I think it's a real thing to a large degree, not a contrived framing. There aren't really that many studios that have been around for even five or ten years most of the names that will leap to mind are now actually particular name brands of conglomerates. If you look out at the studio landscape over history, it is still very, very frothy.
It remains fairly common even today for relatively large companies to essentially be brought down by one bad release, resulting in them getting acquired by EA. Unfortunately, the gaming industry really does seem to work on a model where darned near every major game is a near-death experience for the company in question. "I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story." Meanwhile Myst holds a special place as a fun, quick little puzzle game. They did a re-release a year or two ago, which I guess is probably worth a shot, but my memories of Riven are just so soured by my experience. So I haven't gone back to replay it since the original 5-disc release in the 90s. For the better part of two decades, it was basically unplayable on any modern PC without major effort. The clue you need may well be anywhere, which in combination with the disc swapping, makes finding clues into a huge chore instead of a delightful exploration.Īnd the biggest shame is it was built on very crappy technology (Quicktime) that even back in the day was held together with spit and string. So there aren't really discrete "areas" anymore, or even puzzle themes restricted to an area. When you're stuck on a puzzle in a Disc 2 area, should you keep exploring that area, or is it possible the clue you need is on some other disc? Which one? Are you willing to put up with the hassle? It wouldn't be so bad if each area was obviously self-contained, as they were in Myst, but in Riven they tried to change from a collection of puzzle boxes into a real world where the "puzzles" were diegetic. It penalized exploring the island freely, which has some bad gameplay effects. I wonder if anyone's done a deep dive comparing the first two titles' gameplay philosophies and technical and development differences.Ĭertainly the 5 CD release was itself a stumbling block. I know the dev team had major changes between every title, so I suppose it's not surprising that they don't gel together very well.
Myst really clicked with me, while I was never able to get into the later titles, Riven included. The shift from Myst to Riven and the following sequels is really interesting.