Myst v Riven: What Do you Take With You? 

I agree that Riven is the absolute masterpiece. I love Myst but he atmosphere and sheer magnificence of Riven is breathtaking. Fantastic journalistic review.

With all due respect to Myst, which was groundbreaking for its time and captured my attention for countless hours, Riven was the full expression of Cyan’s talents.

Riven is absolutely cyans masterpiece. It is deeply embedded in my psyche… and I’ve never even played it for more than 30 mins. I had very little friends when I was 12-13 and I was homeschooled. So the only thing to do with my free time was to sit and watch my brother play this for hours, listen to the soundtrack alone in my ‘homeschool classroom’ (my bedroom), while working on my schoolwork, then I would lay in the grass in my backyard and imagine a fissure opening up and taking me to strange beautiful worlds. Even though I barely ever played this game, it inspired most of my creative endeavors, including the book I am working on right now.

Myst looks like a playground, Riven looks like a world

An absolute masterpiece that had an impression on me that no other game has been able to match.

You won’t get any arguments from me on Riven’s excellence. Loved the video, always great to see Myst content!

An excellent analysis. One thing that increased Riven's allure for me: with solutions to a few fairly straightforward moves you got to explore a lot of the world. But to actually SOLVE the crucial bits, let alone understand what you were aiming for, that's what made Riven a maddening, wondrous experience.

Nothing controversial about your assertion that Riven is Cyan's true masterpiece. And yes, Riven is only two puzzles. Absolute genius the way those two puzzles are in opposition to each other, and the way their clues are spread throughout the landscape of the game. The rules of the puzzles are for the player to discern without any hand-holding.

I consider myself a Riven fan before being a Myst fan. Riven was IT. My 12 year old self naively believed back then it would spur a lot of creativity in terms of world building in videogames. I never finished Riven on my own. i'm not ashamed of it. Some of us get more of a kick of getting a super hard puzzle solved, than others. It was too difficult for my young self. And even now, I don't think I'd have the patience to figure the marble puzzle out on my own. But it doesn't matter, because what I loved about it was the world itself.

Absolutely agree about Riven being about as perfect as a game can get, in terms of being an expression of the authors' underlying goals. My only real complaint about it is that - as you touch on - it's so easy to become disconnected from the game world or simply lose the thread of the plot. If someone decides to play Riven (or any of the Myst series, really) it requires genuine dedication. If you stop playing for a week, you'll probably never get back into it without a full restart.

I appreciate that there was no juvenile, sophmoric or comedic details thrown in, even sparsely, to try and broaden the appeal to more players. The tone was serious start to finnish, and the acting was largely at least ok. I'd suggest to anyone playing this for the first time to do so with a good quality audio system, not just PC or desktop speakers as the ambient sounds and the music are quite well done and add a lot of realism to the game.

I don’t see riven as a video game. It’s more like a real experience that I had

Riven was my first Cyan game when it was released in 1997. My absolute favourite. Still got my Indy-adventurer-style note book with coloured codes and drawings of the puzzles. My little treasure.

I remember spending countless hours digging away at all the content in this game back in the 90's. My friends and I managed to beat it somehow back then. I just bought it again for android and am excited to re live this game. Lol

Me: *travels to a different island* Game: please insert disk five. Me: *inserts disk, travels some more* Game: please insert disk two. Me: *headdesk*

I think having the end "puzzle" in plain sight serves a different purpose in Riven than in Myst. In Myst it's a "how did i miss this?" In Riven, going to the telescope and smashing the barrier is a big deep breath that you're done. You've explored the world and solved the puzzles and now you, the player, at your convenience, get to finish the game.

god the 90s were magical

Riven is the quiet achiever, most people out in the world are aware of Myst but fans live for Riven imho, I can't wait for the remake - hoping they don't change much.

"when I played myst, decades back" ... sent a shiver down my spine man. Can't believe how time flies! Agreed, riven is cyan's true masterpiece. "Tage ma! Tage ma ne kuahne!".... only riven players will understand.. I'll be buying obduction once I get a machine that can run it properly...

Nothing in gaming compares. Cyan is a religion and Riven is our temple. The remake is coming. Amen.

For me the sense of accomplishment was better in Myst, but the conclusion was much more rewarding in Riven.

This video's accurate to a fault about Riven. Also what's weird is I too had a prolonged and complicated history with trying to beat Riven. I used a guide at a young age to beat Myst, beat Myst 3 on my own in my teen years, and went on to do the same for Myst 4 and 5. But Riven was one I never landed my hands on until 18 or so. And it took almost 10 years to get back to it and sit down and really play it. For some reason I still found its puzzles ridiculously confusing and hard, despite it making logical sense. It's like the world was so believable I just didn't really know what to do with it.

I was trying to show my boyfriend this game and what it’s about and this was one of the only videos I could find. Good video! Just sad this seems to be a largely forgotten about series

I love all.the games in their own ways...glad to see riven remake... i got 10 days off work to live in Riven vr....

In the Myst video, you talk about not packing anything from the intro (the dialogue of Atrus falling into the fissure). I think Riven thrusts something into your mind that you may only subconsciously notice you've carried with you: (some minor Riven spoilers, below) When you complete the animals puzzle, you get a reprise of melody you hadn't really heard since Riven's intro, playing over the broken panel that started you on this sequel's journey. (and you realize you finally end up seeing the box art)

If you haven't played Outer Wilds (not Outer Worlds, different game) I HIGHLY recommend it. It feels like a more modern take on a Myst style game set in the horrors of space. The story also does a good job of being present without being in the way. I finished recently and very much had that same really cool feeling of "wow, with the information I've studied and earned about how this game functions I can do the end game right from the very beginning." Your reward for solving puzzles and figuring things out isn't a better piece of gear, it's a better understanding of how the game's world operates and how you can use that to progress.

"Riven is Cyan's real masterpiece" Yes. Absolutely. I love Myst, but Riven is a masterpiece through and through. It's better than Myst in every way (and taking the two together it tells a fantastic story).

17:26 Hold on, you can rotate that?!

This was an excellent detailed analysis my friend and I wouldn't expect anything less out of you. These are games that I often seen in the computer stores of the mid to late 1990's but unfortunately they never really had my interest, so it's nice to see video's like which truly show what these games are about and the qualities that make them memorable experiences.

It seems like you are motivated often by interacting with game worlds in organic ways. The way you play minecraft and the way you view Riven are similar, and your preference for Riven over Myst makes sense. You want to explore a world, not fiddle with a machine. Cool!

Riven is indeed Cyan's masterpiece, as fas as I'm concerned..........and even as a wannabe game designer as a kid, I knew the fact Robyn Miller....and most importantly Richard Vander Wende (responsible for the look of DIsney's Aladdin) were involved was a big reason why. After they both left Cyan.........the games were just not the same. Even if you take III and IV which were developed by different studios....it's just a different feel, altough Exile came closest in my opinion. Riven is a landmark game for me. I remember being 12 and being OVER THE MOON something like this even existed.......getting lost in an ORIGINAL-looking alien world, with full detail of a different culture etc....not bound by our reality. You'd think it would be a much more common experience in videogames...........but actually..........24 years afterwards.............Riven still stands out in the videogame landscape as really really unique. Designing a world is the most important part of making a cool videogame.............and it really saddens me more companies aren't as keen on delivering to us really odd, surreal or unique experiences in that department. .

Love the videos on Myst and Riven, and will be diving into your back catalog soon. Can you tell me which video covers the “singular moment” in Riven that made such an impression on you? Or was it encountering the little girl?

Riven is the masterpiece of masterpieces. Is the pinnacle of adventure games followed by Zork Nemesis.

The level of effect that the Myst games and books had on my young imagination I often compare to how others were inspired by Tolkien, whom I read later in life.

I've got both on my phone, so no need for a choice. IMO though, Riven was a better game, simply because it was longer and had better backstory. Myst will allways have a place in my heart though, because it was the first game I ever completed and then immediately replayed when I was a kid.

Really liked this compare/contrast between the two games. Building on the part where you talk about the two games being part of the same story - did you ever read the novel they wrote, The Book of Atrus, which acts as a prequel to both books? I read it between playing Myst and Riven, and found that understanding aspects of Riven’s story, such as the star fissure, would have been much, much more difficult without having the extra context provided by the book.

Myst has been remade 15 times by now... if only we would get Riven once :( (I know about the Starry expanse project but that has been in development for a decade or so and just like Skywind, it might or might not ever make it all the way..)

The only tattoo I've ever considered is the rebel dagger 🗡️

underrated channel. great work.

Riven is the crown jewel indeed. The conclusion of an amazing story. Riven 4 had potential, but fell a bit short in execution ...and all the others were just empty calories.

Wow, that description of the puzzle involving the room and the eyes and the...etc was so cryptic that I genuinely don't know what all of those hints are, as someone who knows Riven fairly well and has completed it on a couple of occasions.

I might be in the camp of weird people fans for liking the complete Uru (and End of Ages as its epilogue) the best. Its huge sprawl of places and naturalistic puzzles is still unprecedented for the genre. The whole thing's a cohesive and finished whole, and it's the one game (two, I guess) that finally explains, frames, and grounds this whole series' larger drama and worldbuilding in something with thematic resolution. Also it adds a smooth camera and more complex character controls, and it uses those additions to the puzzle palette cleverly. But yeah it is as flawed and awkward as the Ubisoft ones, for much of it. And Riven's the only flawless one of these.

Riven absolutely is the masterpiece of the series.

I've been thinking about Myst a lot lately since they just released a VR port. Made me wonder whether they'll do this for any of the others. I'm curious what your take on Obduction is, since it is their most recent game I think.

Hey dude, absolutely loved this video. I'm extremely unfamiliar with Riven compared to Myst. Do you plan to cover The Witness in the future?

Riven is brutal

I’m jealous of the people that read about the age of riven in ‘the book of atrus’ before riven came out

Bring a camera. My Riven sketchpad/notebook filled up quickly.

Dang, I want to throw patreon money at this channel but can't. These Myst game videos are my people and I need to support them!

I finally finished Myst fully for the first time last month. I found that only some of the "puzzles" were as purely nonsensical as I recall from my childhood. The gears puzzle near the start took me about as long as the entire rest of the game. I mathematically proved that it was impossible to solve... until I held down the control a little longer than normal. 🤦

The main issue i had with Riven was technical problems. I don't know if it was due to the system i had at the time or if it was later patched. None were crash or game stopper level, rather it was all stuff like the wrong animation playing, like part of the hangman game animation playing when in the submarine, or sound events playing twice. It took a lot of the polish off the experience for me.

And now, for Exile

As a fan I take Riven. As a historian I take Myst.

Best Video Game ever!!! More than a game in my opinion!!😲

Yes. Riven is a masterpiece. A wildly ambitious gamble that was a total success. Then they went all in on URU. Well... I guess you can gamble too much.

Myst is Demon Souls Riven is Dark Souls

have you played exile? i'm working through it now

riven 对我人生有重大影响

Will you review abduction?

riven is indeed cyan's true masterpiece! i LOVE myst and i think it's incredibly thoughtfully made, but I would say Obduction is better than Myst and doesn't fall too short of Riven!

really cool video. riven is definitely my favourite out of the series. It has such depth and atmosphere, and has inspired me to make my Riven style game called Neyyah. You might find it interesting as you have taken such a shine to Riven. Feel free to check it out on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/1289720/Neyyah/ Any video on Riven is great to see :) will look into more of your work!

Should I skip Myst and play Riven?