This honestly has been the VERY BEST Let's Play video series I've ever seen. Your narration was very pleasant, I loved all your explanations and the background of every bit of lore in the game. The world needs more Let's Plays like this one! It's exactly the type of walkthrough gameplay I'm always searching for. Thank you so much for this amazing journey!
“I threw this message in a bottle into the ocean and it reached someone, so if I throw them into the ocean, they’ll make it home!” Loved this lets play, and all the details you provided!
I am in my late 60s and played a little bit of these Myst games back in the 90s when they came out but I was too busy and the puzzles were a bit too much for me to figure out in the short spurts of time I did have. Just this week after some disappointing trial-and-errors I discovered your walkthroughs and I wanted to say thanks so very very much for such an exciting adventure!! Your knowledge of these 'places' and your detailed explanations were like listening to a great-professor tell some wonderful amazing stories and you actually brought it all to life. It's like reading a mesmerizing epic book...but with pictures and puzzles!! I am blessed to have found your walkthroughs and can you tell how excited I am to know that I have Exile-Revelation-and End of Ages to look forward to?! Again, many many thanks.
5 years after you've made this video, it seems that now finally realtime graphics have caught up with Riven 18 years after it's been made. The latest work by the crew of the Starry Expanse Project (RealRiven) are doing an incredible job at maintaining and even enhancing the depth of the visuals all within te realtime Unreal 4 Engine. I'm currently doing try-outs to join the development team for art asset creation for the remake, and it's dedications like your series that make me stoked to see it someday played through again for newer generations of gamers.
Thank you for doing this. I was playing this last year and followed a few other walkthoughs and always got stuck. Your walkthrough was so informative, I was able to decipher the codes that I needed to continue and finally finish this game. Thank you again for your hardwork and amazing help to understand this game better. I will be starting Myst 3 Exile today and will be using your walkthroughs when I get stuck.... hehehehe. 🙂
It's bittersweet. When Riven came out years ago, i was much much too young to understand it, let alone solve it, but it's atmosphere was so intoxicating that i played it just the same, aimlessly poking around riding trains from island to island. then my well meaning parents bought a walkthrough book so that i could see more, and so i never got to solve the puzzles on my own. it's a hard pill to swallow that in my short-sighted childhood i cheated myself out of the full experience of this utterly unique game.
All is not lost. I just finished Myst and knew everything about the game, yet I did not know how to solve anything. It was like playing a new game. That is, if you don't have photographic memory (which I do not).
I keep watching this series. You are one of the few LPers who talk about the details about the game and the story instead of making funny faces and yelling a lot.
Eight years later and I just found this. Thank you so much. I used to play this game when I was a kid with my uncle and it has been one long nostalgia fueled blast watching your Let’s Play. I appreciate you.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. An Exile LP is unlikely, however. For one thing, I'm working on a LP of Uru at the moment, at it'll be a while before I finish that one. Also, shadyparadox (who is currently doing a realMYST LP) has told me he wants to do Exile, and since I don't like Exile as much, I'll probably leave it to him. Thanks again for watching my videos, and please also watch my Uru videos if you're interested.
Thank you for this playthrough. I haven't played Riven in a casual manner in years. As others have said, I have played the Myst series, but I have been to Riven. Truly one of my favorite games.
We have the year 2023 and I just finished watching this Let's Play completely while having played Riven in parallel on iPad (which is working suprisingly well!). Knowing that there will be an official Remake of Riven currently developed by Cyan is making me rejoice! Thanks, Sven, for all your great videos throughout the years. I hope you will do one for Firmament, too, which I also finished just recently and which I also enjoyed much. And of course for the upcoming Riven Remake I'm looking forward to hearing a warm "Welcome back!" ;-)
Just wanted to say a MASSIVE thank you for this series! I am studying Riven for my english class and I was having a lot of trouble playing the game, this helped me so much!!
Thank you Sven, I'd forgotten how far I'd got in the game, and what it took to get there - like you I really was lost, trapped, in this other world for hours, nights, days, and I couldn't get away!Incidentally, I noticed in your game-play you like to take a left, there is a logic for always taking 'a-left' if in doubt in a game, one's opponent is not just the boss in the game, it is also the writer, the programmer ... and most people in the world including programmers are right-handed, and think right-handed. Of course there is not the coding that there once was when writing the components of a game, though I suspect due to bad-housekeeping there is probably still enough legacy-coding in the modules used, to make taking a 'left' first - still viable!
Thank you very much for taking the time and making these. As I was a child, I got Riven as a present to play on my PlayStation, but was overwhelmed by the puzzles and never saw it through. You've closed a chapter there for me, pal and I thank you! =)
The steam version of this game is riddled with bugs, and crashes. I couldn't proceed from this part after playing the entire game cause every time I broke the glass, the game would crash. Thanks for uploading a let's play so I could see the ending.
o.O Why didn't Atrus just hand the Linking Book to the Stranger instead of dropping it over the side again? The Stranger fell through the fissure anyway so it would at least keep the Linking Book in familiar hands...
+LaffeeTaffeeGG Yeah, he says "You know where to find me." Except at this point in time, the only way for the player character to get to him would be via Myst Island and then onto D'ni.
+LaffeeTaffeeGG Because that would defeat the purpose of "sending [the stranger] back to the place where [he] came from." As stated in the opening cutscene. (It was the least-vague thing about Atrus' opening spiel) Besides, the stranger has working eyes and brains (He wouldn't have beaten either game if he didn't), and he stumbled across the book to Myst when he wasn't even looking for it. Furthermore, Atrus dropped the book to Myst into the Fissure in the first place, and since the Stranger found it in his world, it stands to reason that anything dropped into the Fissure on Riven would end up where the Myst book landed. Therefore, upon touchdown, the Stranger would be back on his world, with the book to K'veer (and the original book to Myst) nearby. The only thing that Atrus left to chance was whether the Stranger would survive the journey, and at the very least he (Atrus) knew the environment within wasn't overly harmful.
Because the Stranger is Nephrite from Sailor Moon (which is how he arrived through the star fissure, after turning into rainbow sparkles) and so Atrus was afraid that when the Stranger got back to Tokyo, it might fall into the hands of the Dark Kingdom if they were not yet defeated. 1000% Cannon.
Thank you once again for a great LP Sven. I guess it has been a long time since you recorded this to the time that I am watching it so it may no be all relevant for you to read these comments anymore. I think you have a nice sense of humor and a smart and calm way to do walkthroughs. It almost feels like a I know you a bit after seeing 4 of your walkthroughs. I guess we live in the same country considering your name;-)
Wonderful pieces of D'ni history in these informative videos you've made. Much appreciated. I will share this on to many who desire to know more about these games in the future. Thank you for your hard work in all of this.
I recently purchased the masterpiece collection from Steam. All games including realMyst. Though i only got stuck maybe once on the first game and a couple on Riven i loved and appreciate your videos. Now...to Exile. I never got past the first puzzle. So ill be back. Thank you so much. Truly. This game is a childhood delight. So fun replaying. 🙏🙏🙏 THANK YOU
@h4x0y If you're using XP Mode in Windows 7, I'd recommend turning off the integration features (Tools, Disable Integration Features) if you haven't already. It will improve the experience. The linking book that Atrus uses at the end leads back to D'ni, as far as I know.
It's great to see how your LP's have evolved since this one, Sven. Thank you for all of your hard work you put into these. You've helped me re-connect to these games and get back into them since playing Myst when I was 13 when it first came out.
I hated the puzzles when I first played this game (circa 2000, when I was too dumb to tie them together into the final "fire marbles" puzzle). But, with the atmosphere, the characters and the mythology of it all, it's a game I have never forgotten since. The trilogy of books that accompany the series, especially the second one, helped permanently cement the story into my mind. Story wise, it's one of my absolute favorites.
You were terrific and are, indeed, a Master Let's Player of the Highest Caliber. It was an honor to have journeyed with you. While you fell into the Star Fissure I was thinking of this as an ending. [The camera pans through space showing nebulae and our solar system.] "Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before." RANDOM
The fissure comes out near the cleft, as seen in Uru, which is very close to Tomahna. So it did take the stranger home. My theory is that the stranger returned to that area later and met Atrus there by accident (where they probably had a laugh about the fact that, if it weren't for all the cave-ins and such, the stranger could've walked home from K'veer). :-)
Y'know, I just had a thought: Why did Gehn decide to make a link from the 233rd age to Prison Island, when he finds it so difficult to make books work, and there seems to be plenty wood for building a boat, instead. Of course, he can't see Prison Island from any of the other islands, but he should have a general idea of where it should be, and he does have a ginormeous telescope, and the technology to mark the route with buoys...
Hi, just wanted to say thank you for such a great series. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Riven again after all this time! The thought to look up a RUclips video on it really came out of nowhere for me and I have to say it brought back so many memories! In 1997 I was fifteen and became the butt of all of my friend's jokes when it came my enthusiasm for this game. I guess I caught the bug but none of my friends did. I never finished it though, I'm not sure why. It's hard to remember but I think I may have made it as far as Ghen's cage. So close! Watching the ending after all this time really blew my mind. I'll have to check out to see if I can play this game on MacOS, and the other's in the Myst line. There are so many games that I have played while visiting friends that I just found completely uninteresting. They just run around shooting each other, die and repeat. And they can play it for hours, I don't understand. I much prefer to be stranded on a strange island where everyone runs away from me and I have no idea what I'm doing haha! But I loved it. I remember forcing my friends to play it with me and their groans during some of the most amazing moments in the game 'oh my god that statue's mouth just opened we can go inside!! or 'Oh it's not a base 10 number system!' Such excitement, just not shared by my friends haha. I did see the frog silhouette, but didn't know what it meant or what the hell was going on there. I haven't played Myst so I think there was a lot that I didn't understand of the story. Just here's a book and now you're in a cage and off you go... I know I'm going on and on but I also really enjoyed hearing the music. And I have to absolutely agree with your point that 3D graphics just don't compare to this style, I'm not sure it ever will. It's just a totally different expressive technique I suppose and you can't really compare them. Thanks again, Joel
@WriterOfMadness I think the stranger is simply bracing himself to prevent him from falling in. And you'll notice, everything that falls into the fissure now was stuff that was directly above it, so I guess the suction wasn't that strong.
I played Riven back in the summer of 98. I saw a roommate in college play it and I was curious enough to try it in the summer. Thank you for this LP, I actually did beat the game but with a lot of *ahem* help. This LP explained a lot of things that I never noticed back when I first played it.. I only recalled how realistic the game looked and I loved the way the world moved (like those rotating hemispheres!)
@lovemeg5186 No, Atrus fell into the fissure 30 years ago, dropping the Myst book. The stranger found it, starting the events of Myst. Now, Atrus believes that the fissure will return the stranger home.
@danielcdawson The audio skips in the commentary were caused by the screen turning off due to the power settings (I record the commentary on my laptop while I play the game on my desktop). Since then I take steps to prevent that so similar skips are not observed in newer Let's Plays. Also, that laptop has already suffered an untimely demise due to a faulty video card. I have a different laptop now. :-)
Riven is also one of my favorite games ever. Actually, I only just quite recently got to play through Riven, together with the original Myst and Exile. 1 month of aggrivating puzzling later, and I had finished them. I also got the fourth one, and while the story and atmosphere may be better than part 3's, the puzzles seem kinda illogical, so I never finished it. So I thank you for making a let's play of that one, so I could focus on the story I hold so dear :) Thank you for your stellar work!
You do meet Atrus again in Myst III: Exile, set a few years after Riven. He wanted to take you to Releeshan to meet some D'ni survivors, before things go wrong and you have to help him again. In Myst IV: Revelation it's implied that you visit Atrus regulary in Tomahna (which is on Earth).
Every time I watch this LP I wonder why Atrus doesn't let the Stranger have the book. Eventually I realise (agehn... get it? "A Gehn?" "Again?" Hee hee...) that it's going to the same place the Stranger will land... Still a bit rude to just drop it and not-quite-say "go fetch!" though. Considering that, I see that we now have /two/ Myst linking books! The one that started Myst (the game) should still be there (unless some Other Stranger grabbed it! :O ) and now this one from Riven will land there as well. Hmmm.
+Mazryonh It wouldn't make much of a difference. The Stranger has access to a D'ni Linking Book on Myst Island, in the fireplace. It'd just be a shortcut haha.
+ExoBassTix Ironically, D'ni is on Earth, so you could not link to D'ni from where you land after the fissure. I actually wonder there Atrus' linking book leads to... though it is probably Myst or K'veer (D'ni).
@benaniman1 Yeesha was born 9 years after the events of Riven so if Catherine was expecting now it would've been the longest pregnancy ever. Sure, we don't know how long pregnancy lasts for a Rivenese carrying a part-Rivenese, part-Human, part-D'ni child, but 9 years sounds a bit excessive. :-P
Myst and Riven are simply the best computer games of all time. The new games are getting worse and make me sea sick with all the spinning. These games were perfection and haven't been topped. It's truly bittersweet to watch this, knowing it had to end at some point. Thanks for the commitment to detail and for revealing all the richness of these games.
I am honestly curious how the Stranger survives the fall through the Fissure. In Uru, near the cleft, you can see the remains of the telescope and a Whark skeleton, signaling it leads to Earth, but they clearly fell down, similar to the book in Myst's intro. By that logic, the Stranger should be dead on impact with the ground.
There may be another Myst-related LP in the future, but I cannot give you any time estimates. Sooner rather than later I hope, but it depends on how busy I will be with work.
It has now been a decade since Dilandau3000 released these videos. 🍻 Cheers! Let's keep celebrating Riven for decades to come! Also think of the fact that in 2 years there will be as much time since this video release as there was between the video release and the release of Riven.
Excellent let's play. I though this would be an interesting game for me to do my own LP so I did a search to see if anyone had done it and here you are. I thank you for providing all of the back story that I missed when I first played the game I'm really into that stuff. I've got the 5 CDs sitting next to me here, but I can't get past the QuickTime part of the install so I might not be playing Riven anytime soon.
wow, what a ending! I have now watched every video in this LP, and i got to say it is one of the best i have seen on youtube. Your knowledge of the game and the backstory is awesome! I really look foward to the "bad" endings, especially what happens when you release Gehn :D any upcoming projects? (another Myst LP? =D) thanks again for all the videos!
I got so far in this did everything on my own. But I could never open the star fissure. I went through it again and again. Hopefully it will still work on my laptop. And now with the help of your videos I can hopefully complete it. Thanks.
That's an amazing idea. There should be a Myst ARG with Riven-like puzzles scattered around some national park. I wonder if someone's done this already...
Great job I never played riven but it was a pleasure to watch u play it... nice job on the videos I played Myst but couldn't get passed the rocket ship puzzle love both games.... have u beating all the Myst games I will check your videos and see ones again good job damn theme puzzles where hard
I actually never understood Atrus's belief that falling into the Star Fissure would send you home. The book could survive the journey because it's an inanimate object, but how do we know we could survive the journey? I always assumed the star fissure was like a rift to fall through ACTUAL space between the planets, so it isn't like habitable with oxygen, etc. Who knows though, Rand Miller created the story but would be funny if Atrus' believed it was the way home but we died on the journey because we were basically dropping through the void of space.
@Dilandau3000 under XP Mode in Virtal PC it actually worked! quite laggy and the menu wont come up sometimes, but it works so thank you for your help! Just one question left: where does this linking book in the end link to? has it anything to do with the book falling in the beginning of myst I? or is it a link to Tomahna where you start myst III (atrus says he goes home through that book, but it wasnt tomahna yet, was it? yeesha wasnt born yet..) groeten uit Holland ;)
It was a bit rude of Atrus to not hand you the book before linking out, but the designers probably didn't want the player to be frustrated that they couldn't use the book. But Atrus did know that both the Stranger and the book would land in the same place, so the result would be the same; the Stranger could just pick the book up and take it with him. Atrus didn't realize that the place the fissure takes you is right above D'ni and probably thought it took you to a different Age entirely.
myst was my all-time favorite game until riven came along. then riven was my all-time favorite game until starcraft 2 came along. now riven is my all-time favorite game again after watching this lp. i bought 3 (yes, 3) copies of myst, both the cd and dvd versions of riven, and the myst 3 collector's edition. should get around to myst 4 and 5 and uru someday... thanks for the videos.
Yeah, no Riven eyeball-style puzzles there. They'd probably think they were bombs. I could easily see someone scattering journal pages around and creating some kind of scavenger hunt with codes and whatnot, though. As for story...a crazy Myst fan has kidnapped Rand Miller, and only an equally crazy Myst fan with working knowledge of D'ni can save him! Requires Rand Miller's cooperation...ideally. (I'm very sorry about what I'm posting. I should be sleeping right now.)
very well done walkthrough! great solid narration, shared my sentiments about the game exactly! i also love the game designer richard van der wende. -who doesn't know about his work should look him up! i think riven also had the greatest influence on me, especially the music. i tend to hear it from time to time while talking walks outside. i have perfect surroundings for the mood it transports. like gazing at a dusk/star clear night sky. robyn miller is exception as a composer! :)
bravo!!! well done, good Sir. I too, spent many nights with no sleep. when I had three or four days off in a row, my ass was parked in the game..lots of caffeine (and other stimulants lol) and visene. I never got to Catherine, oh well
now if you look at Catherine it looks as though she is expecting a child which makes sense in the next game Yeesha exists in the next game. I'm sure it was not the original intent for the game designers to have players to draw this conclusion, but ultimately was the route that the game series went in that direction. The idea of Playing Riven in Real Time has a lot of promise but it would take a good number of fans to have Cyan, Ubisoft, or even Presto Studios just to make it happen for real.
well that was a great, GREAT Let's Play. well done, it brought back all the good memories from riven. Please help me out of my misery, I have the original 5-CD riven aswell as the DVD version found in the Myst 10th anniversary DVD pack, currently running windows 7 32 bit and both versions of riven wont work... not so long ago i was running win XP, riven didnt run either, how did you manage to play it? cheers!
In case you didn't find out or someone else wants to starryexpanse (dot) com They also have uploaded a demo of what Prison Island would be like. It is a little glitchy as it is a new project (if you go pull the elevator switch then step out quickly, your character will go up but not be in the elevator, for example) but the graphics are absolutely gorgeous. Cyan supports them and even gave them the original textures used in Riven.
Hey Dilandau, was Riven always your favorite of the Myst series then? I personally liked Myst IV the best as it had an excellent balance of graphical detail and reasonable puzzles to solve. Riven was actually my least favorite Myst game because of it's difficulty (least favorite doesn't mean I hated it though).
Awesome LP of an awesome game, thanks for doing it, played tis abit when I was really young, as well as a different First person adventure game I can not remember and am still trying to find it. Now I need to find an LP of Myst 3, nver beat 3 (was too scared) but made some good distance
Thanks for the game play. Your commentaries made this game alive once again, despite of the visuals and graphics. I won't be watching the remaining series of myst, for I only played the first 2 games of myst on my mac, and I like to keep it that way. ^^
@Dilandau3000 I hope you got your system checked out. I used to get audio skips like one can hear in your commentary, as well as random program crashes and other strange things. Turned out, I had a bad RAM module. Not good for your data. Nice LP, BTW.
1:10 When looking at the stop, shouldn't we see the left rail of the telescope? This is something I never got. And in the normal view, shouldn't it be visible whether the stop is set or not?
Wudn't the best result be for Atrus to link to D'ni and leave the book with the stranger, then the stranger travels home, then he'd know the book was in safe hands and the stranger cud also visit them? Surely leaving the linking book on the floor in the middle of new mexico wudn't be a better option? (assuming that's where the star fissue takes you)
![FNAF vs TF2 - Episode 2 [SFM]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/z5b3V2-VLb0/mqdefault.jpg)
This honestly has been the VERY BEST Let's Play video series I've ever seen. Your narration was very pleasant, I loved all your explanations and the background of every bit of lore in the game. The world needs more Let's Plays like this one! It's exactly the type of walkthrough gameplay I'm always searching for. Thank you so much for this amazing journey!
I just found these this week and I feel exactly like you do! It was such a fun exciting adventure.
“I threw this message in a bottle into the ocean and it reached someone, so if I throw them into the ocean, they’ll make it home!”
Loved this lets play, and all the details you provided!
I am in my late 60s and played a little bit of these Myst games back in the 90s when they came out but I was too busy and the puzzles were a bit too much for me to figure out in the short spurts of time I did have. Just this week after some disappointing trial-and-errors I discovered your walkthroughs and I wanted to say thanks so very very much for such an exciting adventure!! Your knowledge of these 'places' and your detailed explanations were like listening to a great-professor tell some wonderful amazing stories and you actually brought it all to life. It's like reading a mesmerizing epic book...but with pictures and puzzles!! I am blessed to have found your walkthroughs and can you tell how excited I am to know that I have Exile-Revelation-and End of Ages to look forward to?! Again, many many thanks.
I agree. You just said it better than I could.
5 years after you've made this video, it seems that now finally realtime graphics have caught up with Riven 18 years after it's been made. The latest work by the crew of the Starry Expanse Project (RealRiven) are doing an incredible job at maintaining and even enhancing the depth of the visuals all within te realtime Unreal 4 Engine. I'm currently doing try-outs to join the development team for art asset creation for the remake, and it's dedications like your series that make me stoked to see it someday played through again for newer generations of gamers.
+Matt Laskowski (fox-orian) Good luck. :D
They're still working on it! (Two years after this comment)
What are you up to nowadays?
Best play through ever. Your generation is perfect. Not too much and not too little. Thank you for doing these!
Thank you for doing this. I was playing this last year and followed a few other walkthoughs and always got stuck. Your walkthrough was so informative, I was able to decipher the codes that I needed to continue and finally finish this game. Thank you again for your hardwork and amazing help to understand this game better. I will be starting Myst 3 Exile today and will be using your walkthroughs when I get stuck.... hehehehe. 🙂
It's bittersweet. When Riven came out years ago, i was much much too young to understand it, let alone solve it, but it's atmosphere was so intoxicating that i played it just the same, aimlessly poking around riding trains from island to island. then my well meaning parents bought a walkthrough book so that i could see more, and so i never got to solve the puzzles on my own. it's a hard pill to swallow that in my short-sighted childhood i cheated myself out of the full experience of this utterly unique game.
I downloaded A walkthrough online when I was too young. You are not the only one.
All is not lost. I just finished Myst and knew everything about the game, yet I did not know how to solve anything. It was like playing a new game. That is, if you don't have photographic memory (which I do not).
I keep watching this series. You are one of the few LPers who talk about the details about the game and the story instead of making funny faces and yelling a lot.
Eight years later and I just found this. Thank you so much. I used to play this game when I was a kid with my uncle and it has been one long nostalgia fueled blast watching your Let’s Play. I appreciate you.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. An Exile LP is unlikely, however. For one thing, I'm working on a LP of Uru at the moment, at it'll be a while before I finish that one. Also, shadyparadox (who is currently doing a realMYST LP) has told me he wants to do Exile, and since I don't like Exile as much, I'll probably leave it to him.
Thanks again for watching my videos, and please also watch my Uru videos if you're interested.
My dad never got the Star Fissure. He was all "why doesn't Atrus just take us out for pizza?"
Thank you for this playthrough. I haven't played Riven in a casual manner in years. As others have said, I have played the Myst series, but I have been to Riven. Truly one of my favorite games.
We have the year 2023 and I just finished watching this Let's Play completely while having played Riven in parallel on iPad (which is working suprisingly well!). Knowing that there will be an official Remake of Riven currently developed by Cyan is making me rejoice! Thanks, Sven, for all your great videos throughout the years. I hope you will do one for Firmament, too, which I also finished just recently and which I also enjoyed much. And of course for the upcoming Riven Remake I'm looking forward to hearing a warm "Welcome back!" ;-)
Just wanted to say a MASSIVE thank you for this series! I am studying Riven for my english class and I was having a lot of trouble playing the game, this helped me so much!!
Many thanks for this lp!! It's been over 7 years since then but Riven stands the test of time...
It has been over twenty years since the game came out, and it’s still a great story.
Thank you Sven, I'd forgotten how far I'd got in the game, and what it took to get there - like you I really was lost, trapped, in this other world for hours, nights, days, and I couldn't get away!Incidentally, I noticed in your game-play you like to take a left, there is a logic for always taking 'a-left' if in doubt in a game, one's opponent is not just the boss in the game, it is also the writer, the programmer ... and most people in the world including programmers are right-handed, and think right-handed. Of course there is not the coding that there once was when writing the components of a game, though I suspect due to bad-housekeeping there is probably still enough legacy-coding in the modules used, to make taking a 'left' first - still viable!
This was my second time watching the LP and I still love it. Thanks for making it!
Thank you very much for taking the time and making these. As I was a child, I got Riven as a present to play on my PlayStation, but was overwhelmed by the puzzles and never saw it through. You've closed a chapter there for me, pal and I thank you! =)
The steam version of this game is riddled with bugs, and crashes. I couldn't proceed from this part after playing the entire game cause every time I broke the glass, the game would crash. Thanks for uploading a let's play so I could see the ending.
o.O Why didn't Atrus just hand the Linking Book to the Stranger instead of dropping it over the side again? The Stranger fell through the fissure anyway so it would at least keep the Linking Book in familiar hands...
+LaffeeTaffeeGG Yeah, he says "You know where to find me." Except at this point in time, the only way for the player character to get to him would be via Myst Island and then onto D'ni.
+LaffeeTaffeeGG Because that would defeat the purpose of "sending [the stranger] back to the place where [he] came from." As stated in the opening cutscene. (It was the least-vague thing about Atrus' opening spiel) Besides, the stranger has working eyes and brains (He wouldn't have beaten either game if he didn't), and he stumbled across the book to Myst when he wasn't even looking for it. Furthermore, Atrus dropped the book to Myst into the Fissure in the first place, and since the Stranger found it in his world, it stands to reason that anything dropped into the Fissure on Riven would end up where the Myst book landed. Therefore, upon touchdown, the Stranger would be back on his world, with the book to K'veer (and the original book to Myst) nearby. The only thing that Atrus left to chance was whether the Stranger would survive the journey, and at the very least he (Atrus) knew the environment within wasn't overly harmful.
Because the Stranger is Nephrite from Sailor Moon (which is how he arrived through the star fissure, after turning into rainbow sparkles) and so Atrus was afraid that when the Stranger got back to Tokyo, it might fall into the hands of the Dark Kingdom if they were not yet defeated. 1000% Cannon.
@ilikemario8 No, they probably linked to D'ni. It would be some years after this before Atrus and Catherine moved to Tomahna.
14 years later and your videos are still relevant to people like me, thank you very much.
Thank you once again for a great LP Sven. I guess it has been a long time since you recorded this to the time that I am watching it so it may no be all relevant for you to read these comments anymore. I think you have a nice sense of humor and a smart and calm way to do walkthroughs. It almost feels like a I know you a bit after seeing 4 of your walkthroughs. I guess we live in the same country considering your name;-)
Crazy how close I got to the ending of this game so long ago. I got stuck on the fire marble puzzle way back in the day.
Thank you so much for this series! It fulfilled my curiosity after getting stuck in the game years ago. It was great to get to see it all. Thank you!
Wonderful pieces of D'ni history in these informative videos you've made. Much appreciated. I will share this on to many who desire to know more about these games in the future. Thank you for your hard work in all of this.
I recently purchased the masterpiece collection from Steam. All games including realMyst. Though i only got stuck maybe once on the first game and a couple on Riven i loved and appreciate your videos. Now...to Exile. I never got past the first puzzle. So ill be back. Thank you so much. Truly. This game is a childhood delight. So fun replaying. 🙏🙏🙏 THANK YOU
@h4x0y If you're using XP Mode in Windows 7, I'd recommend turning off the integration features (Tools, Disable Integration Features) if you haven't already. It will improve the experience.
The linking book that Atrus uses at the end leads back to D'ni, as far as I know.
@h4x0y I used a virtual machine (check Virtual PC or VMWare) with Windows 98. Though the game should work under XP as well.
It's great to see how your LP's have evolved since this one, Sven. Thank you for all of your hard work you put into these. You've helped me re-connect to these games and get back into them since playing Myst when I was 13 when it first came out.
I hated the puzzles when I first played this game (circa 2000, when I was too dumb to tie them together into the final "fire marbles" puzzle). But, with the atmosphere, the characters and the mythology of it all, it's a game I have never forgotten since. The trilogy of books that accompany the series, especially the second one, helped permanently cement the story into my mind. Story wise, it's one of my absolute favorites.
You were terrific and are, indeed, a Master Let's Player of the Highest Caliber. It was an honor to have journeyed with you.
While you fell into the Star Fissure I was thinking of this as an ending.
[The camera pans through space showing nebulae and our solar system.]
"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."
RANDOM
The fissure comes out near the cleft, as seen in Uru, which is very close to Tomahna. So it did take the stranger home. My theory is that the stranger returned to that area later and met Atrus there by accident (where they probably had a laugh about the fact that, if it weren't for all the cave-ins and such, the stranger could've walked home from K'veer). :-)
Wow, finally after all these years all those puzzles -+ the story makes sence.
I am truly great ful that you took the time to make these videos!
😎
Y'know, I just had a thought: Why did Gehn decide to make a link from the 233rd age to Prison Island, when he finds it so difficult to make books work, and there seems to be plenty wood for building a boat, instead. Of course, he can't see Prison Island from any of the other islands, but he should have a general idea of where it should be, and he does have a ginormeous telescope, and the technology to mark the route with buoys...
Hi, just wanted to say thank you for such a great series. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Riven again after all this time! The thought to look up a RUclips video on it really came out of nowhere for me and I have to say it brought back so many memories! In 1997 I was fifteen and became the butt of all of my friend's jokes when it came my enthusiasm for this game. I guess I caught the bug but none of my friends did.
I never finished it though, I'm not sure why. It's hard to remember but I think I may have made it as far as Ghen's cage. So close! Watching the ending after all this time really blew my mind.
I'll have to check out to see if I can play this game on MacOS, and the other's in the Myst line.
There are so many games that I have played while visiting friends that I just found completely uninteresting. They just run around shooting each other, die and repeat. And they can play it for hours, I don't understand. I much prefer to be stranded on a strange island where everyone runs away from me and I have no idea what I'm doing haha! But I loved it.
I remember forcing my friends to play it with me and their groans during some of the most amazing moments in the game 'oh my god that statue's mouth just opened we can go inside!! or 'Oh it's not a base 10 number system!' Such excitement, just not shared by my friends haha.
I did see the frog silhouette, but didn't know what it meant or what the hell was going on there. I haven't played Myst so I think there was a lot that I didn't understand of the story. Just here's a book and now you're in a cage and off you go...
I know I'm going on and on but I also really enjoyed hearing the music. And I have to absolutely agree with your point that 3D graphics just don't compare to this style, I'm not sure it ever will. It's just a totally different expressive technique I suppose and you can't really compare them.
Thanks again,
Joel
@WriterOfMadness I think the stranger is simply bracing himself to prevent him from falling in. And you'll notice, everything that falls into the fissure now was stuff that was directly above it, so I guess the suction wasn't that strong.
I played Riven back in the summer of 98. I saw a roommate in college play it and I was curious enough to try it in the summer. Thank you for this LP, I actually did beat the game but with a lot of *ahem* help. This LP explained a lot of things that I never noticed back when I first played it.. I only recalled how realistic the game looked and I loved the way the world moved (like those rotating hemispheres!)
did anyone else think that the stranger would not be able to breath in the star fisher
@lovemeg5186 No, Atrus fell into the fissure 30 years ago, dropping the Myst book. The stranger found it, starting the events of Myst. Now, Atrus believes that the fissure will return the stranger home.
My heart shatters every time I see the ending to Riven. :/ I really fell in love with the Age.
@danielcdawson The audio skips in the commentary were caused by the screen turning off due to the power settings (I record the commentary on my laptop while I play the game on my desktop). Since then I take steps to prevent that so similar skips are not observed in newer Let's Plays.
Also, that laptop has already suffered an untimely demise due to a faulty video card. I have a different laptop now. :-)
Fantastic LP, this really brings me back. We are seriously lacking on these types of games today.
Riven is also one of my favorite games ever.
Actually, I only just quite recently got to play through Riven, together with the original Myst and Exile. 1 month of aggrivating puzzling later, and I had finished them. I also got the fourth one, and while the story and atmosphere may be better than part 3's, the puzzles seem kinda illogical, so I never finished it. So I thank you for making a let's play of that one, so I could focus on the story I hold so dear :)
Thank you for your stellar work!
You do meet Atrus again in Myst III: Exile, set a few years after Riven. He wanted to take you to Releeshan to meet some D'ni survivors, before things go wrong and you have to help him again.
In Myst IV: Revelation it's implied that you visit Atrus regulary in Tomahna (which is on Earth).
Atrus and Catherine--still a better love story than Twilight.
Eric Young ya think?
Every time I watch this LP I wonder why Atrus doesn't let the Stranger have the book. Eventually I realise (agehn... get it? "A Gehn?" "Again?" Hee hee...) that it's going to the same place the Stranger will land... Still a bit rude to just drop it and not-quite-say "go fetch!" though. Considering that, I see that we now have /two/ Myst linking books! The one that started Myst (the game) should still be there (unless some Other Stranger grabbed it! :O ) and now this one from Riven will land there as well. Hmmm.
+Princess Riikka Maybe Atrus' Linking Book in fact leads to D'ni and not Myst Island this time?
+Mazryonh It wouldn't make much of a difference. The Stranger has access to a D'ni Linking Book on Myst Island, in the fireplace. It'd just be a shortcut haha.
+ExoBassTix Ironically, D'ni is on Earth, so you could not link to D'ni from where you land after the fissure. I actually wonder there Atrus' linking book leads to... though it is probably Myst or K'veer (D'ni).
@benaniman1 Yeesha was born 9 years after the events of Riven so if Catherine was expecting now it would've been the longest pregnancy ever. Sure, we don't know how long pregnancy lasts for a Rivenese carrying a part-Rivenese, part-Human, part-D'ni child, but 9 years sounds a bit excessive. :-P
While sometimes I found got really stuck so badly, I love the world of Riven! There is nothing like it! It definitely is one of the best!
Myst and Riven are simply the best computer games of all time. The new games are getting worse and make me sea sick with all the spinning. These games were perfection and haven't been topped. It's truly bittersweet to watch this, knowing it had to end at some point. Thanks for the commitment to detail and for revealing all the richness of these games.
I am honestly curious how the Stranger survives the fall through the Fissure.
In Uru, near the cleft, you can see the remains of the telescope and a Whark skeleton, signaling it leads to Earth, but they clearly fell down, similar to the book in Myst's intro.
By that logic, the Stranger should be dead on impact with the ground.
There may be another Myst-related LP in the future, but I cannot give you any time estimates. Sooner rather than later I hope, but it depends on how busy I will be with work.
It has now been a decade since Dilandau3000 released these videos. 🍻 Cheers! Let's keep celebrating Riven for decades to come! Also think of the fact that in 2 years there will be as much time since this video release as there was between the video release and the release of Riven.
Excellent let's play. I though this would be an interesting game for me to do my own LP so I did a search to see if anyone had done it and here you are. I thank you for providing all of the back story that I missed when I first played the game I'm really into that stuff.
I've got the 5 CDs sitting next to me here, but I can't get past the QuickTime part of the install so I might not be playing Riven anytime soon.
I've completed Myst, almost Riven and have the next two games in the series. Excellent games. And you're right the puzzles are extremely difficult..
Thanks for this upload! I also enjoyed your URU live LP series!
Thank you for showing this Let's play. I can't play the game because It's to hard but watching it as a story is amazing.
Wow, great LP! I also had the 5-disc version of this game as a teenager (I'm 26 now) and it was awesome to see it played again.
@Dilandau3000 Thank you for answering my question. But who is the "stranger" I never understood that part.
@ffflol There's three additional videos showing those bad endings.
wow, what a ending!
I have now watched every video in this LP, and i got to say it is one of the best i have seen on youtube. Your knowledge of the game and the backstory is awesome! I really look foward to the "bad" endings, especially what happens when you release Gehn :D
any upcoming projects? (another Myst LP? =D)
thanks again for all the videos!
Damn falling in the Fischer once again lol
And a whole 14 years later you’re now getting your wish as Riven has been released as a virtual reality game. Cannot wait for that “let’s play”
I got so far in this did everything on my own. But I could never open the star fissure. I went through it again and again. Hopefully it will still work on my laptop. And now with the help of your videos I can hopefully complete it. Thanks.
That's an amazing idea. There should be a Myst ARG with Riven-like puzzles scattered around some national park. I wonder if someone's done this already...
Great job I never played riven but it was a pleasure to watch u play it... nice job on the videos I played Myst but couldn't get passed the rocket ship puzzle love both games.... have u beating all the Myst games I will check your videos and see ones again good job damn theme puzzles where hard
Noooo don’t leave me dilaundau :( you’re voice is like an old friend. I wonder how different it is these days
I actually never understood Atrus's belief that falling into the Star Fissure would send you home. The book could survive the journey because it's an inanimate object, but how do we know we could survive the journey? I always assumed the star fissure was like a rift to fall through ACTUAL space between the planets, so it isn't like habitable with oxygen, etc.
Who knows though, Rand Miller created the story but would be funny if Atrus' believed it was the way home but we died on the journey because we were basically dropping through the void of space.
Agreed. These MYST games hold a special place in my heart. Fantastic video play through. :-)
Dammit Atrus, why'd you go and make me divide by zero?!
"...served as a safe passage home for my friend... either that, or he's dead now."
hehe, on a serious note, most beautiful game ending of all time.
@Dilandau3000 under XP Mode in Virtal PC it actually worked! quite laggy and the menu wont come up sometimes, but it works so thank you for your help! Just one question left: where does this linking book in the end link to? has it anything to do with the book falling in the beginning of myst I? or is it a link to Tomahna where you start myst III (atrus says he goes home through that book, but it wasnt tomahna yet, was it? yeesha wasnt born yet..)
groeten uit Holland ;)
It was a bit rude of Atrus to not hand you the book before linking out, but the designers probably didn't want the player to be frustrated that they couldn't use the book. But Atrus did know that both the Stranger and the book would land in the same place, so the result would be the same; the Stranger could just pick the book up and take it with him. Atrus didn't realize that the place the fissure takes you is right above D'ni and probably thought it took you to a different Age entirely.
probably the most complete walkthrough of the series on youtube, except you whould make a walkthrough of myst iii!
myst was my all-time favorite game until riven came along. then riven was my all-time favorite game until starcraft 2 came along. now riven is my all-time favorite game again after watching this lp.
i bought 3 (yes, 3) copies of myst, both the cd and dvd versions of riven, and the myst 3 collector's edition. should get around to myst 4 and 5 and uru someday...
thanks for the videos.
Yeah, no Riven eyeball-style puzzles there. They'd probably think they were bombs. I could easily see someone scattering journal pages around and creating some kind of scavenger hunt with codes and whatnot, though. As for story...a crazy Myst fan has kidnapped Rand Miller, and only an equally crazy Myst fan with working knowledge of D'ni can save him! Requires Rand Miller's cooperation...ideally. (I'm very sorry about what I'm posting. I should be sleeping right now.)
Thank you, I enjoyed this LP immensely. Now I've got to go track down someone who will do an Exile LP...
very well done walkthrough! great solid narration, shared my sentiments about the game exactly! i also love the game designer richard van der wende. -who doesn't know about his work should look him up! i think riven also had the greatest influence on me, especially the music. i tend to hear it from time to time while talking walks outside. i have perfect surroundings for the mood it transports. like gazing at a dusk/star clear night sky. robyn miller is exception as a composer! :)
This game changed my life.
bravo!!! well done, good Sir.
I too, spent many nights with no sleep. when I had three or four days off in a row, my ass was parked in the game..lots of caffeine (and other stimulants lol) and visene.
I never got to Catherine, oh well
now if you look at Catherine it looks as though she is expecting a child which makes sense in the next game Yeesha exists in the next game. I'm sure it was not the original intent for the game designers to have players to draw this conclusion, but ultimately was the route that the game series went in that direction.
The idea of Playing Riven in Real Time has a lot of promise but it would take a good number of fans to have Cyan, Ubisoft, or even Presto Studios just to make it happen for real.
Easter Egg: Save the Game in the fissure and the Savegame is called "Home". At least on the iPad.
Riven was a long strenuous game.You played it well Sven!
@Dilandau3000 I've only played Myst and Riven, and a little bit of Myst III. Would you consider this the hardest of the Myst games?
well that was a great, GREAT Let's Play. well done, it brought back all the good memories from riven. Please help me out of my misery, I have the original 5-CD riven aswell as the DVD version found in the Myst 10th anniversary DVD pack, currently running windows 7 32 bit and both versions of riven wont work... not so long ago i was running win XP, riven didnt run either, how did you manage to play it? cheers!
In case you didn't find out or someone else wants to
starryexpanse (dot) com
They also have uploaded a demo of what Prison Island would be like. It is a little glitchy as it is a new project (if you go pull the elevator switch then step out quickly, your character will go up but not be in the elevator, for example) but the graphics are absolutely gorgeous. Cyan supports them and even gave them the original textures used in Riven.
I wonder if the giant Moiety Dagger next to the cage, going down is supposed to mean anything significant or if it was just done for effect.
Yay, my new copy of Riven arrived today, and much sooner than expected. :)
Excellent long play. Cheers mate.
I wonder if you'd consider doing a Let's Play of Traitor's Gate Dilandau?
Hey Dilandau, was Riven always your favorite of the Myst series then? I personally liked Myst IV the best as it had an excellent balance of graphical detail and reasonable puzzles to solve. Riven was actually my least favorite Myst game because of it's difficulty (least favorite doesn't mean I hated it though).
If anyones wondering: this game does work on windows7.
Awesome LP of an awesome game, thanks for doing it, played tis abit when I was really young, as well as a different First person adventure game I can not remember and am still trying to find it. Now I need to find an LP of Myst 3, nver beat 3 (was too scared) but made some good distance
Thanks for the game play. Your commentaries made this game alive once again, despite of the visuals and graphics. I won't be watching the remaining series of myst, for I only played the first 2 games of myst on my mac, and I like to keep it that way. ^^
Thanks for making this let's play!
@Dilandau3000 I hope you got your system checked out. I used to get audio skips like one can hear in your commentary, as well as random program crashes and other strange things. Turned out, I had a bad RAM module. Not good for your data.
Nice LP, BTW.
That was fun. I'm gonna go play Myst IV again now. Still haven't beat it.
1:10 When looking at the stop, shouldn't we see the left rail of the telescope? This is something I never got. And in the normal view, shouldn't it be visible whether the stop is set or not?
I consider Uru to be canon. :-)
Wudn't the best result be for Atrus to link to D'ni and leave the book with the stranger, then the stranger travels home, then he'd know the book was in safe hands and the stranger cud also visit them? Surely leaving the linking book on the floor in the middle of new mexico wudn't be a better option? (assuming that's where the star fissue takes you)
awesome LP