Myst was a massive success when it was released. It was a major influence in the adoption of the CD-ROM drive, and would keep its status as greatest selling PC game until The Sims passed it in 2002. The game was frustratingly difficult and slow paced, but atmospheric and mature in its expectation of patience and attention to detail out of the player. Its pre-rendered backgrounds were technologically impressive for the time, helping to give the game an immersion that most other games weren't accomplishing with adults. Naturally, a sequel was well anticipated.
Riven took what Myst did well and improved on it in just about every way. The story was improved to give the world of Riven a better sense of place and weight, something accentuated by the massive improvement in soundtrack and pre-rendered visuals. The puzzles were significantly more difficult, but given better tip-offs to their various components than in the original (anyone remember the submarine sound puzzle from Myst). With this expanded difficulty, however, comes a far lower finish rate for this much improved sequel, which may be a con more than a pro depending on how well you liked the original Myst.
Riven is one of my favorite games of all time, and my favorite of the Myst series. The pre-rendered backgrounds of the original felt like very early computer graphics, with a hodgepodge of different styles littering the island in a way that may have looked nice for the time, but was ridiculous if you were trying to consider this a believable world. Riven is so much more impressive on this front that it could be more of a spiritual successor if it didn't continue off from the first game. There are games that have an atmosphere all their own, where that game feels distinctly their own (think Halo, Metal Gear Solid, or Bioshock), and one of the forgotten masters of unique atmosphere must be Riven. The world is absolutely dripping with this abandoned wonder, a world of icons and religious significance, mysterious mechanisms, and haunting visuals. I have yet to find a game that has quite the same feeling of isolation and history that Riven does. In all of my favorite worlds, there is usually a hint of this: Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls. Yet still, there is something invoked out of that meeting place where Riven's soundtrack, visuals, and world construction cross into one another that has yet to be replicated.
But Riven isn't just atmosphere, as much as I would pretty well be satisfied with that. Riven has devilishly tough puzzles, but of a certain type. Rather than the spacial complexity of Stephen's Sausage Rolls or physicality of Portal, puzzles that probably better fit the "puzzle" genre than any of the Myst games, Riven requires you to learn the world's iconography and sense of space in order to proceed. Riven often requires you to go down a path to find one part of a puzzle, only then to ask you to backtrack and pay attention to doors opened, levers pulled, or lamps lit or unlit in order to recognize that, more than likely, multiple paths exist where only one was obvious. Riven's puzzle structure is aligned with the puzzles' complexity. Your first task, despite the presence of puzzle pieces scattered around before you on the starting island, is to find the multiple paths from island to island. There are five islands in total, four of which are interconnected whose connections must be found or unlocked. As you solve the puzzles required to open up these pathways, each of the islands present their own island-centric puzzles. These can sometimes require traveling to other islands in order to find the missing information connecting the independent parts of the puzzle (such as the number-ball puzzle on the village island, which requires in part going to two different islands for two small pieces of information nearly required to solve the puzzle). When these are completed, you enter the final stretch where you must solve an island-spanning puzzle, pieces of which you've picked up in or through the other puzzles. The game comes together incredibly well, even if these puzzles can be somewhat demanding. The ball puzzle of the village island, for example, not only requires remembering the sounds of animals that you may only see once in the game, but also learning a new base-5 numbering system that the people of Riven use (disclaimer: I love having to learn a minor language or numbering system if its done well, as it is here). And once you've gotten that under your belt, there is still one of the balls that requires going to another island to find the ball which has been taken out of its slot, and then going to another island to get the proper perspective on where the ball is in order to finally solve it. It's the only puzzle in the game I felt might have been a bit too opaque, although I wouldn't say it was unfair.
Riven has dated, for sure, but it is surprisingly immersive and challenging today, and more than a worthwhile play. I can't think of any game of this type that is as challenging or patient as Riven, and if the Myst series or Myst-like genre is a gap in your classic PC gaming history, then you owe it to yourself to play the reigning classic of the genre.
10
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