It was two years ago that I’ve finally played Myst from start to finish for the first time. After decades of attempts to “get it”, the game clicked with me, most likely due to the direct controls that made playing it far more convenient than the classic screen by screen navigation. And while its The Chronicles of Amber inspired story didn’t grab me that much, the constant sense of discovery in that game as the main aspect of its puzzles certainly did. Hence why I was very excited to learn that Riven: The Sequel to Myst was getting a similar treatment as well, so I could finally understand how people in Rivne live with all of these puzzles around… Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Anyway, the Riven remake is out and, from what I’ve checked in video form after completing it, quite different from how the game used to be originally. So, I suppose, I will never know if I like the original game, but I definitely enjoyed this one.
The basics of Riven are the same as they were with Myst – it’s a first person puzzle adventure game, where the emphasis is put not on finding and using inventory items, but rather at understanding what mysterious interactive elements you find in the world do and how to operate them. In practice, it’s not about finding an item to enable the mechanism you find right at the beginning of the game, rather it’s about understanding how to enable that mechanism and then learn over the course of the game how to decipher the symbols on it to operate it correctly. In fact, there aren’t that many “puzzles” in the game, it’s just that each of them requires a lot of investigating and trying things out. Like interacting with strange devices that serve as hints that build your understanding of the puzzle and also understanding which strange devices only serve a worldbuilding role and have no gameplay or hint functions.
Direct control and the ability to sprint once again make the whole experience very enjoyable. Especially since Riven is built like an interconnected world where you unlock shortcuts as you play, rather than a collection of more self-contained locations, as it was in Myst. The beautiful art design of the locations looks especially incredible due to the smart usage of Unreal Engine 5 with which the game often times looks better than the fantastic pre-rendered CGI of the mid-90s. You can also take screenshots for the in-game notebook and write notes for them, which lessens the need for pen and paper for most puzzle solutions. And on top of that, there’s a curious (if underutilized) additional tool you eventually find, that lets you see things in the world you can’t see normally, which simply wouldn’t work as a fun mechanic if the game was still point and click.
With so many cool puzzles and slow building of player knowledge and understanding of the world, Riven is full of moments which every puzzle game strives for – the moments of epiphany when a very clear assumption forms in your head and you rush to test it. If the game confirms it, you feel really smart and rewarded, if you’re wrong, you try something else. However, the big issue with the Riven remake, is that this wait between having an epiphany and testing the assumption can be painfully long. Even with direct controls, every mechanism in the world takes ages (no pun intended) to finish its animation which means going from a place where you had an idea (possibly after discovering a hint) to the place where you can test it can take minutes even when the road isn’t that long in terms of distance. To add little frustrations, notebook screenshots cannot be “pinned” to the screen, so you could be interacting while looking at them and instead you constantly need to exit the puzzle screen, enter the notebook, check the next part of the hint, go back. As a result for select puzzles it’s still much more convenient to take a picture with your phone instead of using the built-in screenshot system.
It’s a bit of a shame that several late game puzzles are more slow than difficult to solve due to all of that extra waiting as it really sours the ending of the game. Because the core experience of discovery and understanding the puzzles in Riven is genuinely great otherwise. I really liked playing the game and think that anyone who loves puzzle focused adventure games will enjoy the Riven remake as well. Just wish that the game didn’t test your patience quite as much as it does.