I'm conflicted about this remake. Today's graphics are absolutely equal to the task of rendering this environment in true 3D, and it looks every bit as good as the original renders, but the old grouch in me wishes that the original renders and live performances had been preserved. They are some of the earlier examples of digital artistic expression, and a part of our collective history. On the other hand, being able to walk around in this gorgeous environment in VR is joyous.
Agreed, it's a shame the models don't hold up to live action, but the silver lining for me is that this version can scale forever with newer hardware. They could even patch in better models!
Dude, really appreciated ALL your Myst videos- gave me closure to the series that I didnt want to play but wanted to still experience. Thanks for making them
Great playthrough. Regarding the fire marble puzzle, the 5-digit sliding combination element of the puzzle WAS in the original as the code to open the fire marble domes. In the original game Gehn just writes down the 5-digit code but here you have to do a little math. In a way the math element they've added with the "base number" offset actually makes it easier to figure out the code because it makes it so the highest possible D'ni number you would have to learn is 16 whereas with the original if the code had a 25 in it you better figure out what 25 is in D'ni. I think my biggest issue with how they handled the marble locations isn't that they made it easier but that that the sliding tile puzzle is a completely arbitrary puzzle that has no in-world context to exist except to give you the solution whereas the map in the original existed because as Gehn wrote in his journal that the locations of the domes was important and he used the map to determine where to place them. I feel they could have reduced the grid to 5x5 but still had us locate the domes using the map and it would have been far better than a random sliding tile puzzle. It's a much more Myst-style puzzle now. And on top of that they could have added more lore as guidance to explain WHY the locations of the marbles mattered. In the original there's just a vague note in Gehn's journal on boiler island that the locations are important but not why that matters to the waffle iron. In this version it feels like there's even less reason why the marbles need to match the dome locations on the waffle iron. But overall I was very impressed with the remake and think it's wonderful.
Very funny that the Moiety hid the shortcut out of the animal puzzle cave from you so well that even you didn't find it this time hah. Love your playthroughs and restrospectives, thanks for this! ^_^
Yeah, I didn't even realize that shortcut was there until I debriefed with the speedrunning community! I saw the notes in Catherine's journal but I thought it was referring to lore only, for some reason.
Regarding the bridge, there were a few instances in my playthrough where I wanted to go from boiler island to temple island and crossing that bridge would have still been faster than going the way I had to go. There's a certain bad ending that now requires going to 233, leaving, and coming back like 5 times and the Riven book on 233 dumps you on boiler island.
Loved seeing your playthrough and especially loved hearing your thoughts at the end! Technical shortcomings aside, this remake was incredible. Really fleshed out the world of Riven in ways that make sense and continuously surprised and delighted existing fans. I think the fire marble puzzle was changed up intelligently to please both long-time players and existing fans. TBH I didn't find the original fire marble puzzle difficult at all.
I learned the numbers from the game in the schoolhouse. Count the clicks. Edit: I loved this, because I'm old now and I can't play games like this unless I take reams of notes. I can't remember shit. I watched this all, in segments. I gather that you have others such as Myst. I'll be watching that too. Thank you!
I just watched the entire video. Sometime around 1999 I played the original version for the first time. I'm afraid my current PC isn't powerful enough to play this version of Riven and I know it might actually be more fun to look at it until I can play it myself. But I was too curious to wait until then. Luckily I don't have a perfect memory, so as soon as I can play this version, I will probably have forgotten this video ;) It was a pleasure to see you play the game and hear your nice comments on it. Good job. Many thanks for that! I really enjoyed this.
I'd like for you to upload the non-cut version, that's why we're here to see you experience things or even get stuck for the first time in a series we love...
Hi Jordan - I was wondering or more to the point hoping you’d jump in and do a new playthough for us. I watched all of your previous ones and started watching the Riven one again to refresh my memory. Like you that was many moons ago in 1997 we all got hooked on the Cyan phenomenon! Another great run thru - enjoyed the whole 6 hours - I’m about halfway thru on my Quest 2 VR version and totally blown away with the vision moving around the islands. It would be neat to have some shortcuts to jump around quicker but I’m currently being more like a tourist and I’m just exploring looking for differences. Thanks again - wishing you all the best 👍✅😄 TD 🇦🇺
I played the whole game in basically 2 sittings this week and liked it a lot! I like the new fissure travel a lot, because it feels like Gehn brute forcing a problem again instead of just getting good at writing. What I didn't really like at all was the lens, because I constantly forgot about it...
57:01 I also had to think about the exact same starry expanse blog post! 😂 Never thought we'd end up here with the game finally remade in this beautiful form!
I also really liked going to p. island first! It gives you some information on what's going on pretty early and when I didn't know what to do, I went back to Catherine and checked if she told me anything new!
Haven played the original on the PC DVD version, and then years later on the ipad version. Changing things up a bit was a very welcome addition. I was expecting the balls that rotated. But the totems felt much better for me. And adding a new number system was great to solve that. Changing the fire marble puzzle was just trying dome coordinates for strike strength which was another nice change up. So for someone who played before, the slightly different paths and puzzles made it much fresher. So in the end I think something for old players and new.
SPOILERS: i'm so glad they changed the wooden eyeball sphere puzzle. I disliked the idea that the moiety CARVED A PERFECT FROG SILHOUETTE in a cave mouth FROM A PERFECT ANGLE???? and i also didn't like that they somehow made wooden spheres replicate perfect animal noises. I think all the new clues are much more reasonable for the moiety to have created/maintain. Honestly i will die on the hill that every single change to the game is an improvement or fix, EXCEPT i don't think they should have collapsed the bridge (i know it takes long to cross, i have rationale). One last thing i sorta wish they changed in this version was randomizing the positions of the marbles within each island chunk because the positions have no meaning in the remake (they barely do in the OG honestly). I also still don't understand how the boiler works at all (why does simultaneously turning the pump on and disconnecting the feed line from the lake drain the boiler??)
Pretty good first run. Took me about 9 hours to completely solve everything...my own fault though for not really taking the numbering system seriously at first.
I was hoping they'd bring back the East Path on Survey Island! Maybe once someone finds a way to get oob or use the console you can get there. Or maybe they'll patch it in later, what I dont think though
@@JordanRogers85 Strange I’ve launched the game a 3rd time but I always get the same code (spoiler: fish,beetle, butterfly (?), sunner, ytram, wahrk) maybe it’s a bug, also I’m running the macOS version.
don't forget you ALSO still have to use the topo map to figure out which island is which. easy to take for granted as a veteran player. you also missed a big shortcut! i'm sure you know by now
They cut a lot out of the original because their budget was tiny. Fine. But make the tiny part you have look and sound good. In the village, when you have wood railings that don't even align to fit through the post holes ... what the heck are you even doing? I'll ignore the horrendous characters and animations, but why is the lighting so bad? The dark and mysterious mood of the original RIven is completely gone. I have a very strong feeling most of this production was outsourced to India.
I actually rewatched your Riven retrospective just before playing the remake, thanks for the awesome work you're doing!
Wow, was a great watch. Was so proud when I beat RIVEN as a wee lad.
I'll put my 1 whole year unused quest 2 to use again now! Looked amazing.
I'm conflicted about this remake. Today's graphics are absolutely equal to the task of rendering this environment in true 3D, and it looks every bit as good as the original renders, but the old grouch in me wishes that the original renders and live performances had been preserved. They are some of the earlier examples of digital artistic expression, and a part of our collective history.
On the other hand, being able to walk around in this gorgeous environment in VR is joyous.
Agreed, it's a shame the models don't hold up to live action, but the silver lining for me is that this version can scale forever with newer hardware. They could even patch in better models!
I'm glad Catherine scared you like she scared me 🙂
I think my favorite part of this game is just how well they have done with the audio. All of the sound effects seem original and sound so goodl
I was just re watching your past videos this week so its a pleasant surprise to see a new vid!
Good luck at GDQ! It was a blast watching you play through Riven
Dude, really appreciated ALL your Myst videos- gave me closure to the series that I didnt want to play but wanted to still experience. Thanks for making them
Holy smokes he’s back! Great to see it!
Awesome! I had been wondering if you were going to post anything on this. I’m excited to watch!
Thank you for the walkthrough! Loved it!
Great playthrough.
Regarding the fire marble puzzle, the 5-digit sliding combination element of the puzzle WAS in the original as the code to open the fire marble domes. In the original game Gehn just writes down the 5-digit code but here you have to do a little math. In a way the math element they've added with the "base number" offset actually makes it easier to figure out the code because it makes it so the highest possible D'ni number you would have to learn is 16 whereas with the original if the code had a 25 in it you better figure out what 25 is in D'ni.
I think my biggest issue with how they handled the marble locations isn't that they made it easier but that that the sliding tile puzzle is a completely arbitrary puzzle that has no in-world context to exist except to give you the solution whereas the map in the original existed because as Gehn wrote in his journal that the locations of the domes was important and he used the map to determine where to place them. I feel they could have reduced the grid to 5x5 but still had us locate the domes using the map and it would have been far better than a random sliding tile puzzle. It's a much more Myst-style puzzle now.
And on top of that they could have added more lore as guidance to explain WHY the locations of the marbles mattered. In the original there's just a vague note in Gehn's journal on boiler island that the locations are important but not why that matters to the waffle iron. In this version it feels like there's even less reason why the marbles need to match the dome locations on the waffle iron.
But overall I was very impressed with the remake and think it's wonderful.
Thank you for the video. As i sad 3 or 4 years ago: your calm aura is really enjoyable and I like listening to you. Keep it up. :)
Very funny that the Moiety hid the shortcut out of the animal puzzle cave from you so well that even you didn't find it this time hah. Love your playthroughs and restrospectives, thanks for this! ^_^
Yeah, I didn't even realize that shortcut was there until I debriefed with the speedrunning community! I saw the notes in Catherine's journal but I thought it was referring to lore only, for some reason.
Regarding the bridge, there were a few instances in my playthrough where I wanted to go from boiler island to temple island and crossing that bridge would have still been faster than going the way I had to go. There's a certain bad ending that now requires going to 233, leaving, and coming back like 5 times and the Riven book on 233 dumps you on boiler island.
It's been a long time, welcome back
Been looking forward to this! Thank you 😊
Loved seeing your playthrough and especially loved hearing your thoughts at the end! Technical shortcomings aside, this remake was incredible. Really fleshed out the world of Riven in ways that make sense and continuously surprised and delighted existing fans.
I think the fire marble puzzle was changed up intelligently to please both long-time players and existing fans. TBH I didn't find the original fire marble puzzle difficult at all.
Your videos on this series are the best around. Would love to see you play through the 2021 Myst remake too!
Great playthru Jordan. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for playing!!!
Thank you so much Eric! Promise I'd still love to do an interview or three one day.
They've created a great looking game.
Thanks for coming back and giving us this video !
I learned the numbers from the game in the schoolhouse. Count the clicks.
Edit: I loved this, because I'm old now and I can't play games like this unless I take reams of notes. I can't remember shit. I watched this all, in segments. I gather that you have others such as Myst. I'll be watching that too. Thank you!
I just watched the entire video. Sometime around 1999 I played the original version for the first time. I'm afraid my current PC isn't powerful enough to play this version of Riven and I know it might actually be more fun to look at it until I can play it myself. But I was too curious to wait until then. Luckily I don't have a perfect memory, so as soon as I can play this version, I will probably have forgotten this video ;)
It was a pleasure to see you play the game and hear your nice comments on it. Good job. Many thanks for that! I really enjoyed this.
Nice to see you again after six years from Riven Sequel to Myst, great video. 👍
I'd like for you to upload the non-cut version, that's why we're here to see you experience things or even get stuck for the first time in a series we love...
He is BACK!!!
Hi Jordan -
I was wondering or more to the point hoping you’d jump in and do a new playthough for us. I watched all of your previous ones and started watching the Riven one again to refresh my memory.
Like you that was many moons ago in 1997 we all got hooked on the Cyan phenomenon!
Another great run thru - enjoyed the whole 6 hours - I’m about halfway thru on my Quest 2 VR version and totally blown away with the vision moving around the islands. It would be neat to have some shortcuts to jump around quicker but I’m currently being more like a tourist and I’m just exploring looking for differences.
Thanks again - wishing you all the best 👍✅😄 TD 🇦🇺
2:07:25: Thanks for directing in the maglev! 😂 That was amazing.
I played the whole game in basically 2 sittings this week and liked it a lot! I like the new fissure travel a lot, because it feels like Gehn brute forcing a problem again instead of just getting good at writing.
What I didn't really like at all was the lens, because I constantly forgot about it...
I feel like I got lucky because the lens is so intuitive and fun to use in VR. Glad you liked it! The usage of the expanse is really smart.
I used the lens all the time from the moment I got it lol. Pulled it out in Ghens ages too like a dummy.
Thank you very much, for a great video and have a great time at at GDQ, Jordan. :D
Hell yeah!
You're back! 🙂 I was hoping you'd make a video on this.
57:01 I also had to think about the exact same starry expanse blog post! 😂
Never thought we'd end up here with the game finally remade in this beautiful form!
I also really liked going to p. island first! It gives you some information on what's going on pretty early and when I didn't know what to do, I went back to Catherine and checked if she told me anything new!
Haven played the original on the PC DVD version, and then years later on the ipad version. Changing things up a bit was a very welcome addition. I was expecting the balls that rotated. But the totems felt much better for me. And adding a new number system was great to solve that. Changing the fire marble puzzle was just trying dome coordinates for strike strength which was another nice change up. So for someone who played before, the slightly different paths and puzzles made it much fresher. So in the end I think something for old players and new.
Agreed, I think they struck the balance of changes and additions really well. Obviously I can’t speak for newcomers but it really impressed me.
If the industry would rather remake old games than come up with something new, I have a list of about 200 DOS classics I'd like to see sometime soon.
Unexpected upload
So hyped for this!
Its outstanding !!
I'm on my second time through it in VR, it's a fantastic remake. Pressing in the analog stick will switch to "sprint' running mode.
SPOILERS:
i'm so glad they changed the wooden eyeball sphere puzzle. I disliked the idea that the moiety CARVED A PERFECT FROG SILHOUETTE in a cave mouth FROM A PERFECT ANGLE???? and i also didn't like that they somehow made wooden spheres replicate perfect animal noises. I think all the new clues are much more reasonable for the moiety to have created/maintain.
Honestly i will die on the hill that every single change to the game is an improvement or fix, EXCEPT i don't think they should have collapsed the bridge (i know it takes long to cross, i have rationale). One last thing i sorta wish they changed in this version was randomizing the positions of the marbles within each island chunk because the positions have no meaning in the remake (they barely do in the OG honestly).
I also still don't understand how the boiler works at all (why does simultaneously turning the pump on and disconnecting the feed line from the lake drain the boiler??)
Heck yeah all around!
Pretty good first run. Took me about 9 hours to completely solve everything...my own fault though for not really taking the numbering system seriously at first.
ah ive missed that riven music.
1:43:45 Still working my way through the video but the lens is also useful on the domes if you have not yet realized.
2:16:00 That moment in genuinely frightening.
This remake was awesome! Visually though, MYST IV Revelation is still my favourite looking MYST game, by a slight margin. 😊
So does 'The Room' series of games owe It's lenses to Riven or does Riven owe their eye glass to 'The Room'?
I was hoping they'd bring back the East Path on Survey Island!
Maybe once someone finds a way to get oob or use the console you can get there. Or maybe they'll patch it in later, what I dont think though
watches you play you got lucky landing where you did...so far I found all the domes and have opened them... but that is as far as I got
i wonder if you went to jungle, and crater before destroying the bridge if you could walk on it
I want to know why Catherine leaves you in her prison That makes little sense.
Did you happen to record your reaction to the demo as it seems some of this has already been spoiled for you from that playthrough?
No sadly, sorry!
1:59:13 Imagine sticking your foot in there. OSHA violation.
Wooo
Strange, I played the game twice and in the animal puzzle the order was different than yours.
Yeah! It's randomized per playthrough, except the last one.
@@JordanRogers85 Strange I’ve launched the game a 3rd time but I always get the same code (spoiler: fish,beetle, butterfly (?), sunner, ytram, wahrk) maybe it’s a bug, also I’m running the macOS version.
don't forget you ALSO still have to use the topo map to figure out which island is which. easy to take for granted as a veteran player.
you also missed a big shortcut! i'm sure you know by now
I do, and it's very key to the speedrunning route now :p
Hey what is your Twitch channel called?
twitch.tv/radringtail
Wait, this is in VR? When did that happen? It looks like there are enough changes to warrant a replay, even if not in VR?
Absolutely! The newest version is very different and worth experiencing.
@@JordanRogers85 If only we had a Holodeck! That would be epic.
Which VR headset did you use?
Quest 2, tethered to the PC via USB cable
They cut a lot out of the original because their budget was tiny. Fine. But make the tiny part you have look and sound good. In the village, when you have wood railings that don't even align to fit through the post holes ... what the heck are you even doing? I'll ignore the horrendous characters and animations, but why is the lighting so bad? The dark and mysterious mood of the original RIven is completely gone. I have a very strong feeling most of this production was outsourced to India.
please subtitel 👌🥰
Awwww snap well there goes my Sunday lol