History VideoGame / Riven

* SceneryPorn: Duh. But unlike the original Myst this game still looks ''gorgeous''. ''Riven'' has received praise for aging well with its photo realistic scenes, the only limitation being the scenes rendered only in standard definition.

* SceneryPorn: Duh. But unlike the original Myst this game still looks ''gorgeous''.

* RealityEnsues: Gehn taught himself the Art of writing ages, and as a result, his understanding of it is flawed. This is why Riven is falling apart at the seams and Atrus has to make edits to the Riven descriptive book to keep it going while the PlayerCharacter is in there.

* DummiedOut: In beta versions of the game, there was an operable book press near the boiler on Book Assembly Island. The screen containing it still exists in the game, but was made inaccessible because playtesters mistook it for a puzzle. It can still be seen in the background of some other screens. Gehn's lab on the same island has five drawers, of which only the top one opens, revealing a collection of different eggs. An unused screen (without opening/closing animations) reveals that the drawer below this one contains butterflies.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Gehn is trapped and the people of the Age freed in Tay, the Stranger goes home, and Atrus and Catherine are reunited. But the Age of Riven itself dies, along with all of its animals, and it seems unlikely at that point that the Stranger and Atrus' family will meet again]].

* ChekhovsGun: The telescope is one of the very first things you encounter. [[spoiler: Near the end of the game, you figure out how to open the latch underneath it and remove the safeties to break the glass between Riven and the Star Fissure, allowing you to escape from Riven and beat the game.]]

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:Gehn]] suffers this fate if you do things right.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: [[spoiler: After smashing the plate of glass in the iron plating covering the Star Fissure, the vacuum pressure of space manages to bend and suck in all of the metal surrounding it…but leaves the player and all other characters around the Fissure standing upright with only some wind blowing their clothes around.]] Then again, this is an unstable age we're talking about.

** The combination to the telescope hatch is found [[spoiler: in Catherine's journal, which you pick up on Tay]], and if you use it and trigger the ending as soon as you get it, [[spoiler: Gehn shoots both you and Atrus]]. However, if you take that code back in time via an earlier saved game, another version of the ending is played where [[spoiler: nobody turns up.]]

* TreeTopTown: The village in the Moiety Age, situated in the middle of a giant tree, as seen on the cover art. [[spoiler:(There used to be a similar tree on Riven, but Gehn had it cut down.)]]

* DevelopersForesight: Some of the details in the game can really go unnoticed. For example, on Village Island, knocking on the one accessible village door [[ArcNumber five times]] will rouse a response (albeit a frightened one) from the house's occupant.

* FissionMailed: If you [[spoiler:enter the trap book when Gehn asks you to]], the screen goes black. And stays black for the better part of a minute before something happens. The development team apparently wanted to make it longer, but the testers thought their computers had crashed.

** Opening the Star Fissure before going to Tay: [[spoiler:falling into the fissure with an immediate NonStandardGameOver.]]

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler: Gehn]] suffers this fate if you do things right.

* BlackComedy: The morbid children's game in the school.

* GuideDangIt: Riven in general is seen as much harder (and, in some cases, more obtuse) than Myst, so there are several spots in the game that could qualify. The most well-known, however, is the notorious "Waffle Iron" puzzle, where the player must correctly place five coloured marbles on a [=25x25=] grid, with very little indication as to what the marbles or the grid represent. And yes, the colour of the marbles ''does'' matter, yielding a total of 93,850,000,000,000 (that's ninety-three ''trillion'' eight-hundred-fifty billion) combinations, according to the behind-the-scenes coffee-table-book "from Myst to Riven: the Creations and Inspirations".
** You also need to listen to various animals throughout the game and remember what noises they make. Two sea-dwelling animals are particularly annoying because if you approach them too quickly, they run without making the noise you need to hear. In order to hear them properly, you have to wait until their animation finishes before moving forward.\\

* IHaveNoSon: In the bad ending where you signal Atrus before trapping Gehn.
-->'''Atrus:''' Father.
-->'''Gehn:''' I am no longer your father because you are no longer my son! [[spoiler:*shoots Atrus*]]

** Opening the Star Fissure before going to Tay: [[spoiler: falling into the fissure with an immediate NonStandardGameOver.]]

* BilingualBonus: In a [[ConLang fictional language]] no less. When the player first arrives in Riven, they're confronted by a native guard who addresses them in an unknown language: "Tahgemah b'soo rekoah." He's expecting Atrus, so he's trying to communicate in broken D'ni. What he's ''trying'' to say is "Tahgemah b'zoo ah rekor." - "Give me the [linking] book."

* PalmtreePanic: Noticable on Temple Island where most of the literal palmtrees reside. There's even Riven's version of a shark, the wahrk, in Survey Island's aquarium. A lush beach on Jungle Island further adds to the theme.

* PalmtreePanic: Literally noticable on Temple Island where most of the palmtrees reside. There's even Riven's version of a shark, the wahrk, in Survey Island's aquarium. A lush beach on Jungle Island further adds to the theme.

* PalmtreePanic: Especially noticable on Temple Island where most of the palmtrees reside. There's even Riven's version of a shark, the wahrk, in Survey Island's aquarium. A lush beach on Jungle Island further adds to the theme.

* PalmtreePanic: Especially noticable on Temple Island where most of the palmtrees reside. There's even Riven's version of a shark, the whark, in Survey Island's aquarium.

-->[[spoiler: '''Gehn:''' ...Are you dying? You have my sympathies. *screen goes completely black*]]

Catharine writes the book for the age of Tay by making corrections to one of Gehn's "dead" books but the book still needs ''some'' power due to low quality materials. She specified a particular power crystal in the age description so that she could eliminate the need to use Gehn's Fire Marble Domes after the first link-in and have power source for books that is extremely portable.

* ShoddyKnockoffProduct: In universe, Gehn's descriptive books to ages are compromised by poor grasp of "The Art", enabling links to unstable worlds that eventually collapse. His books also require clunky external power sources. Poor quality book materials may be partly to blame, but Gehn's poor writing creates many of the problems. This is assuming a book even works in the first place.\\

* ShoddyKnockoffProduct: In universe, Gehn's descriptive books to ages are compromised by poor grasp of "The Art", enabling links to unstable worlds that eventually collapse. His books also require clunky external power sources. Poor quality book materials may be partly to blame, but Gehn's poor writing creates lot of the problems. This is assuming a book even works in the first place.\\