Riven Feature Remaking a Masterpiece
Introduction
On Halloween night, 1997, when most kids were out trick-or-treating and teepeeing houses, I was locked in my bedroom with the lights turned off, hunched over a 40-pound CRT monitor, obsessing over every pixel of Riven: The Sequel to Myst.
I discovered five islands ripped apart by mysterious forces. An ancient civilization with the power to create bridges between worlds with books. A man who believed he was a god. A woman determined to free her people.
Over the next few weeks, I pulled levers, pushed buttons, and unlocked doors until I heard their steam-powered pneumatics in my sleep. I read every journal left behind by the people who lived in Riven. I said Oh my God out loud at least a dozen times and gasped in surprise just as often.
If Myst was The Hobbit of point-and-click adventure games, Riven was The Lord of the Rings. Built by a small studio called Cyan in Spokane, Washington, it had photorealistic graphics on par with its eras Hollywood movies and the narrative intricacy of a novel.
But for many people, it was more than just a technical marvel. It was a life-changing experience.
I can directly trace my path to the gaming industry back to Riven, says Sam Winkler, narrative director at Gearbox Software and co-writer on Borderlands 3.
I often credit Myst and Riven as the main inspiration of my creativity today, says David Howe, lead editor of Netflixs Castlevania series.
An engineering lead on Diablo IV, Jeff Stewart, says Riven was the single most inspirational game he ever played.
But in 1998, a few months after Riven came out on October 31, 1997 before it sold 4.5 million copies and became the runner-up to Myst as the best-selling PC game of all time until 2002 the games three creative leads parted ways.
Rand Miller, the developer who played franchise protagonist Atrus on-screen, stayed at Cyan and became CEO of the oldest surviving independent game studio in America. His brother Robyn Miller, the artist and composer behind many of Myst and Rivens sights and sounds, left the company to pursue other interests. Richard Vander Wende, the production designer of Disneys Aladdin who pushed the Millers sequel to new heights in iconic imagery and character-driven realism, went back to the film industry.
Two decades passed before Rand Miller asked a question.
What if we went back to Riven?
And then, What if we made it bigger and better?
Rebuilding A World
Rebuilding A World
Twenty-six years after the original Riven was released, I arrive in Spokane at the peak of autumn, when the forest surrounding Cyans headquarters is bright with red and gold leaves. I immediately recognize the front door from Richard Kadreys 1997 coffee table book, From Myst to Riven an otherworldly arch that looks like it was torn away from the rest of the Arts-and-Crafts-style building by an earthquake.
The bricklayers loved that, the voice of Atrus tells me. They said it was the most fun thing theyd ever done.
In person, Rand Miller doesnt remind me of the bespectacled scholar (and questionable father) hes played in six consecutive Myst games. Now 64 years old, with long locks of gray hair and a penchant for Birkenstocks, Miller exudes the easygoing and paternal warmth of a surfing instructor. He speaks with the slightest hint of a southwestern drawl, no doubt from his years living in New Mexico and Texas.
Miller shows me around the House That Myst Built. I see mannequins dressed in costumes from the original Riven, a display case full of awards, and a massive knife prop built by Adam Savage before Mythbusters made him famous. In the back of the building, overlooking an algae-filled pond and a grove of ponderosa pines, we reach a conference room with a cyan-blue ceiling.
Why remake Riven after all these years, I ask.
Miller takes a deep breath. Riven was sacred to us, so we waited until the technology finally caught up to the point where we could make something that looked even better than the original, but in 3D, he says. [And] my first thought was, we need to make it look precisely the same.
But then Miller reached out to Vander Wende, the original games co-director, with a tantalizing question: If you could change anything about Riven, pie-in-the-sky, what would you change?
Vander Wende arrives at Cyan a little later in the morning, fresh off a plane from Hawaii. Hes in his 60s now, too, and tall like Miller but more soft-spoken. He also sounds like every bit of the perfectionist he was in the 90s.
I cant do something half-assed unless somebody puts a gun to my head, Vander Wende says. Turning to Miller, he continues: I was really dubious when you approached me about coming back to Cyan. Why would I want to remake something I already did? I never even played the original game after it came out. Doing an imitation of it held no interest for me.
As a result, the new Riven isnt a carbon copy of the original. There are new puzzles, new locations, and new pieces of lore alongside structural changes to make the world more narratively consistent. And this time, itll be fully traversable in real-time 3D instead of an interconnected series of 4,000 still images and quick time events.
We looked at the backstory that gave rise to the world of Riven and the characters that inhabited it, Vander Wende says. We found discrepancies and corrected those and embellished things that needed to be filled in.
I raise my eyebrows. Miller notices. This is a dangerous question, but when you heard we were remaking Riven, what kinds of things did you hope wed do? he asks me.
I think about it for a few seconds. I tell him all the parts of the world I wanted to explore more, as well as the two additional worlds we only glimpsed in the original game. I wince, worrying Ive just described an impossibly grand vision for the new Riven.
But Miller smiles. So far? Check, check, check, check.
Rewriting A Memory
Rewriting A Memory
Was there always a stairwell over here?
Im exploring Book Assembly Island, also known as Crater Island or Boiler Island. I can hear the turquoise water lapping against the shore of its volcanic caldera and the wind pouring over the cliffs above me. The sky is the same blue I remember from my childhood, but now I can walk anywhere and look in any direction.
Seven or eight Cyantists, including Miller and Vander Wende, are sitting behind me, watching me play their new version of Riven.
Hannah Gamiel, Cyans development director and one of the two people who will lead it when Miller retires, informs me that there was not, in fact, always a stairwell over here. I descend into a dark cave, where an entirely new location presents a new series of puzzles, as well as new insights into the world.
Within seconds, Im lost. Always follow the pipes, Gamiel says, sitting to my right. Our games should have been called Follow the Pipes 1 and Follow the Pipes 2.
Gamiel first played Riven when she was 4 years old, sitting in her mothers lap. I was the designated disc-swapper, she says. The original game was split across five separate CD-ROM discs, one for each island. Gamiels mother, Robin, would later meet and marry Rand Miller.
Gamiel started working at Cyan in 2013, first in the QA department and then as a programmer. Those were super lean years, she says of the time before Obduction, the companys Kickstarter comeback in 2016.
Later, elsewhere on the same island, I break into a regal laboratory built by Gehn Atruss father, a world-conqueror with a god complex whos been trapped on Riven for decades only to discover that the interior has completely changed compared to the original game.
One of the first things I did when I came back was write a rough outline of Gehns 30 years on Riven, which we had never done before, Vander Wende says. Once I did that, it was easier to make decisions [about what to change or add].
After a white-knuckle ride on Gehns magnetic levitation tram, I reach the other island Cyan made available during my demo, where Gehn spied on the Rivenese people from a Gothic underwater stronghold. On the surface of the island, one of the structures I remember is missing completely, and there are new puzzles to solve, but Miller assures me the other islands hold even bigger and wilder surprises.
What do you think, Miller asks me. Youre the first person to see any of this outside the company.
Im stunned. In some ways, it feels identical to my memory of Riven, I say. But in other ways, its like Im playing it for the first time because there are new places and new things I dont understand.
Vander Wende frowns. All I can see are the mistakes, he says but laughs along with everyone else.
Technical Difficulties
Technical Difficulties
Its a puzzle, Miller says.
A few hours later, we arent in Riven anymore. Were in the Cyan parking lot, and I cant figure out how to open the passenger door on Millers Tesla Model Y. Vander Wende cant figure it out either, and I think Miller, who is probably one of the most famous puzzle designers in America alongside Will Shortz and that guy who buried a treasure chest in the Rocky Mountains, is sadistically enjoying our confusion.
Once we solve the puzzle (I couldnt tell you how for the life of me now), Miller drives us through the Douglas fir forests north of Spokane to a restaurant for lunch, where I get to know Cyans creative director, Eric A. Anderson, the other person who will lead the company alongside Gamiel after Miller retires.
I stumbled on Cyan when I was in art school collecting issues of Cinefex magazine, Anderson tells me. Now in his 40s, he still has the barely bottled energy of a Cyan fan whose dreams have come true. There was a help-wanted ad in the back that said something like, Were making Myst II, and we need 3D artists. Anderson emailed Cyan asking if it hired college interns, but fate wouldnt bring him to Spokane until the year 2000 when Miller was spearheading the ambitious, aforementioned MMORPG.
Decades later, in the early days of the Riven remake, Anderson and Gamiel thought they might be able to reuse some of the original games 3D models, even though most of them had been lost to the tech-death of SGI workstations, the same now-defunct computers that Industrial Light & Magic used to make Jurassic Park. But when they finally managed to locate and open a single file from the 90s, it was too low-resolution, forcing them to recreate every inch of the islands from scratch in Unreal Engine 4.
Cyan also met with a grassroots team of Riven fans called the Starry Expanse, which had been painstakingly translating the games old models into its own version of a 3D Riven for more than 13 years. We referenced some of their assets for measurements, but they were replicating the old Riven, Anderson says. Once Richard [Vander Wende] came back, we knew things were going to change, so it was easier to just build everything ourselves.
One of the biggest technical challenges for Anderson and Gamiel has been bringing Rivens characters back to life. The original game featured live-action video performances by several actors, including Rand Miller as Atrus, Sheila Goold and Regina Altay as his wife Catherine, and Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus John Keston as his father Gehn.
But its literally impossible to graft a 2D video from 1997 into a real-time, high-resolution 3D environment. Cyans previous remake, 2021s award-winning VR and PC version of Myst, featured computer-generated characters in lieu of the original live-action performances. It was an experiment, Miller laughs, but for the new Riven, Cyan hired a full-time animation lead, Autumn Palfenier, to raise the uncanny valley.
For Gehn, we tried analyzing the [old] video and tracking certain features, but the resolution was so low, and its not even a full shot, so it just wasnt doable, Anderson says. Instead, theyve been filming performances in Cyans basement using motion-capture technology.
I can say on the record that this is a union production with SAG-AFTRA, Gamiel says, referring to the same labor guild that represents Hollywood actors. We wanted to get some incredible talent into this game.
She wont tell me whos playing who but does confirm that Miller will return as Atrus and that the studio managed to salvage an old audio recording of John Keston, who died from COVID-19 complications in February 2022 at the age of 97. We had an actor study Johns performance and then do it in sync with the original audio, so we got Gehns full body, Anderson says. They show me a work-in-progress close-up of Gehns face, which exceeds my expectations.
For Gamiel, working with professional actors has been the most rewarding part of the project. When I watched some of these performances, I was shook. They brought us to tears. People are going to be impressed.
The Ending Has Not Yet Been Written
The Ending Has Not Yet Been Written
Back at Cyans headquarters, I try to get one more surprise on the record before leaving Spo kane behind.
Can you confirm a release year for Riven? I ask.
Miller, Gamiel, and Anderson look at each other and make several faces. Its coming out sooner than people might think, Gamiel says. They also cant confirm or deny (yet) that there are any plans for a VR version, only that itll be available for PCs.
After Riven, will we revisit the Dni universe in a future Cyan game? I ask, referring to the fictional civilization responsible for Myst and Rivens linking book technology, of which Gehn and Atrus are practicing descendants.
100%, Anderson and Gamiel say in unison. Star Wars figured out how to tell more than just the story of the Skywalker family, and were trying to do the same thing, Anderson says. There are more stories to tell in the Dni universe that arent directly about Atruss family. There are other characters out there that [our fans] are familiar with, and it would be a shame if we didnt leverage those to our benefit.
Its time for me to go, but I keep thinking about something Vander Wende said the day before. When Riven came out, most of my friends and family didnt play because it was too difficult. I just didnt know whether what we made really meant anything to anyone, he said.
Days later, back at home in North Carolina, my 7-year-old daughter walks up to my desk while Im writing this story. She notices an image of the original Riven on my second screen a dramatic vista of a massive golden dome surrounded by vertical sea stacks.
Where is that place? she asks, her eyes wide.
I almost tell her its from a video game. I think about playing Myst with my dad and playing Riven with my brother. I think about how happy my mom was when I told her I was flying out to Spokane. I think about Vander Wende, Miller, Gamiel, and Anderson and what it means for art to make an impact on people.
Ill take you there soon, I say.
This article originally appeared in Issue 362 of Game Informer