Holy crap! I didn't even know Cyan was still around, let alone still working on the Myst universe. This is awesome! I would love to revisit the entire Myst series with more modern mechanics and graphics. For some reason Riven was the hardest for me (not counting Uru which I never played because I wasn't remotely interested in the multiplayer element when the internet was still in its infancy).
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Do you know about https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255560/Myst/ ?
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No, I didn't... but the fact that they just remade Myst (for what, the 12th time?) and now are doing Riven gives me hope they'll do the entire series. Not sure how I feel about the VR aspect ... I can see both good and bad with it. Of course, like any good Myst fan, I will of course (eventually) buy and play it.
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Cyan is still very much around. In addition to some of their newer games - including remakes - they still keep URU (their old Myst MMO) up and running for free. Not only that, they've made it open source and now fan-created content is being ported into it. If you think that you've played all of the Myst series, know that there are new ages to explore in Myst Online. Almost all of it can be played solo, if you want, although you might run into people in the public areas.
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I'll look into it. For me, the main draw of the Myst series was that it felt like you were the only one who could save (insert figure or world here). I mean, I get it, when you find the first Myst book that was thrown into the Rift, it would have stayed behind when you Linked and anybody else could have also found it ... but your actions literally change the world of Myst around you. For example, raising the sunken ship that you see the moment you land. With an MMO, it's like "Why am I even here, there's a thousand other people who can, and probably already did, do the job before I even get there." At least when I attempted to play Uru, it just pulled me out of the immersion, it felt like I was playing a game instead of participating in a story. I don't know how to explain it better than that, it just feels wrong with other players. Maybe they've found a way to fix that element after 20 years ... but I doubt it.
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Well, not to try and talk you into it, but there is a story in which you do affect the world, in a sense. Also, every Age that you go to, except the public city and some other common areas, is your own instance. You need to manually invite others to join you. You can probably do 90% of everything there solo. If you want to see 100% of everything, there are a few puzzles that require help from others. The original intention of the game was that puzzles would collectively be solved by "the community", but there is still a lot of individual achievements to it, depending on how patient you are with puzzles.
I find Myst Online/URU to be one of the "loneliest" games that I've ever played, but I mean that in a good way. You're exploring the remnants of a dead civilization and it all seems so isolated from everything. My experience playing through has been a mostly solitary one. Eventually, I ran into other players and found it to be nice to be able to chat with them about the world. There's a lot of backstory and lore to the game.
And quite honestly, there are very few people actually playing it now. Cyan practically keeps it running as a charity to its players, since it doesn't cost them much and most of the updates are being done by volunteers. Even if you go to the public city, you might see a handful of people there, possibly none, depending on the time of day. Sometimes when I'm on, I wonder if I'm the only player in the game at the moment. Most people who are there now have solved every puzzle that there is and just still enjoy being in that virtual world. A lot of gatherings take place in instanced neighborhood areas or ages. It's definitely a different experience from the single-player games, but Cyan's artistry is on display everywhere in URU. Some of my favorite areas in the whole series are there. I think it's worth a look.
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Omg ! This is an awesome news !
I lost hope in Riven being remade (or just getting a modern day port).
I'm so happy, thanks for sharing this news <3
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I finally played completely through Riven earlier this year. Had it on discs from when it first came out, and cheated my way through it after a while. Thankfully it's been long enough now that I didn't remember any of the solutions. Had to look up hints for one thing, but otherwise made it through on my own this time.
Played through Exile for the first time after that, and definitely enjoyed the graphical upgrade.
I think my favorite part about Riven all these years later is still just seeing the seal-type creatures. It was great to see some life in the game world, after being alone through Myst.
Also, Riven doesn't have achievements, so with the Steam Deck, I could just play it randomly whenever offline.
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"Cyan announced the "modern remake" of the adventure game classic on Riven's 25th anniversary.
On the 25th anniversary of the release of Riven, the sequel to the mega-hit adventure game Myst, developer Cyan has announced that it is being redone in a "ground-up modern remake."
"Riven is one of the most highly regarded games in Cyan’s history," the studio said in an FAQ(opens in new tab), explaining why it waited 25 years to commit to a Riven remake. "We didn’t want to approach it lightly or frivolously. Cyan is a small indie studio. We wanted to make sure we could take on such a difficult, costly and complicated endeavor—and do it well."
(Myst, by way of comparison, has been remade multiple times, including as Myst: Masterpiece Edition, realMyst: Interactive 3D edition, and realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. The most recent remake, simply entitled Myst(opens in new tab), came out in 2021 with VR support.)
While Cyan waited a quarter-century to bring back Riven, there was a long-running fan project aimed at resurrecting it "in a fully-realized realtime-3D environment" called Starry Expanse(opens in new tab). In 2019, the Starry Expanse team said it was "officially working with Cyan Worlds to bring the dream of a real-time Riven into reality." Cyan said in a separate message(opens in new tab) posted today that members of that team are not working on the official remake, but that "we reached an agreement which allowed us to reference core pieces of their efforts to jump-start our development." The Starry Expanse project itself quietly halted development a couple years ago, after Cyan informed the team that it was preparing to launch an official remake.
Truthfully, I didn't like Riven as much as Myst—which, to be clear, I absolutely loved. Myst was revolutionary: an unprecedented gameplay experience wrapped in photorealistic graphics and a lush, exotic soundtrack that demonstrated what seemed like the virtually limitless potential of CD-ROM technology. Riven was more technologically advanced, yes, but like so many sequels it was also more of the same, and coming four years after Myst it just wasn't quite as magical the second time around.
Still, I'm happy that Cyan is finally moving forward with the update, and maybe 25 years of separation from the original will give me a different perspective on it. Unfortunately, there are no details at this point about platforms or a possible release date, but Cyan did clarify—because apparently clarification was necessary—that owners of the original Riven will not be upgraded to the remake version for free."
https://www.pcgamer.com/riven-the-sequel-to-myst-is-getting-a-remake/
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