its predecessor.

At the time of ''Riven''s development, publisher Broderbund was facing falling revenues as development costs rose. Two years into the project, Cyan still had nothing they could show them. Broderbund's stock dropped from $60 a share to $22 in 1996, because of a delay in the publishing of ''Riven''. The plan had been to ship the game in time for the 1996 holiday season; ''Riven'' was finally published on October 31, 1997. Even though ''Riven''s sales were expected to be higher than any other game that holiday season, Broderbund launched a $10 million marketing campaign and developed a retail marketing partnership with Toshiba America. Anticipation for the game was high even among non-gamers, helped by web-based word of mouth and well-placed media coverage.

Graphics

As in ''Myst'', the topography of the islands was originally created as grayscale images, where brightness corresponded to elevation. In Softimage, these maps were turned into the terrain models seen in the game. The large island objects were broken apart to facilitate efficient rendering, which required them to be created using polygonal geometry. All other objects were modeled using B-splines and NURBS.

Many of the textures were accumulated during a three-day trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The artists took hundreds of photos of wood, adobe, sand, stucco and other materials, which were treated in Photoshop before being mapped onto the 3D geometry. Whereas many computer-generated environments of the time ended up looking smooth, like plastic, the Millers and Vander Wende developed a more gritty and weathered design, with corroded and aged elements, to imply reality. The artists considered how objects would look and function if they were real, where and how they would be worn, and created corresponding details. While bump maps were occasionally used to simulate geometry, even small details such as screws were often individually modeled.

Rendering was executed in Mental Ray, using numerous custom-made shaders to produce lifelike lighting, water and landscapes. Wireframes also served as a guide to model the backgrounds. In total ''Riven'' has over three hours of video and almost five thousand images; rendering was a major bottleneck in production despite the use of 18 dedicated workstations. Some scenes consisted of tens of thousands of individual models and textures and more than a hundred virtual light sources. Loading a single island model could take two hours. Runtime animation effects were created by Mark DeForest, to add flying insects and simple water ripples.

''Riven'' combined the pre-rendered backgrounds with live action footage, in order to increase the player's immersion level. ''Riven'' was the first game in which any of its designers had directed live actors, and Vander Wende was apprehensive about their use. Rand Miller had to reprise his role of Atrus from ''Myst'', even though he hated acting. All the actors were filmed with a blue screen as a backdrop, which was removed in post-production by chroma key, so that the actors would blend into the virtual environment. Real world stairs, doorways and studio lights had to be meticulously positioned on the live stage to match their CG equivalents. Some sequences were seamlessly cut together with morphing, to allow for partial variations due to the nonlinearity of the gameplay.

Audio

Robyn Miller composed ''Riven''s music, which was later packaged and released by Virgin Records as ''Riven: The Soundtrack''. Miller designed the liner notes and packaging, which included English translations of the language found in the game. Whereas the music to ''Myst'' was, at first, only available by mail-order from Cyan, Virgin Records had bought the rights to release it initially, prompting Miller to make sure that it could stand alone in CD form. The compact disc was released on February 24, 1998, with 54 minutes of music.

Miller established three leitmotifs for the game's three central characters, Atrus, Catherine, and Gehn. Gehn's theme is only heard in its complete form near the end of the game, but portions of the melody can be heard throughout Riven, highlighting his control of the Age. Miller tried to let the environment dictate the resulting sound in order to make the music as immersive as possible. He blended live instrumentation with synthesizers: "By mixing and matching conventional instrumentation, you can create an odd, interesting mood," Miller said. Ultimately, he wanted the music of ''Riven'' to reflect the game itself, which he described as having "a familiar-yet-strange feel to it."

Miller described his biggest challenge in writing ''Riven''s music as reconciling the linear, pleasing construction of music with the nonlinearity of the gameplay. As players can freely explore all areas, Miller explained in an interview, "the music can't say anything too specific. If it says something, if it builds in intensity and there starts to be a climax, and people are just standing in a room looking around, and they're thinking 'What's going on in here? Is something about to jump out from behind me?' You can't have the basic parts of music that you'd like to have, you can't have a basic structure. It's all got to be just flowing, and continue to flow." Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine argued that the soundtrack is "appealingly atmospheric", but "lacks definition", and that the music loses impact when separated from the game.

Ports

Sunsoft, who previously published ''Myst'' for the Sega Saturn, were initially set to publish the Saturn version of ''Riven'' in PAL regions, but the rights were later picked up by Acclaim Entertainment. Atari Corporation were in talks with Sunsoft in regards for a potential conversion of ''Riven'' to the Atari Jaguar that never materialized. On December 17, 2017, ScummVM added support for ''Riven''.

Reception

''Riven'' was generally positively received by critics, with the PC version garnering an average critic score of 83/100 at Metacritic. PC Data reported it as the best-selling computer game in the United States during 1997, despite its having only been on the market for less than three months. ''Myst'' or ''Riven'' held the number one and two spots on the PC Data sales charts from June 1997 until January 1998. By April, ''Riven'' had sold over 1 million units and earned $46.2 million in revenue domestically, which led PC Data to declare it the fifth-best-selling computer game in the United States between January 1993 and April 1998. Sales surpassed 1.5 million units within a year of its release. By 2001, over 4.5 million units had been sold.

Jeff Segstack of GameSpot gave the game high marks, explaining that it is "a leisurely paced, all-encompassing, mentally challenging experience. If you enjoyed ''Myst'', you'll thoroughly enjoy ''Riven''." '' Computer Gaming World'' stated that the graphics were the best they had seen in any adventure game. '' GamePro'' said that it "retains the ambiance of ''Myst'', but new features, such as increased use of animation and live action footage, create even more believable environments." The reviewer gave it a 4.5 out of 5 in graphics and a perfect 5.0 in every other category (sound, control, and funfactor), and predicted that it would both surpass the expectations of ''Myst'' fans and draw in many new enthusiasts to the series. Laura Miller of '' Salon'' declared that "Art ..is what ''Riven'' approaches," and praised the gameplay as having "a graceful elegance that reminds erof a masterfully constructed novel." The game's sound and graphics were consistently praised. '' Macworld''s Michael Gowan highlighted the game's "rich, engrossingly mysterious world", and he argued that the quality of its storytelling made ''Riven'' "more like a good novel than a computer game."

Nevertheless, several publications found fault with aspects of ''Riven''. ''Computer Gaming World'' felt that the gameplay was too similar to the original ''Myst'', making ''Riven'' the "same game with a new title"; the magazine also criticized the minimal character interaction. Gaming magazine ''Edge'' felt that although ''Riven'' was a good game, the solitary atmosphere and lack of mobility was steadily becoming outdated, as games like '' Super Mario 64'' sacrificed graphical fidelity for an increase in freedom. They stated "the question is whether Cyan can incorporate its almost Tolkien-esque world-building skills into a more cutting-edge game vehicle next time." Even long-time players of the ''Myst'' games, such as Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers, felt that a few puzzles were too difficult; '' Computer and Video Games'', meanwhile, believed that the story clues were too symbolic and scant, which made following the plot difficult. '' Next Generation'' commended ''Riven'' for being highly accessible to the general public rather than just experienced gamers, but also said the puzzles, while an improvement over those of ''Myst'', were still not well-integrated into the story, making them feel like arbitrary obstacles to progress.

''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (EGM) and ''GamePro'' both positively reviewed the PlayStation port, remarking that ''Riven'' is very specific to the player's taste, with a slow pace, intricate plot, vast size, and often frustrating set of puzzles that would likely infuriate traditional action gamers but engross the more patient player. Kelly Rickards and Shawn Smith of ''EGM'' argued that while the game is superficially very similar to ''Myst'', subtle elements such as the greater amount of interaction and better puzzle design make it more appealing, and anyone with an open mind should give it a try. ''GamePro'' gave it the same scores as the PC version, excepting only that the graphics category dropped to a 4.0 out of 5. John Broady of ''GameSpot'', however, said that while the developers had done the best they could with converting the game, the limitations of the PlayStation made it fall far short of the PC original, with dithered scenery, muddy video sequences, and long load times. He concluded that "Playing ''Riven'' on the PlayStation is sort of like watching '' Star Wars'' on a 13 TV; you'll get the point but you're definitely missing something."

Despite the success of the game, the Miller brothers eventually pursued other projects. Robyn Miller said: "I think it would be a detriment to always, for the rest of our lives, be creating ''Myst''-like projects. ��We're going to change, evolve and grow, just like any person does in any manner." Robyn would leave Cyan to form a new development company called Land of Point; Vander Wende would also leave to pursue other projects. The next video game entry in the ''Myst'' franchise would be 2001's '' Myst III: Exile'', which was not developed by Cyan nor published by Broderbund. Presto Studios took over development; Ubisoft acquired Broderbund's entertainment library from The Learning Company (formerly SoftKey) and published the Myst sequels.

The reviewer from ''Pyramid'' #29 (Jan./Feb., 1998) stated that "''Myst'', and now ''Riven'', are worlds to be explored, with complex puzzles to be solved, and without time limitations or enemies to worry about. Take all the time you like; the basic problems of the game will still be there, waiting for you to solve them."

Remake

Cyan announced plans to release a remake of ''Riven'' on the game's 25th anniversary on October 31, 2022. Cyan said the game will feature fully explorable 3D environments, in a similar manner to the 3D remake of ''Myst''. Cyan reached out to The Starry Expanse project, a fan-driven effort to recreate ''Riven'', about a year prior to the announcement, working out a deal to work with members of that team to use their efforts within the remake of ''Riven''.

References

External links

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1997 video games
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