Riven
The PC box art for Riven, showcasing Richard Vander Wende's concept of what players would first see on the Age of Riven.[2]
Developer(s)	Cyan
Publisher(s)	Brøderbund (PC, Mac) Mean Hamster Software (Pocket PC)
Designer(s)	Robyn Miller Richard Vander Wende
Platform(s)	PC Windows, PlayStation, Mac OS, Sega Saturn, Pocket PC
Release	October 29, 1997 (PC/Mac) (Hybrid CD-ROM) (PlayStation) (Saturn) Summer 1997[1] (Pocket PC)
Genre(s)	Graphic adventure game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Riven is the sequel to the highly successful computer game Myst. It was initially distributed on five compact discs and was released on October 29, 1997 in North America; the game was later released on a single DVD-ROM with a fourteen-minute making-of video and higher quality graphics.^[3] In addition to the PC versions, Riven was ported to several other platforms, including the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.

The story of Riven is set immediately after the events of Myst. Having been rescued from the machinations of his sons, Atrus enlists the help of the Stranger to free his wife from Atrus' power-hungry father, Gehn. Unlike Myst, which took place on several worlds known as Ages and linked together by special books, Riven takes place almost entirely on the eponymous Age of Riven, an inhabited world slowly falling apart due to Gehn's rule.

Development for the game began soon after Myst became a success, and spanned more than three years. In an effort to create a visual style distinct from Myst's, director Robyn Miller and producer Rand Miller recruited former Aladdin production designer Richard Vander Wende as a co-director. Publisher Brøderbund used a $10 million advertising campaign to publicize the game's release.^[4]

The game was generally praised by professional reviewers, with the magazine Salon saying that the game approaches the level of art.^[5] Critics positively noted the puzzles and immersive experience of the gameplay, though some such as Edge felt that the nature of point-and-click gameplay limited the title heavily.^[6] The title was the best-selling game of 1997, and sold 1.5 million copies in one year.^[7] After the game's release, the Miller brothers drifted apart, with Robyn Miller forming his own development studio while older brother Rand stayed at Cyan and continued to work on Myst-related products,^[7] including the novel Myst: The Book of D'ni. Richard Wende would also leave Cyan to pursue other projects. The next video game in the Myst series, Myst III: Exile, would be developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft.

Gameplay

Like its predecessor Myst, Riven is a point-and-click adventure game taking place in a first-person perspective. The player explores immersive, prerendered environments using mouse clicks for movement;^[8] the objective is to solve puzzles in order to reach a nebulous goal stated at the beginning of the game.^[9] The cursor changes in appearance depending on what a player is pointing at;^[8] for example, when the player positions the cursor near the edge of the screen, the pointer changes from the shape of a pointing hand to a bent finger.^[8]

Several items, including journal pages which give clues to puzzles or offer backstory, can be picked up and carried by the player.^[10] These items can then be examined at any time.^[10][11] As with movement, the cursor changes in context to show when players can drag or toggle switches.^[10]

As in Myst, Riven has an optional method of moving known as "Zip Mode". This allows players to skip to areas already explored, but can lead to missing important clues.^[8] Whereas in Myst the objective of the game is to travel to different worlds known as Ages and solve puzzles there before returning to a hub Age, Riven's gameplay takes place on the five islands of the eponymous Age of Riven. Much of the gameplay consists in solving puzzles to access new areas of the islands, but players can also explore without fufilling any objectives.^[11]

Story

Although Riven is the sequel to Myst, it also ties up loose ends from the companion novel Myst: The Book of Atrus. The player assumes the role of the Stranger, the protagonist of the first game and friend of Atrus. Atrus is the creator of many books which serve as links to other worlds known as "Ages"; the ability to write these books is known as the "Art". Atrus needs the Stranger's help to free his wife Catherine, who is trapped on the slowly collapsing Age of Riven by his unhinged father Gehn. Atrus and Catherine had previously trapped Gehn on Riven by removing all linking books from that age; the very last book to be removed, linking to the island of Myst, was the one Atrus held as he used to escape Riven. Atrus hoped the book would fall into the star fissure, a void leading out of the reality of the damaged Age of Riven and into unknown space; the book ends up falling to Earth to be found by the Stranger, sparking the events of Myst. Catherine, however, was subsequently tricked into returning to Riven by Atrus' sons and was captured by Gehn.

Atrus equips the Stranger with a trap book—book that appears to be a linking book, but is actually a one man prison—and his personal diary by way of explaining 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. Atrus will not risk sending a real linking book to Riven until Gehn is safely imprisoned, in case his father should capture the book and use it to escape his confinement; the Stranger must thus enter an Age with no way of leaving.^[11] Atrus tells the Stranger that he must capture Gehn in the trap book, find Catherine, and then signal him.

The Stranger travels across the islands of Riven and eventually finds Catherine. 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 by reopening the star fissure, which Gehn had closed; Atrus immediately links to Riven to investigate, and meets the Stranger at the brink of the fissure. Depending on the player's actions, the ending to Riven varies considerably. In the canon ending, the Stranger tricks Gehn into the prison book and released Catherine, who meets Atrus at the brink of the fissure and link back to Myst. The Stranger then falls into the star fissure, to be taken on the path back to his own world. Other endings can result in the Stranger's death or his own entrapment in the prison book.

Development

Cyan started working on Riven in 1993 immediately after Myst's release. Before the name of Riven was decided, the Miller Brothers wanted a "natural flow" from the first game to the sequel.^[12] As Myst soon showed out to be a popular and commercial success, the two developers had the possibility of expanding from their previous four-people team to a much larger crew of designers, artists, programmers, and sound designers.^[2] Development spanned more than four years, and was a much larger undertaking than for the first game;^[2] the graphics of Riven have more than 5,000 frames a player can view, twice the number in Myst.^[13]

The design for the areas of Riven came from a desire to create something different and more dynamic than the Romantic styles of Myst.^[2] The first stage of development was to create the puzzles, in an attempt to integrate them as smoothly as possible into the areas.^[2] The Millers met their eventual co-designer Richard Vander Wende at a demonstration of Myst for the Digital World Expo in Los Angeles.^[2] Wende had previously worked for Disney as a designer for the animated feature Aladdin.^[14] As the third member of Riven's conceptual team, Wende ended up contributing what Robyn Miller described as an "edgier" and complementary vision which made the game dramatically different than its predecessor.^[2] Whereas many computer-generated environments of the time ended up looking smooth like plastic,^[2] the Millers and Wende developed a more gritty and rustic design with corroded elements.^[14]

Riven combined pre-rendered backgrounds with live action footage of actors to increase the level of immersion.^[11][2] All the actors were filmed with a blue screen as a backdrop. In post-production the blue was removed by chroma key so that the actors would blend into the computer graphics.^[14] Rand Miller had to reprise his role of Atrus from Myst, even though he hated acting.^[14] Riven was the first game for which any of its designers had directed live actors, and Wende was apprehensive about their use.^[2]

At the time of Riven's development, publisher Brøderbund was facing falling revenues as development costs rose. Brøderbund's stock dropped from 60 US dollars a share to 22 in 1996 when it delayed the publishing of Riven.^[4] To help boost Riven's sales, which were expected to make it the best-selling game of the 1997 holiday season, Brøderbund launched a $10 million marketing campaign^[4] and developed a retail marketing partnership with Toshiba America.^[15] According to The Boston Globe, the release of the game was highly anticipated even among non-gamers, due to web-based word of mouth and well-placed media coverage.^[16][9]

Sound

Robyn Miller composed the music to Riven, which was later packaged and released by Virgin Records as Riven: The Soundtrack. Robyn designed the liner notes and packaging, which included English translations of the hieroglyphic language found in the game.^[17] Whereas the music to Myst (which Miller also wrote) has initially only been available by mail-order from Cyan, Virgin Records had bought the rights to release the music initially; this meant that Miller wanted to make sure that the music could stand on its own in CD form.^[18]

Miller established three leitmotifs for the game's three central characters: Atrus, Catherine, and Gehn.^[19] Gehn's theme is only heard in its complete form near the end of the game, portions of the melody can be heard throughout Riven— this served to influence the way Gehn controlled his Age.^[20] Miller tried to let the environment dictate the resulting sound in order to make the music as immersive as possible.^[17] The composer also mixed and matched live instrumentation with synthesizers; "By mixing and matching conventional instrumentation, you can create an odd, interesting mood," Miller stated.^[19] Ultimately, Miller wanted the music of Riven to reflect the game itself, which he described as "a familiar-yet-strange feel to it".^[19]

Miller described his biggest challenge in writing Riven's music as reconciling the linear, pleasing construction of music with the nonlinearity of Riven's gameplay. As players of the game 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."^[18]

Reception and legacy

Riven was positively received, with the PC version garnering an average critic score of 84% at Game Rankings.^[24] The game sold more than 1.5 million units within a year of its release, and was the best-selling game of 1997,^[7] despite having only been on the market for less than three months.

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."^[21] Computer Gaming World stated that the graphics were the best they had ever seen in any adventure game.^[25] Laura Miller of Salon declared that "Art [...] is what Riven approaches," and praised the gameplay as having "a graceful elegance that reminds [her] of a masterfully constructed novel".^[5] The game's sound and graphics were consistently praised.^{[23][21][16][9]}

Nevertheless, several publications found fault with certain 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 disagreed with the minimal character interaction.^[25] 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 some graphical fidelity for an increase in freedom; Edge stated "the question is whether Cyan can incorporate its almost Tolkien-esque world-building skills into a more cutting-edge game vehicle next time."^[6] Even long-time players of the Myst games, such as Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers, felt that some puzzles were too difficult;^[22] Computer and Video Games, meanwhile, felt that the story clues were too symbolic and scant, which made following the story difficult.^[26]

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."^[12] Robyn would leave Cyan to form a new development company^[7] called Land of Point.^[27] The next video game entry in the Myst franchise would be 2001's Myst III: Exile, which was not developed by Cyan or published by Broderbund; Presto Studios took over development, and Ubisoft published.^[28]

References

External links

• Riven product page at Ubisoft