Riven Demo - Thoughts and Disappointments
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- I played the demo to the Riven Remake recently. I had some thoughts on the weird change in player progression and level design in the first area.
I ramble a bit, and say the words "basically" and "really" more than I should. But bear with me. I'm new to this.
The redesign of temple island is not new player friendly, and takes away something that was good in the original. I also had some thoughts on the visual presentation as well (one thing I wish I had mentioned is that I acknowledge the remake looks almost identical to the original, but this doesn’t change my feelings about the new artistic design).
00:00 (Start and talking about the change in progression)
05:37( Analyzing the level design in paint)
14:54 (Talking about the loss of tone in the temple's visual design)
Yeah, this is pretty much the last time i touch a remake from Cyan. I'm done with that. They've clearly forgotten specific things and misunderstood what made their games great. What to them were results of limitations, to us were points of great joy and inspiration. Now, allowed in the garden of Cornucopia, they've completely "pigged out" on this whole VR thing, even tho it basically represents only a small (and dwindling) percentage of gamers as the hype falls flat and made a remake centered, created, and oriented for VR, even tho a good portion of those who'd play this game are here to play the old game, in better sight. I still have a few years on my back, i hope that enough people are equally disappointed in these mistakes of thought, and that they will remake Riven properly. Cyan sees this problem in the shape of a nail, so of course they will pick the hammer as the only tool to use to approach it, they are utterly blind to the reality that Riven was not what it is in the Remake. For shame.
What I loved i n the original was the first Maglev ride, as you leave Temple Island look at the running rails, they quiver slightly as you take off, a very minor detail but real attention to detail that is missing in the remake. Also the original looked more weathered and aged.
Yes. The original had a really lived-in feel to the world. The maglev was a great example of how much attention to detail was in that game.
Your concerns are valid for the demo but the full game allows and encourages open exploration like you describe.
Having finished it I thought it was an incredibly intelligent remake of the game that switched many things up for the better and respectfully fleshes out the world to make even more sense.
I agree with you that some visuals are not as good in the remake as the original.
Is the starting area different in the full game? Because if it's not, then the problem is still there. A new player's initial experience is restricted to one small area gated by a time consuming puzzle. If the starting area in the full game is different, that's surprising, but creates a different problem in that the demo isn't representative of the experience.
Either way, if the rest of the game is designed more intelligently, that's great, but the demo left be feeling wary and skeptical.
@@FutureScribeoftheProtolith The start is the same as the demo, but there are surprises as to how the rest unfolds. Without spoiling anything, there's puzzles and progression that are improved over the original and there's parts where it isn't as strong. All in all, this is a great complimentary experience to the original. Very much a different game that still feels very Riven in the best ways.
I first thought where’s the options for ray tracing? Might sound stupid but considering the mind blowing quality of the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original that had baked in ray tracing, it would have been great to use real time ray tracing to see the difference or how far we’ve come.
A bit of a personal take.
For this player, fiddled with the game for 20 minutes at a time over three days to get thru this section...meaning three days after buying it, there was a thrill that might have been all spent right at the beginning as in the '97 version.
Visuals - Old version - limit of screen resolution lowered the crispness...check out the old posters to see what it was actually looked like full resolution. The advantage with this new version is same visual quality, but delivered high res to the screen. Lighting and pallet are faithful to the original. Liked and Subscribed
Thank you for the comment and the subscribe!
Each player is going to experience things differently, for sure, and my perspective doesn't represent everyone. It definitely takes patience to play any puzzle game, especially a Myst game. But, I wonder if the average player would have your patience to play 20 minutes at a time over three days? Returning player, sure. New players, not so sure.
I disagree with you a little on the lighting and palette. I think a lot of the visuals I've seen are pretty faithful, but there's some notable exceptions. Such as in the video how I mentioned the temple has a completely different emotional tone and narrative weight due to the change in lighting the room.
The more I think about the decision to move the cage room, the more sense it makes. The tendency was to explore that room and open the temple door before even encountering it while it was shut, which felt pointless. It was a non-puzzle, and the only point of making you go there a single time was to show the projection chair. Now you're required to solve the rotating room first, which isn't hard, especially since it's way more obvious that you can see into and *out of* the room, you can clearly see the mesh gates working so you don't have to wonder what xyz switch does, you're made aware of the island symbols in the dome windows, you can see there's actually a point to the dome besides being a big pool, you can see from the starting area there's a door you need to get to... I don't see the problem with educating the player more before letting them wander all over with no clue. Originally you could go all the way to boiler island without learning much and just feel lost. If this change bothers you so much I've got bad news, there's way more changes 🥴
The decision to change how you open the big temple door makes sense. Blocking off progression to jungle island and changing the experience from non-linear to linear does not. As I said in the video, it would have made sense to have a separate puzzle to unlock the temple and get to the mag-lev. However, the rotating star chamber is tedious (rotations) and parts are obtuse and not intuitive (wooden gate) so players are trapped in a small area. This sort of level design is often done in other games to tutorialize the player, but New Riven doesn't do that. I agree with you that educating the player before opening up the world can be good, I don't think New Riven does that with its opening.
To your last comment. The only reason the other changes would bother me is if they are as inconsiderate to player experience as the one I discuss in the video. But from what other commenters have been saying, it seems they are not.
I don’t understand the disappointment at all. In the original game you are encouraged to explore the area inside the dome to redirect the steam of the two bridges, otherwise later you are in real trouble returning from Crater Island and solving the fire marble puzzle. It’s pretty straightforward to find the cage room and you can find also - already at the beginning - the symbols of the smaller domes. And - caution spoiler - you are able to go to Prison Island instantly.
I think I explained the disappointment pretty well: in the new game you’re trapped behind the rotating star chamber before you can explore anything else. I even drew a picture explaining that. You can’t do anything or go anywhere until you deal with that puzzle.
In the original game you were not encouraged to explore the area inside the dome (I’m assuming you meant golden dome) in the beginning, because in the beginning you don’t even know about the steam pipes and you have free access to go explore jungle island. But even if it was true that the first game encouraged you to explore beyond the star chamber, you would still only have been *encouraged* at the start and not *forced* at the start like the new game forces you to.
This is why I didn’t play the demo. I think the progression is fantastic in the full game. As a lifelong fan I’m loving it. And I went in skeptical
That's good to hear. Thanks for the comment!
You can say it. They took much less ressources to do Riven remake than they put in the original. But also to their defence, a 3D Studio from 25 years ago could make better pictures then when it has 3 days time to render it, than when a gpu today must do that 60 times a second ;-).
Thanks for the comment. I don't know how true it is that modern graphics can't be as artistically well designed as the original Riven. But, my main point was about the change in progression design that traps the player on temple island, while in the original you could freely explore further. That choice in gating the player's progress isn't a product of changes in graphics rendering. Same with what I said about the temple losing it's tone and atmosphere. Being generically lit is not a product of increased rendering requirements or anything like that. It's a creative choice, or rather, a lack thereof.
It's because of VR, it has to run at 90fps for each eye on limited hardware, so fancy stuff like volumetric lighting in the temple is not possible.
Good points made
Thank you for the comment! Glad you liked the video.