User:David Fuchs/sandbox

Development

Riven released in October 31, 1997. It sold 4.5 million copies, becoming the second best-selling computer game (after Myst) until it was surpassed by The Sims in 2002. After Riven's release, Rand Miller remained at Cyan, but Riven's other chief creatives, Rand's brother Robyn and Richard Vander Wende, left the company. In subsequent years, Cyan revisited Myst and produced versions of the game that swapped the pre-rendered imagery with realtime 3D graphics. Twenty years after Riven's release, Rand pondered returning to Riven. Initially, the idea was to precisely recreate the original in 3D, but Rand asked Vander Wende what he would change if he could.

Instead, Cyan decided to expand the scope of the remake, adding new puzzles and locations. Story details were also adjusted to fix discrepancies. Early on in the process, Cyan looked at reusing the original game's 3D models, but found them either missing or too low-resolution, so they remade it in scratch in Unreal Engine. Cyan also referenced the extant work of the fan project Starry Expanse, which had been working on a faithful realtime 3D version of Riven for 13 years. The live-action video of the original was replaced with 3D models performed via motion capture, as the original source footage was too poor in quality to use other than as reference. The late John Keston's vocal performance was saved and replicated by an actor.