Man, the guy really was a bastard.

Praying it does make it to psvr2

Sadly, reMahn-Shooth has nixed new dialogue by Gehn.

Wow man it's like you lived my life! Exactly the same for me.

Reading this, I’m suddenly wondering, whether they’re gonna make Riven a multi-player game. Don’t know what triggered this, but this idea suddenly popped into my head. Not that I expect this, but I expect they would have the tools to pull this off. So, who knows . . .

​@@user-no9wi4vu3x What would even be the point? It's the quintessential single player experience. I can't think of many games as ill-suited, with its slow pace and focus on difficult puzzles you need to make notes for. The unnerving but somehow also cozy sense of loneliness is one of the game's greatest strengths. There is zero reason for Cyan to do something like this.

@ImVeryOriginal Sorry. It was just a spontaneous idea, popping up. Reading your reply, I have to fully agree with you. In fact, that’s what I appreciated the most back then: the atmosphere and the quietness. The sheer number of times I just went back, both while still playing and after having finished the game, just to enjoy that. So, yeah, I’d fully agree with you. Then again, I can also see a version, an online version, that’s fully integrated into Myst Online. So, there might be a single player version, AND a MMORPG version. Who knows. I don’t think so though. And it’s not like I wish for it.

I remember many years ago fans were doing a remake of Riven in Unreal Engine. Is that the project you are talking about? I applied to help out but didn't get the gig. Did Cyan end up taking their assets? Or did Cyan complete start from scratch in studio?

​@@MrTynanDraperyes, that was starry expanse. Cyan brought on some of their talent and probably benefitted from some of their analysis such as motion and camera matching, but they said they had less use for their assets as they were going to change a lot of the game. The general impression is that they ultimately didn't use assets from Starry Expanse except possibly for reference. I think they've been a bit vague, someone may correct me.

@@Rhodochrone Ah. . that project seems like so many years ago! I wonder how far they got. Well getting to work for Cyan is a sweet payoff for a few of them anyhow.

The remake will always be connected to starry expanse, One project ended because the other was born. So it's entirely possible some of your dna will be on the final product! As you said, they have the SE data and there was much good work in there.

In the original it wasn't obvious that you wouldn't be able to reach the shackles from the rim. I bet now it will be, which is good, because when players get to the gallows before they close the aperture, once they do close the aperture later, they'll be more likely to understand that they need to return to the gallows.

He zooms through the air/With the greatest of ease/The daring young man on/The deadly trapeze...

and "Myst IV - Revelation" to have the series complete in beautiful 3D. ^^ Myst V was already in 3D and should be fine as is.

@djayjp @grams18 Unless Cyan is gonna heavily modify these games, I need neither of them. Myst III: Exile is still okay, and I could accept that, if done properly (which I have no doubt they are able to pull of). But Myst IV: Revelation is just a disaster IMHO. The story’s background still has some merit to it, but apart from the visuals there’s not much beef in it. The gameplay is so bad, that I didn’t even finish the game. Especially at the end, where you have to make all the colorful blobs go white: there’s no overview, you’ve got no idea how far you’ve progressed and I don’t see how you can easily finish the game once you understood the basics of what you have to do. The puzzles in general are most of the time not following an understandable logic. Following Robyn Miller’s remark: “ A good puzzle should be perfectly melded into the world and into the story. It should be invisible and intuitive at the same time it should not be a chore,” well this (Myst IV) wasn’t it. Very, Very Well said by Robyn Miller, btw. I fully agree. See, the marble puzzle in Riven was utterly complex. To get to the point where you got the idea, and started to understand how to solve it, took a good deal of time. But once you knew how to solve it, doing so was relatively easy. This is what is missing all over the place in Myst IV. At this point I’d like to explicitly say sorry to Cyan. My (almost utter) contempt with Myst IV, has absolutely nothing to do with you as a company, not with any of the people working there. The original Myst IV didn’t come out of your house, and as far as I’m aware you had nothing to do with it, other than allowing it to happen. I hope, I really hope, you made a buck out of it, because you’d deserve that more than the group/company who released the game. If you’re ever gonna touch it, which I’m not waiting for, then I hope you’re gonna make it a game worth playing. As for me, I don’t feel it’s worth waisting time and effort on it. I LOVE your games, and Riven probably most of all. But Myst IV is not one of them. Literally.

@@user-no9wi4vu3x Yeah, unfortunately no other game in the series (not even the original Myst) adhered to that principle. Exile was good, but the puzzles were pretty arbitrary, every Age felt like part of an amusement park - although it compensated somewhat by being pretty and having an interesting antagonist. But yeah, Revelation was just meh, I also gave up on the bubble puzzle, it was so out of left field and just plain annoying. I really wish there were more adventure games that followed Riven's philosophy.

@@ImVeryOriginal Myst III at least had the advantage that it was *supposed* to be an amusement park, in-universe. Atrus set those ages up to intentionally contain lots of puzzles in order to teach his sons about the Art. And, well... that's not great, because it's basically just the plot apologizing for the lack of puzzle coherence. But it's better than some of the nonsense in Myst IV. I don't remember much of Uru, which is weird because Uru is huge. Myst V had the problem of "it's too easy to accidentally draw something you haven't officially learned yet and skip half the plot" mixed with "wait, this drawing pad is just a gimmicky version of old school lock-and-key puzzles."

You know, there are so many superfluous things in Riven, that are there, just to make it look like a habitable and inhabited world, but it somehow never gets in the way. For the most part, you just understand that it’s there for exactly that purpose and that purpose alone. And then underneath, the puzzles are waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting to be discovered and solved. And when you find a piece, it feels so natural that it’s just wherever it is. . I have to say, I’m also so glad that Richard Vanderwende returned for the remake. The fact that he returned should us all make shiver just that little bit extra with anticipation. I’m very curious to see the end result. And then again, I wouldn’t mind waiting another couple of years, if that’s what it takes to gives us back something we couldn’t even dream of.

Gehn's response to this statement would be, according to chatgpt: "Ah, the naïveté of such a statement! My affinity for levers was not mere affection but a testament to my ingenuity and control over Riven. Each lever, a masterstroke of engineering, symbolized my dominion over that world. Those who fail to appreciate this subtlety are blind to the grandeur of my designs."

@@RichardPrieto-jx2dv I don't know how many people are going to understand or agree with this, but my major issue with Firmament was, in all honestly, that all nearly all the levers were exactly the same - a slot for the adjunct. The best Cyan games are, at least to me, wholly characterized by the intricacy of the pieces of the world you interact with. 🥲

@@RichardPrieto-jx2dv haha. Dude had a major god complex.

@@RichardPrieto-jx2dv "chatgpt" huh? Shut up. Have an original thought jfc.

​@0plush Sure. I could have done that, but then to me, at least, it wouldn't have felt like it was authentically Gehn because it came from me.

Yeah, that would be cool. Back then, I always wanted to go out and roam around on 233, but alas, that never was possible (for understandable reasons). Maybe, just maybe, they now take the time to make that possible. I’d love that. Though I don’t hold my breath for it. Would be cool though.

Right? This remake looks how I remember Riven actually looking, even though it's obviously pixellated to all hell by today's standards. Speaks to the power of the vision behind it.

It’s work in progress 😅

In the original it wasn't possible to go down the gallows, but it looks like they've added a control for doing so. I like that, because it would make more sense that the gallows was operated from the top than the bottom when being used for its intended purpose. Also, in the original, the submarine becomes unreachable once you've gone up the gallows, and though it resets back to the village when you leave the island and come back, there isn't a good reason for the player to expect it to work like that.

@@sashakindel3600perfectly said. This would remove the need for the dark souls ladder on the previous catwalk

​@@sashakindel3600 They also altered the shackles in two ways: * Now it can execute five people at once. In the original, the gallows could only execute one person at a time. * Now there's a platform for the Stranger to (presumably) stand on. In the original, it looked like the Stranger sits on top of the shackles.

​@@NYKevin100 good eye!

I'm guessing to make it more obvious that it's a thing you're supposed to get onto, especially for VR. As an in-universe explanation, since they've removed the ladder access to the left of the prison cell, it seems like it's now how you would have to transport prisoners *up* to the holding cell as well as down to their execution (or stay thereof), so having room for more than one person would be necessary. Also I just noticed there's now 5 sets of shackles beneath the platform, so Gehn can now dispose of dissidents in bulk.

😂

They didn't upload an HDR version to KZfaq... HDR was hit or miss in the last Myst game, hopefully they do better this time.