When Riven appeared on the shelves in 1997, I raced out
to buy it. I'd heard plenty about its predecessor, Myst, and even
though I hadn't played that game, I didn't want to miss out this time
around. I was a bit shocked to see that the game included the official
clue book. Looking back, I should have taken that inclusion as a sign
of things to come—if the game came with a clue book, then people must
have raising a considerable ruckus about the game's difficulty.
Nonplussed, I installed the game and played for about an hour. I had
never felt so lost and aimless playing a videogame before. I just
didn't "get it." I resorted to the clue book, but when I realized that
I would likely be spending more time with the clue book than the game,
I quit in disgust. I figured I'd wait a few years until I forgot what
I'd learned in the clue book, then try it again with a fresh
perspective.
About a week ago, I did try the game again. This time I had more
experience with this type of adventure game and had recently completed
Myst. I figured I would be able to get through the puzzles and soon be
installing the third game, Exile.
Boy, was I wrong. An hour later I was on the net looking for clues.
In the course of that, I realized that I still had the old clue book,
so I turned to it once again to figure out what the heck I was supposed
to do in this game. It wasn't just that I didn't know how to solve the
puzzles. I couldn't even find the puzzles. I didn't know the puzzles
when I was staring right at them. I was puzzled before I even got to
the puzzles! I guess I shouldn’t be using the term "puzzle" here
anyway, since several reviews I read explained that Riven doesn't have
puzzles, only mysterious devices. Oh boy.
The agony of Riven, for me, at least, is that you really have no
idea what to do. Even when you start working at levers or buttons, you
have to wonder if you're not doing something prematurely and should
wait until later to do it. It was unclear to me what to do first, or
what I could do even if I had the patience to try everything (as some
of the hint sites recommended). After starting fresh a few times and
assuring myself that "This time I will not use hints," I gave up and
just used a walk-through to get me through the game. Even with that
resource I was stumped a few times and had to really think about what I
was doing wrong.
I'm not sure what Cyan was thinking with this one. The puzzles here
are enough to stump a professional cryptologist. What's more, it felt
at times as though the developers must have thought their puzzles were
too easy and had thrown a monkey wrench or two in the equation to make
them virtually unsolvable—at least by deductive means. An example of
this occurs in the "Golden Dome Puzzle," which involves six colored
marbles and a huge grid. The idea is to place the right colored marbles
in just the right spots on this grid and pull the lever. The "monkey
wrench" is that one of the marbles is actually not needed on the grid.
How a player would discover this on his or her own is beyond me. More
likely players will spend fruitless hours (if not weeks) trying to
figure out where that extra marble goes, or else questioning their
whole stratagem because there are six, not five, marbles—so something
must be wrong with their initial approach.
Another puzzle is even more laughable. I finally found a schoolroom
with a really clever and interesting device that I recognized as the
clue to deciphering Riven's number system. I counted clicks and
transcribed symbols, then rushed out and discovered that I didn't have
all the symbols I needed. The device wasn't helpful, and I couldn't
find anything else in the game to help either. A clue book revealed
that these other numbers were the result of rotating and combining
symbols to make new ones. It's a bit more complicated than that, but
you get the idea of how mind-blowing and frustrating this game can be.
After getting through the game and reflecting on it, I can see so
many things Cyan did right with it. The puzzles were clever even if
they were too difficult. A few hints or additional clues would have
helped immensely. I suppose the developers thought they had done enough
by making it impossible to die or really "screw up" playing Riven. With
only a very few exceptions, you can't "die" in Riven or put a machine
in a state that can't be reversed. This is comforting and helps
encourage exploration.
What I really like about the game is the indirect manner in which
you learn about your nemesis, G'hen. Slowly, and very subtly, you begin
to discover how he's behaved himself in exile on Riven. A few moments
in Riven are genuinely creepy—I really felt I was "trespassing" and was
drawn on by my innate appreciation for the macabre. One scene involving
a deadly fish nearly made me drop my swee (that's Barton for "sweet
tea.")
The atmosphere of Riven is even more desolate and lonely than that
of Myst, if such a thing is possible. The worlds seem dusty and
forlorn, and even though you do encounter people from time to time, you
don't get to interact with them. Even at the end, when you finally meet
G'hen and Catherine, you can't talk back to them or respond in any way.
You just watch. That's a pretty lame reward for sweating through all
those puzzles, but so it goes. In a way it's very interesting, simply
because the moments when you encounter others is when you are stripped
of all agency. Your agency is tied to your alienation.
Most of the reviews I read of Riven were overwhelmingly positive (I
don't want to say "myopic," but I felt that way about a few of them).
The one review I read that was particularly nasty said the game was
"boring" and stressed the slowness of getting around and the frequency
of CD swapping (a problem that I didn't experience with the DVD
version). I can appreciate this criticism. Riven can be a very dull
place, and it does take a LOT of clicking and some loading time to
traverse the worlds. The lack of clear goals or even a sense of what to
do next can easily lead to boredom. What did Cyan expect you to do;
wander around Riven in a sort of drop-jawed stupor until, miraculously,
you discovered what to do? My neighbors may well have wondered why the
guy next door was yelling, "Throw me a bone, Cyan!"
I guess for folks who really like that feeling of being lost,
confused, stumped, and frustrated, Riven is a winner. For folks like me
who want a more focused and channeled experience, this one's a no-go.
I'm not sure what kind of being of super intelligence it would take to
get through this game without cheating, but let's elect her President
so we can all be filthy rich and warp around the galaxy in custom built
star cruisers.
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