The Art of Environmental Storytelling in Riven: The Sequel to Myst

It's difficult to explain how much an old game from the '90s matters to me (simply: a lot). Of course, I love it for the general reasons all Riven fans do—its immersion, its insane and brilliant attention to detail, its bottomless lore and complex characters, its thought-provoking (or infuriating) puzzles and hauntingly atmospheric mood. But I suppose if I had to look at it through the lens of my creative life, it's really the themes that resonate: a story about creating, about world-building; a story about how words have inexorable meaning, and how storytelling has consequences.

It's also the most writerly of games, not least because it technically takes place inside of a book-that-is-a-world, written by a poor author and falling apart by design.

But more than that: It shows us so many ways to write better.

Riven: The Sequel to Myst, was, as the name suggests, 1997's sequel to the quintessential puzzle game—maybe the quintessential game of the era. Myst, built by two brothers in an unassuming Spokane garage in 1993, became the best-selling computer game of the '90s (predating The Sims) due to shiny new personal computers including CD-ROM drives. Myst was the first game to embrace that tech, and when my dad bought a new PC, we were eager to see what we could use it for.

Beyond The Oregon Trail, I spent most of my computer time browsing the interactive encyclopedia, so I was primed for anything that wasn't dying of dysentery or watching a grainy three-minute video about penguins on infinite loop. All I remember about Myst was books—libraries that opened to reveal worlds—and as a nerd who longed to get sucked into a book Reading Rainbow-style, the aura of the game stayed with me, even if I was too young to remember much besides bizarre tree elevators, an incongruous dentist's chair, the eerie liminality of early 3D graphics, and dark thrumming synth (the soundtrack is still a certified banger).

My mom, a serial game-quitter, and I never got past the hub world, but the mood stayed with me. And a few years later I spotted a big box on a shelf at Office Depot, with a picture of an enigmatic tree shrouded in dark fog.

What was that?

Riven arrived on five CDs, pre-rendered graphics pushing the technical limitations of 1997. But that didn’t stop it from being profoundly immersive. In Riven (as in most Myst games), you play as yourself—the proverbial stranger in a strange land, dropped into a world with uncertain geographies, history, and alliances; a dreamlike experience that makes you rely on your observations and your wits (even if they occasionally fail you).

My first play-through took the whole summer of seventh grade. For three months, I lived on the five islands of Riven. I’d turn off the lights in the computer room and plant myself on a Gatorade-blue tropical cove, listening to the generated waves crash to shore, waiting for the a-ha moments that were slow to come but immeasurably satisfying when they did (if they did). I roped in a few friends for the hard stuff, but eventually beat it alone with some (defensive) extremely minimal cheating (two decades later, thanks to the kind internet soul who posited rotating a certain number).

Then I went deeper—a lot deeper. I read the novels (there are three). I drew maps of imaginary worlds. I spent a ridiculous amount of time discussing lore on forums and mailing lists. Sometimes, the game’s creators would mingle with the fans and obsess alongside me. I considered the feasibility of spending three months' allowance on a replica of a weapon from the game—that could've harmed someone, were I using poison darts. I tried to beg my way to Mysterium, the Myst convention at the holy of holies, the Cyan office in Spokane... but I was thirteen and an anxious gay indoor kid.

Writers often underestimate world-building—the process of developing a fictional world that differs from our own—and its power to enhance storytelling. But that process can be the foundation of a story itself; even its most compelling feature. There's an overarching concept in the Myst series—the Whole, a way of seeing that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things. The D'ni, an ancient multiverse-traveling civilization that forms the foundation of Riven's plot, use this philosophy as a guideline for world-building. And world-building for them is fully literal—for thousands of years the D'ni harnessed the power of Linking Books to "write" other worlds. The Whole embraces the interconnections of an environment and its inhabitants, where each element seeks to tell part of a greater story, and those who see the world in its entirety are rewarded with deeper understanding (not least how to unravel its mysteries).

Most players have noted that Riven has only two real puzzles. But really, it has one. The world itself is the puzzle, and every detail within it serves its Whole. An immersive world—and immersive story—is a believable one, especially if the clues are shown rather than handed to you; even better if they're shown indirectly, prompting the player (or the reader) to actively piece together their solutions.

You enter Riven with a specific task—a rescue mission—but how you accomplish that is for you to discover. You'll probably spend hours wandering around aimlessly before stumbling onto something that seems mundane for its surroundings, but just unique enough to stand out—which is the point. That design philosophy extends to every aspect of the game's story, its lived-in world, and its characters. Subverting traditional storytelling for a nonlinear narrative and hyper-meticulous detail, the poetics of the mundane are the threads that tie the narrative together.

Riven is the story of a place and a people, and the logic of their reality are puzzles to you because you are an outsider to their world. When you arrive on the island, you get a sense that there is some sort of schism here. A man in a janky uniform tries (and fails) to speak to you in a foreign language, then switches to another, more natural but equally foreign language, and yoinks your book from you. Then a masked figure appears, blow-darting the book-thief, stealing the book from him, and running off to places unknown.

You'll find out who these people represent in time, and why the book is such a commodity. The game follows a profoundly dysfunctional family of survivors of D'ni—Myst's protagonist is Atrus, a Writer whose father was the sole survivor of the fall of D'ni, while Riven's main protagonist is his wife, Catherine, a native of Riven (and reluctant revolutionary) who escaped her world and assisted Atrus in imprisoning his father, Gehn. Gehn is the Writer of and self-appointed ruler of Riven, and fancies himself a creator—either a tyrant or benevolent ruler, according to perspective. The first puzzle you encounter on Riven is a gate-room designed to keep certain people out, doing double duty as a hagiographic temple to Gehn and the Art of Writing, revered in a series of iconographic, religious images. The room tells the story of Riven's "creation," the cataclysmic event that split one island into five parts, the family drama that instigated it, and instructs the player in its fractured culture and beliefs, none of which are what they seem.

Those layers are what makes Riven's storytelling so effective: It makes sense not only logically, but in the often contradictory way that a living, breathing world does. Like an investigation, the player comes to understand Riven's history, secrets, and story via cues and subtle hints, using environmental details to unfold the narrative and set the scene without ever explicitly stating its purpose. Players get to know its characters via personal artefacts, which have histories and significance that tell their story, that show they interact with their surroundings in meaningful ways, revealing their traits and their place in the world. Cultural objects, personal spaces, belongings serve to foreshadow events and reveal past actions as much as dialogue or backstories, illustrating where they came from, who their owners are, and where they're headed.

When fully realized, these details can provide a vivid backdrop to the action of its plot, but also become a vital component in enriching the narrative by offering context, depth, and authenticity to the character's experiences and actions. It's hard to explain just how detailed Riven's world is, but I'll mention one symbol that weaves world-building into the broader narrative—the Whark.

Warning for spoilers—

You first encounter Riven's apex predator—a fearsome amalgamation of shark and whale (hence the name)—in the Temple on the island of your arrival, as a pair of huge carved totems flanking a stained glass window with the seal of Gehn (a five-pointed star of pens and Books). The Whark, once revered by the Rivenese for its awe-inspiring presence, has been transformed into an element of fear under Gehn's rule. This shift is apparent in the numerous Whark totems scattered across the islands, often placed in strategic locations, not only to inspire fear but to reinforce Gehn's control over the Rivenese, supplanting and perverting their cultural symbol into an instrument of oppression. Whark tusks are used to deter the villagers from entering Gehn’s domain, while carved statues denote native worship that has been permitted to exist, but only in tandem with Gehn's regime.

The integration of Whark symbology extends beyond visuals and into the gameplay. On Survey Island, the player encounters a living Whark, a rare sight in Riven (judging by the number of tusks decorating various locations, they're in low supply), held in a tank and being “trained” by a mechanism which also instructs the player to understand the game’s major puzzle (which comes later, of course). Interacting with this majestic, sad creature fuses its symbolic significance with practical game play, deepening the immersion (there's a very fun jump scare if you interact with it a bit too much).

In the village schoolhouse, where Rivenese children are instructed in the D’ni language, you encounter a hangman game with two human figures dangling over an open-jawed Whark. The game is intended to instruct the player in the D'ni number system, but the grisly choice of hangman is a dark nod to a structure that stands tall in the village—a gallows, adorned with Whark skulls. By linking the Whark's presence to the D'ni education system imposed by Gehn, and the ultimate sacrifice that the rebelling Rivenese are forced to make under a tyrannical ruler, the circle is complete. When you finally arrive at the gallows, you understand the culmination of the Whark's cultural transformation from a sacred entity to a tool of subjugation.

It's a brilliant web of storytelling through layered world-building, and feels so seamless that it’s almost unnoticeable, and all the more surprising once you put the pieces together.

In Riven's lore, poor Writing, contradictions, shattered descriptions, stilted economy of words are the means—as weapons or mistakes—that destroy worlds. Game designers tell their story through visuals, creating environments that convey the narrative without relying heavily on text or dialogue. The story must be embedded in the world itself, taking in account the non-linear storytelling of gameplay, and how the player's perspective and the choices they make affect the story.

As writers, it's tempting to be a little jealous of game designers with visual elements on their side to direct their players to the right path. Writers are a little short-changed here—we only have words to guide readers, even if they paint vivid pictures in the mind—but there are many ways to achieve a nuanced, evocative narrative. By crafting detailed and immersive settings, engaging all senses in descriptions, and embedding clues and subtle hints within the environment, writers can create a world that feels as tangible and real as any in a game. Environmental storytelling not only deepens the reader's engagement, but invites them to piece together the story, making the reader feel like an active participant in the unfolding and discovering of its secrets, as rewarding as solving any puzzle (without the cheating, of course).

In 2024, the game has undergone a full re-imagining—which, counter to most '90s remakes flooding the media landscape, somehow manages to improve and deepen every aspect of the game—retaining its mystique and atmosphere, but strengthening its environmental storytelling, with new places, puzzles, and lore honoring the legacy of the original. For writers, the re-imagined Riven remains a masterclass in environmental storytelling, a brilliant reminder that the worlds we create (or link to) can evoke the delirious joy of discovery. A puzzle can only be solved once, but as the game's closing words remind us, “the ending can never truly be written.”

Riven offers some fantastic storytelling lessons for writers to enhance their world-building skills:

• Embrace interconnectedness: Each element in your world can contribute to narrative depth and coherence. Your characters, their surroundings, possessions, and actions should interact meaningfully with the environment.

• Detail and immersion: Pay attention to the small details that make a world feel alive—use environmental storytelling to reveal the history and state of your world, with subtle hints and cues to communicate deeper meanings and secrets.

• Plot as Puzzle: Think of your narrative as a puzzle for readers to solve. Unveil information gradually, and let readers piece together the story for a rewarding journey through your world.