Cyan's remake of Riven has a release date: June 25th. It also has a release trailer. Two, in fact -- PC (Steam/GOG) and Quest 2/3. (They're almost the same, but the Quest trailer shows a bit of VR UI at 1:06.)
Snapshot from the release date trailer.
Cyan had said it would be a 2024 release, so of course I was expecting November. Nope!
(In fact that's the day after I get home from NarraScope. Oh boy. I guess I'm lucky it wasn't the day after I leave for NarraScope.)
So, what do we expect from this? Aside from eyewateringly detailed environments and a soundtrack that still defines immersive reality for me.
The Myst remake was impeccably faithful to the original in layout, mechanics, and puzzle design. They made the walkable areas a bit larger. They adjusted a few things to be more VR-friendly -- all objects and devices are reachable from a seated position. And they added the "randomize puzzle solutions" option to give the old fans a replayability boost. But it was the same game, the same presentation, and (options aside) the same puzzles.
I expected the same when Riven was announced. Cyan has been teasing new visual detail and more explorable corners all along, but I figured the puzzles were the puzzles were the puzzles.
Apparently I'm wrong about that too:
[...] the new Riven isn’t a carbon copy of the original. There are new puzzles, new locations, and new pieces of lore alongside structural changes to make the world more narratively consistent.
-- "Remaking a Masterpiece", Adam Morgan, Game Informer, April 1
And, let us recall, new Robyn Miller music tracks as well.
"Narratively consistent" is tricky terrain, of course. Myst fans will happily talk about a "real canon", of which the game Myst is only an abstracted representation. Cyan knows the fans love that stuff; see last summer's Riven announcement at Mysterium, with a "newly recovered" artifact. But they've carefully avoided muddying the mainstream presentation of Myst with it.
I suspect that will remain true when Riven hits the not-really-streets in June. But hey, I've been wrong before.
Comments from Andrew Plotkin
Comments from Mastodon
@zarfeblong this is awesome! I remember when realMyst came out, Riven was viewed as being impossibly too large and complex for a good 3D remake
@zarfeblong oh god my brain is pretty sure realMyst is still relatively new, and it’s also very certain that my back hurts
PS: Nobody has mentioned Rime. Cyan teased in 2022 that Rime was being worked on, but no news since then.
Rime was an epilogue Age added to Myst in 2000 (the RealMyst release). It was meant to (slightly) tie Myst forward to the events of Riven. So it would make sense to release it now as a promotion for the Riven launch. But no sign of that happening, oh well.