DF Retro EX: Riven - An Adventure Classic Returns on PC & Meta Quest 

Quest developer here - the frame generation technique for quest is actually called Application Space Warp. Asynchronous Space Warp is a similar technique specific to PC Oculus titles. Application Spacewarp for Quest uses motion vectors generated by the game to allow it to render at half frame rate and then the Quest generates the in between frames using said motion vectors. Loved the video John! This was an awesome break down.

I really hope Cyan get the recognition that they deserve for bringing back Riven to the modern age. This and Myst are truly one of a kind atmospheric puzzle games.

A good friend was a writer for Riven and he has no idea how important this game was to so many people. I remember seeing this game in 98 but had no computer or money but was so intrigued by the artwork. Fast forward to 2011 and hanging out at my friends house upstate NY and there was a Riven award he was using as a bookend. He was like yeah I was a writer for that game before I got into writing for TV. I was surprised how nonchalant he was about it.

22:00 The sound tour was SO GOOD. John's storytelling and editing are again shining here, as we get a slice of total immersion in this game's beautiful and haunting presentation.

Myst may have the bigger name because of it's impact on the gaming market but Riven is Cyan's true masterpiece and the pinnacle of the series. Having just finished the remake I can say that they did a fantastic job at recreating and expanding the world. Really impressive work by the artists. The puzzles have been streamlined a bit so it's more welcoming to new comers but still a challenge and there's new additions for series veterans which will make them quite happy. Don't skip this one!

Perfect for a quiet Sunday this one.

I beat this a few days ago and it's a fantastic puzzle game. The original is one of the best puzzle games of all time and this remake just enhances it. I highly encourage anyone playing it to NOT look up solutions online and to write down notes with a pen and paper. It's a very rewarding way to play Riven.

Riven is literally THE most nostalgic game of all time for me. I was born in 1991 en my dad was a gamer. So i was 6 -7 years old when i played this. The impact of it was incredible. And yes i also grew up with zork grand inquisitor, and myst. The longest journey among others. Also, after all this time my father developed dementia. I tried to play witcher 3 with him but it was to difficult. Gaming was one the ways we would connect in my childhood. BUT this remake of Riven he might be able to do and probably blows his mind. I also bought a OLED tv with HDR and build my own high end PC next year so everything will look as good as possible.

The PCVR mode is fantastic。On PC VR, I will just sit on the beach and watch the world go by.

Thank you John for taking the time to do the side-by-side comparisons. I can tell you put a huge amount of work into this.

Always get hyped when I hear John's voice kicking off a video. Also, the visuals here are absolutely beautiful.

Remember seeing Myst adverts in Amiga magazines in the 90’s and being blown away. Amazing they are still going as a developer.

Also - kudos to The Starry Expanse project and all of the community members who helped with that too! It looks like Riven remake was not just Cyan Worlds, but started as a community project.

What a time to be alive. The real time gameplay looks better than the pre rendered images of the original. And back then we could only dream of it!

This looks outstanding, and completely out of the blue. I never thought there'd be a remake of Riven, let alone of this quality.

I still maintain that Riven is the greatest looking game ever made. What a beautiful-looking new vision of the original too.

Riven 1997 looks bewildering.

Now Cyan only needs to remake Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, the only third-person Myst game and I think it's quite underrated. I remember that game was one of the prettiest PC game of 2002 with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

I can’t believe they released a full 3D remake of Riven. I discovered the demo like a week before release. I’ve already played and finished it and, aside from the 3D people, everything about the game is nostalgia to the max. It’s so immersive. So realistic. I was blown away at every turn!

Fantastic video. Thanks for the audio tour, I don't think many gamers are sensitive to how much audio detail goes into these projects.

Thanks for this John. Riven is one of the most memorable media experiences from my youth and I was floored by the remake. It was nice to see the team's achievement showcased so nicely.

Riven is an amazing game, and this one looks like an incredible version.

So getting this for the Quest 3. Thank you for the review John.

This is one of the most magical games I've ever played. Loved it back in 1997 and loved it even more now in 2024

A gorgeous-looking update to Riven: The Sequel to Myst which maintains the 'mood' of the original version.

Glad to see VR get more exposure

25 years later, with all my additional life and gaming experiences, and I still couldn't beat it. Lol. Riven is SO HARD

Riven 97 was the very definition of 'imagine this in 3D one day'.....and wow, it works so well!

In a lot of ways the textures and lighting look better in the original to me. The color seems more balanced too

Great video! At some point I'd love to see similar technical coverage of the very analogous 7th Guest remake for VR.

Thank you John for another great video. As a huge Cyan fan I can say you did great service to the series. The music tracks from URU and Myst V you used as background in some sections of the video further enhance the mysterious atmosphere. I regret that in the PC version they didn't include Nanite, VSM and most of all - Lumen GI, and I hope they'll revisit the game in the future and add those in (not only Riven, but also Obduction, Myst 2021 and Firmament), a man can dream :). After all, they are supposedly still working on Firmament for PSVR2, so maybe all these improvements will make their way to the PC version as well at some point. Riven is also confirmed for PSVR2 in the future, if I'm not mistaken. IMO it makes way more sense porting such high fidelity PC VR games to the PSVR2 than it does for porting Quest games, which most studios do nowadays. The state of PC VR currently is appalling for my great disappointment as an enthusiast and early adopter :( I'm surprised that you didn't mention The Starry Expanse fan project. For years, the team was working on making "realRiven" if you will, and then Cyan stepped in and took over in official capacity. To this day, I'm not quite sure what assets from this project (if any) made it to the final release. In any case, I think it deserves a mention. You said you haven't spoken to the team. Reach out, I'm sure you'll be able to have a chat with their technical art director Eric A Anderson and maybe discuss UE-related stuff, the current lack of UE5 features in Riven, RT, the biggest challenges with this project, Rand Miller's love for VR, etc. I see that he retweeted this video :)

Just take a moment to appreciate that some of the scenes _STILL_ look more realistic in the original version. From TWENTY SEVEN YEARS AGO. The raw skill that went into those original models, textures, and lighting -- and the extraordinary ray-tracing of that ancient software -- lend to a quality that was literally one-of-a-kind. There were so many imitators back then, but nothing held a candle to Myst and Riven.

I do hope they give Myst III: Exile the same treatment as Riven. I know that Cyan didn't originally make Exile but the Riven remake is so good Exile absolutely deserves it, and it's my personal favourite of the Myst series.

i think it's easy to misunderstand what made Myst so magical looking back. Unless you were using a Mac or PC of that era, its hard to imagine a game being so big that it simply didn't fit on a harddisk in any computer. At the time of release you'd be looking at something like a Macintosh Quadra 900, it shipped with a 140MB harddisk. Big data harddisks were 400MB at the time, and on the PC side, the maximum supported harddisk size was 504MB because that's all the BIOS supported. So to have a CD that could hold 600MB of data, a game like this. It was insane for it's time. The closest next release that did something so mind bending was 7th Guest. To put it into perspective, the biggest hard disk you can realistically buy now is a 30TB drive, with Steam stats suggesting only 54% of gamers have a bigger than 1TB drive in their computer. It'd be like someone releasing a game, that was 100TB in size, and running it entirely off CD drive, and it having graphics looking like they're a computer 10 years from now, running smooth as butter on your machine. You'd be like, well that's impossible, yet here Myst was blowing everyone's minds at the time... and it was actually a good game as well.

A nice change of pace from Elden Ring.

beyond the visuals its the music that really drives Riven and brings its journey to life.

I've played Riven the first time a few years ago on my iPad and it blew my mind away and I then went ahead and played all of Myst games and became a fan. This remake feels sooo amazing!

Loved that audio demonstration! Good job as always john👍

Games like this exemplify how good a remake can be. Having not played Riven since it was originally released, playing this remake felt like revisiting an old dream. I generally knew how the game would play out, but I didn't remember most of it, hitting me here and there with moments of nostalgic déjà vu. I hope this sells well for Cyan

When John describes the atmosphere of Riven as “creepy even..” I know exactly what he means. I messed around with Riven on PC a lot as a kid and found the world quite unnerving. Even though nothing scary happens. I think it’s the feeling of isolation while the obvious presence of other humans persists in the technology you interact with. I also constantly got the sense I was being followed, despite the game just being compromised of images and videos.

I wish we had a game like this depicting the Krull movie, with an open world to travel between forests, deserts, and the castles and dungeons.

Awesome video. I love how you put a spotlight on the audio, this game really does sound incredible

One of the best DF videos in a long time. Loved this game on launch day, and looking forward to going back. Awesome work.

I remember my mom and I playing this (and MYST) when I was little. Actually, she played and I "helped" by writing down and "keeping" her notes for her-- which taught me note-taking and puzzling/troubleshooting skills I use to this very day. Definitely going to buy this as soon as I've saved up the money-- just wish I could get my hands on a physical copy to put next to my copy of the MYST remake on my shelf. Maybe they'll do it eventually.

I first played Myst on my Saturn back in the 90s,I truly bought it based on the hype it had from it's pc release. I fell in love with the game but never played Riven, definitely will pick it up when released on PS5. Great video John one of your best this year.

I'm sold. I honestly can't wait to try this both on my OLED and in VR. I never played the original but this looks absolutely captivating.

It truly is one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen.

Remakes and remasters are great, it gives nostaligia the way we thought it looked back in the day

Fantastic episode John. Truly fascinating how you're always able to tell a story with your videos.

Loved the music/sound demo and audio tour. Nice job demonstrating this, John, and kudos to the composers and devs for such fantastic sound+game design

That was lovely, John. I absolutely adore DF Retro and savor every video analysis you put out. This new version of Riven is breathtaking, apart from the 3D characters. I wish they'd find a way to insert real actors into the game once again, I think they made this universe feel even more alive and REAL.That's one aspect that drew me into these games back in the late 90s.

Riven was my favorite. We always say gameplay is king and graphics shouldnt matter. But in that era, the graphics of Riven were spectacular. It lead to insane sensations of immersion, and the island was bright, sunny, and cozy.

I wish they would've done this with the FF7 remake, that was all I wanted. Realtime version of the pre-rendered graphics would've been so awesome.

Really nice John, thank you 😊👍🏼

Absolutely fascinating video! I completely missed the Riven Remake on PC! Such beautiful memories I have with this game! Can't wait to grab it and play it in PCVR!!! Kudos for the PCVR vs Quest 3 comparison!

I love the respect and attention given to comparing old-school CGI to modern real-time rendering. I was instantly fascinated by CGI when i was a kid in the 90's and wondered when game graphics would catch up and surpass it. John is great at talking about the old technology and knowingly comparing it to the new!

Thank you John for continuing the VR coverage!

This was my childhood. What a beautiful review and story telling of this amazing game. Thank you DF!

I hope they release a Lumen/PT graphics setting in the future, because path-traced Riven is going to blow everyone’s minds!

DF Retro is always SO good! I love coming back to these gaming staples, and these guys do it better than almost anyone else. Maybe the best!! Keep up the great work!!

The door puzzle seems like a change made for VR. Going under the door would require either big camera swoops or awkward teleports close to the ground to show the movement. It'd also be harder to make that solution obvious without the ability to specifically frame the shot to show the gap underneath, which the original does but the remake omits in the fixed angle mode. Either way, the intent of the puzzle does remain; It's a straightforward solution that requires the player to consider the physicality of the world, to prime them for what comes later. It makes you go outside the box of typical video-gamey logic where locked doors are utterly impassable without a key.

Myst and Riven gave me weird ass vibes as a kid, still remember vividly spending hours in confusion and wonder just clicking around ❤

John is definitely the best person I know to make a video about this game. Thanks for the trip!

I hope this one gets a PSVR2 port. Firmament will be releasing later this year on the platform, so Cyan is friendly to PSVR.

Excellent video, thank you. Just bought it!

This could be the one to make me jump into VR ya know. Riven and Panza Dragoon Saga were two worlds I got truly lost in back in 97. Incredibly wondrous locations and immersion. AS you rightly said, Art Direction trumps all. This remake looks absolutely gorgeous! So much love and care. THIS is what you get when every shot starts as a painting! Proper art.

Excellent video, John. Not only do we see comparisons between the old & new version, VR and early puzzle/world changes are touched upon as well.

It really shows you enjoyed making this video Jhon! Will definitely check this one out

So glad I bought the remake never played it and it is so far one of the best experiences I have ever had.

Thank you so so much for making this

Finally! DF made PCVR vs Quest comparision video!

I played this many many years ago. Absolutely loved it and I actually felt like I really accomplished something great when I finally beat it. Can’t wait to play it again and have my kids play it with me hopefully. One of the best games of all time.

Is it me or does the old one look more realistic than the new one, ie .better

Such an amazingly good game, both the exploration, the culture, the puzzles, the soundtrack.

The remake is simply superb, but this video made me admire games that used pre-rendered graphics more. To this day, when I see Donkey Kong Country 2 running on the SNES on a CRT TV, I am amazed at the visual quality of that game, especially for the time, Resident Evil 3 with extremely well-made backgrounds and I can't help but mention Killer Instinct 2, which to this day Looks impressive and has aged much better than other 3D fighting games of the time, I kind of like how a simple technique allowed developers to go beyond the limitations of the hardware of the time to achieve impressive visuals.

the original riven is one of the few games i can say felt truly real to me as i was playing. nothing gives me that feeling of exploring a real physical space quite the same. i'm glad its remake has done justice to it, i'll definitely be checking it out soon.

WOW !!!! John , great work on a great remaster !

O.K. ! THAT'S EXACTLY the kind of remake the gamer search when we've waiting 27 years ! Take notes developpers ! 🥰👍

Great 1st attempt at a quest comparison. Really enjoyed seeing a quest port being given a critical eye. I see this being very much in line with your work on switch ports over the last few years. Keep at it and explore the alternative capture methods used by the vr RU-vid community to maximise the quality.

I tried playing Myst when I was a little kid, and I couldn’t understand what I was supposed to do - it was a bit too subtle for my little kid brain. Excited to discover this new release and try playing it with my now (hopefully) bigger kid brain!

This was a beautiful video

Amazing video and comparasion shots!

Man, was I obsessed over this game back when I was 10. Suddenly, I remembered all the love I had and I truly want to experience it all again (mind you, It took me several years of on and off play to beat it)

Great review. Thank you.

Nice to see some VR content!

Fantastic remake, loved playing through this one and will check out Cyan's other projects.

This remake looks stunning! Thank you.

I wish my dad had lived long enough to see this remaster. It is the first big PC game I remember him buying and us playing together on release. He passed in 2022 from a heart attack and for like 10 years I wished they would do a Riven remake. I knew it would come eventually.. I just wish it had happened sooner. While I am happy I got to see a Riven remaster finally arrive, it is bittersweet since no other game in my life reminds me of my dad more than Riven. I never owned a copy of Myst, though I remember playing it on a babysitters Mac upon its release, but it was Riven that blew my mind with its detail and immersion. Riven is still that game that showed me just how amazing video games can be, and I still loved returning to it decades later.

"They haven't remade this game before because the technology for real time graphics couldn't recreate the original look" 10 minutes later: "Here's the Meta Quest version, they remade the game using PS2 graphics and it still looks like Riven"

Adventure games like Myst and Riven are a great fit for VR.

Great video John 👍

That audio design is amazing!

When visiting my parents home on a recent holiday I found several pieces of paper including a rolled up map I had drawn an entire grid of riven. Hand counting clicks of movement to solve a single puzzle.

When I was a teen I remember looking at pictures of Riven back in the day and always wanting to play it but never owned a gaming PC. I'm definitely gonna have to pick this up because I remember how cool it looked back then.

great video. One ting I would note is the Stary Expanse team that started creating riven in 3d way back link in 2015. There are some clips of it.

Awesome overview, going to pick it up for PC and try remote desktop for quest !

what I would get for a fully fledged remake of the atlantis the lost tales, I can only dream

Very cool project. Unfortunate they weren’t able to upscale the original character videos - the originals look great, even in low res.

I've been playing on the Quest 3. Can't do anything about the less detailed models and textures, but I found that I could elimate the stutter by using Quest Game Optimizer and dialing the resolution down to 90% of the default. All in all I'm happy with it- it looks bad when you compare side by side with PCVR, but on its own it's still one of the most stunning games on standalone.

I got everything I wanted out of this remake. Everything I've been waiting for for 24 years since I first experienced the first full 3D remake of Myst (realMyst). And then some. Absolutely knocked it out of the park. And even the 3D character models are a step up from what we had in Myst 2023, which were honestly a step or two below the quality in Riven 2024. The mocap and facial animations are also so much better. Bravo, Cyan. Just absolutely stellar job. What a monumental achievement. What a PRODUCT. Truly absolutely worthy of its original's stake in video gaming history and lives up to every bit of the hype.