I’ve spent the past few years working through adventure games deep cuts on my Steam Deck. Odd ones like Sanitarium and Toonstruck. It seems to be one of the only methods of consumption that brings me reliable comfort, which is a sign that I’m getting old. When I wrapped up Escape from Monkey Island a few months ago, a devastating feeling came over me. With my bold pace and LucasArts zeal, I had run out of Guybrush Threepwood adventures at the ripe age of 28… will I ever play anything like this again?
Yet despite my troubling devotion to a genre that has gone the way of the dodo, I still boast a few terrible blind spots. Namely, the Cyan Worlds adventure games Myst and Riven. The liminal, somewhat numinous aesthetic of these games has always compelled me, but I was a twinkle in my father’s eye when Myst launched, and trying to pick through the various modern remakes and remasters to experience the definitive edition always tended to paralyse me.
Thankfully, all that changed earlier this week when I was sent a code for Cyan Worlds’ Riven remake, which has been built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. Starving for a good adventure game, I immediately got to work on it, only to find myself confronted by a man called Atrus, who started talking to me about Linking Books and… the dunny? I had been told that I could enjoy Riven without playing Myst, but there was an urgency to his introduction that suggested a deeper context that piqued my curiosity. I quickly gawped at some of Riven’s opening vistas, then switched it off to fill these crucial gaps.
What is the best way to play Myst?
As you can see from the image below (thank you, Matt Giuca), there’s some serious disparity between all of the versions of Myst that are playable in 2024. The original retains that early, what I would call ‘Bryce3D’ art style, a delectable visual feast challenging to replicate with modern rendering tools. realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, by comparison, takes a faithful ‘consensus reality’ approach, showing the player Myst as they may have felt it looked like in 1993, transposing that rose-tinted dream onto more modern hardware, with a few awkward compromises.
Myst 2021 is striking in its own way but also, technically, the furthest from the truth, with its sun-kissed colour-grading and real-time shadows. Honestly, there isn’t a perfect option here, but for parity with the Riven remake, I chose to play the 2021 remake of Myst. I briefly considered playing in VR but figured the note-taking would be too difficult (I was right), and the graphics really suffer on the Quest version.
Cyan’s most controversial change with the latest remake is swapping in 3D-modelled characters instead of the live-action sequences seen in the original game. There’s an option in the menus to restore the original FMVs throughout Myst 2021, but they aren’t subtitled, and I’m hard of hearing, so I had to pull up a transcript on my second monitor to follow along. More importantly, this option doesn’t restore the FMVs in the opening and ending(s), leaving the most critical scenes in the game to be delivered by this uncanny animatronic:
I’m naive to the limitations in place, so I can understand why this was done, but it would be cool to have an option to cut to the original FMV when you press play and after the final input. Given that the original game traded in this charming mixed-media approach, I don’t think this would devastate the immersion at all. Cyan has also replicated this style in one of its non-Myst titles, 2016’s Obduction, which convincingly blended live-action performances into a real-time 3D world. But anyway, enough nitpicking. What’s it like to play Myst for the first time in 2024? Well, I adored it.
Demystifying Myst
I beat Myst in six hours across two brain-teasing sittings. It was so easy to get lost in the world Cyan created, especially when reading the colourful journals in the hub world’s library, featuring diary entries of expeditions to Myst’s curious puzzle-laden otherworlds. My imagination ran wild, painting pictures of the Channelwood’s past before visiting and picking up the pieces through brilliant environmental storytelling. The lay-up to wish fulfilment pipeline here is really cool.
“The nights are absolutely beautiful here. I have made note of and named a number of constellations that pass above me. Also during the night, I catch glimmers of light from the horizon which I have not been able to discover if it is created by some natural phenomenon or by additional people on far off islands or rocks. I should very much like to discover which” – Atrus’s Stoneship Journal
Myst’s approach to storytelling is inherently archaeological. You can feel the hours of consideration taken for every stray asset and perspective provided to the player. It’s all painstakingly intentional in a manner replicated by few modern games, its nearest modern neighbour being something like Dark Souls or, better yet, Outer Wilds.
There’s also this deep-seated confidence in Myst’s underpinning lore and premise that is so refreshing. You’re dropped into a family feud between figures who have ascended to a kind of godhood, but the situation soon feels important to you. Unlike lesser games, Myst doesn’t make pains to explain the timeline or context leading up to this grave moment. Consequentially, this allows your mind to wander and ponder the boundaries of this fractured, surreal reality and the backstories of its leading ensemble. What kind of world is waiting beyond the sea? What was this family’s everyday life like before it all fell apart? It’s fascinating that a game of five trim levels can feel more grand and awe-inspiring than most open-worlds. No wonder it has inspired so much fandom among its players.
I used my old friend, the Universal Hint System, to guide me through Myst. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the UHS is a walkthrough system, but the hints are sequential and spoiler-free, designed to tenderly nudge you towards a solution rather than provide it wholesale. It means you’re not going in completely blind, but you don’t get all the answers either. Myst has a reputation for its difficulty, but I was surprised by how intuitive and coherent most of it was. I loved how the solutions were often tied carefully to the thesis of the age and the game’s overriding narrative. The compass and rotation puzzles gave me trouble, but the tough stuff was often flanked by a puzzle with cut-and-dry logic that neatly tickled the brain.
Accessibillity-wise, I was impressed by the option to flick on gameplay-related subtitles, as many puzzles rely on audio cues. My unilateral hearing loss makes it challenging to discern sound effects from one another, so this was a massive boon, especially when I was trying to map piano notation or follow streams of running water. For newcomers, I expect the most grating thing about Myst will be how slow and clunky inputting solutions can feel, but I’m already steeled to this by my years of adventure game crate-digging, so it wasn’t a big deal for me. Unfortunately, the idea of a game “respecting your time” has taken hold in recent years, with little patience given for features that aren’t entirely quality-controlled. In that respect, Myst is a throat-burning antidote to the abundance and adrenaline of modern gaming, like reading a novel in an age of endless content.
Yet Myst’s older trappings are offset by meaningful choice and consequence (four endings!) and a frankly prophetic non-linear progression that allows for evidence board eureka moments in unlikely places. The areas where it must compromise have the proxy effect of creating a profound lonely ambience that sometimes borders on terrifying. Any triggered animation that isn’t a direct result of your own input summons the same feeling as an animal scattering in the half-light, your heart rate spiking at the shock. As such, Myst’s quiet environments and feeling of entrapment leave room for eerie intrusive thoughts – what if something isn’t the same when you turn around? What could be waiting for you down this next corridor? All this to say, I think Cyan could make a brilliant horror game with the right intentions.
It’s a shame the disappointing 3D character models ever rear their heads in Myst 2021 because the game also has serious, eye-popping visual chops. The art direction is undoubtedly different to the original, but there’s something timeless about how the building blocks blur old and new, historical and sci-fi: the rocket ship next to the library, a clock tower out at sea. The agoraphobia-inducing images Myst conjures render tremendous in the mind, like lucid dreams.
Returning to Riven
Everybody talks about Myst, but anecdotally, I’ve never heard someone rave about Riven. I expected it to be broadly similar and maybe even a step down from Myst. A measured sequel, maybe, with a hub world and instanced levels. God, how I was wrong. Having rolled credits, I vastly prefer Riven to Myst. Focusing on one age brings greater cohesion to the worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. But the secret sauce, a knock-on effect of my last compliment, is that the puzzles become more connected and complicated, inspiring a deeper commitment that lets you fully ingratiate with the island-hopping narrative.
With Myst, you can get away with not having a pad and pen in front of you. But with Riven, it is mandatory. Along the way, you have to decipher two numerical systems, draw sets of symbols, recall sound effects and colours, and figure out math problems. Every game is randomised in the remake, too, so guides are no help, at least for the most important puzzles. I’ve been put off by this approach in similar games, but how Riven is paced around this is really clever. I spent the first half of my playthrough in a thrilling daze of exploration, charting the islands and solving the more straightforward Myst-like puzzles. This is already rewarding enough and could constitute its own smaller game.
But at a certain point, the rug is pulled, and you realise that you need to think bigger and properly educate yourself on the island’s culture to get to the heart of its mysteries. But by that point, the game has already done such a fantastic job of grounding you in its world and setting up the political dynamics of Riven that you’re champing at the bit to do so. When I eventually finished Riven, with pages of hastily written symbols strewn across my desk, the feeling was even better than Myst, a heady mix of pride and creative inspiration. I had gone on an adventure to another world and returned all the better for it. Many games pretend to offer this kind of experience, but few deliver. Riven is one of those precious games.
Instead of dumping all the lore on you at the start, the game provides you with a journal for its three main characters at different flashpoints in the story, creating a sort of interactive Rashomon situation. You begin with Atrus, then his wife, Catherine, and eventually, Gehn, Atrus’s estranged father, who has trapped Catherine on Riven. The opening island gives you this villainous image of Gehn manipulating Riven’s populace through religion. But by the third act, the possible resolutions feel fraught with unknowns, and your trust in all parties is shaken. It’s a brilliant story about gods playing with the lives of mortals and how generational schisms and family drama can obscure the real quotidian impact often wielded recklessly by people in power.
As a remake, Riven 2024 learns from Myst 2021’s mistakes and wields more powerful engine technology to realise the 1997 colour-grading and brain-melting awe of Riven’s previously pre-rendered scenes. The remade environments are masterfully crafted, offering grand visions of a lost, culture-blending future on the brink of destruction. The 3D character models return, too, but thanks to careful face-sculpting and cutscene framing, the difference is night and day. Still, it’d be nice to reinstate the FMVs as an option in a future update, but it would be far more complicated to do so in Riven, as characters can pop up in the middle of nowhere to frightening effect. I can’t tell you how bone-chilling it was to see the maglev vehicle connecting the islands disembark as I solved an unrelated puzzle…
But as far as fidelity is concerned, this is one of the best-looking games I’ve played in a long time, with Cyan Worlds giving breathtaking care to Riven’s materials and assets. The 2024 remake has meaningful artistic command over a series of unusual biomes that fit together under the same atmospheric roof. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself slack-jawed at parted walls of water, underground whale altars and wisps of cloud wandering over watery fissures. The visual data of Riven’s areas has wormed its way into my brain, like the rift-pocked sky of the Starry Expanse, which reminded me of the Purple Sea, the otherworld Dale Cooper finds himself in during Part 3 of Twin Peaks: The Return. Elsewhere, the intermittent appearance of critters and creatures (and the odd Rivenese inhabitant) bolsters the immersion significantly, as you find tracks and attentively placed material culture that suggests the existence of a fascinating civilization without throwing it in your face.
If you’re going to play the Riven remake, and you absolutely should, I highly recommend this spoiler-tagged hint guide by jjemb on Steam, which shows excellent restraint towards puzzle solutions, probing you to think for yourself first. Do as much as you can without it, but the hints are written carefully should you ever need an appropriate nudge in the right direction.
The ending can never truly be written
I couldn’t help but conquer Myst and Riven in one fell swoop. Herein lies the contradiction of experiencing something profound but finite – you always search for more of it. Of course, there are more Myst games, and I bought them all in the Summer Sale. According to reviews, Myst 3: Exile (developed by Presto Studios) is quite good (and features Wormtongue, Brad Dourif, as its antagonist!). Myst 4 and 5 seem passable if you want more of the same, too.
There’s also Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, an ambitious, third-person, massively multiplayer fork of the studio’s trademark gameplay, which Cyan pivoted to after Riven. The concept of this fascinates me, and it’s still being kept alive as Myst Online, so I’ll check that out next, and hopefully, I can hoodwink some friends into joining me. A seminal game studies book, Communities of Play, was written about the original incarnation of Uru and what happened to the players when it shut down, which I’m reading at the minute. So yeah… you could say I’ve become something of a Cyan Worlds fanboy. I’m currently installing realMyst so that I can check out the exclusive age, Rime. Pretty bold for someone who previously played Obduction for half an hour when he was a teenager and swiftly moved on.
As for the future of the series, there are a few exciting things to discuss. In the Riven Remake, there are a few curious additions that fans are dissecting as we speak. Notably, a room on Gehn’s World (party on) features an imager, a kind of holographic memory capture device. In the original Riven, the imager provided a message from Gehn’s wife, Keta, adding another sad dimension to his story. But in the remake, two more messages exist from characters known to Myst lore buffs. Shannon Woodward plays Ti’ana (Gehn’s human mother), and Aitrus (Gehn’s D’ni father) is played by Ronan Farrow. Pretty interesting cameos, no?
Hopefully, the Riven Remake can achieve enough commercial success to back up its warm critical reception, hopefully leading to more Cyan Worlds adventure games. Maybe they’ll be set in the D’niverse and explore the fate of T’iana and Aitrus? That would make for an exciting prequel, although I believe that story is already covered in the companion books.
Coincidental Breaking News!
As I was writing this piece, Cyan published the studio’s annual ‘State of the Union’ video and revealed that the team has been “working on a new title in the D’niverse” for the past year, and according to the developers, you won’t need to play Myst to enjoy it. Not that I needed one, but now I have a powerful excuse to catch up with what remains of the series. Speaking of which, I should probably wrap this up and get to that…
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