The remake of Myst sequel Riven is coming later this year, complete with VR support

rockpapershotgun.com:

Cyan Worlds today announced plans to launch their fancy real-time 3D remake of Riven later this year, coming with support for both VR cybergoggles and standard meatspace screens. Riven: The Sequel To Myst was the 1997 sequel to Myst, the 1993 pre-rendered adventure game which sold a million CD-ROM drives and launched a thousand specks of spittle from John Walker's mouth. The remake previously had a longwinded name of its own, Riven: New Discoveries Of The Lost D'ni Empire, but now is simply named Riven. They should rebrand again and call it Riven: The Sequel To The Myst Remake.

While Cyan remade and remastered Myst several times over the years, Riven went surprisingly untouched. Now they're remaking Riven in full 3D explore-o-space, letting you freely roam inside the world rather than the handful of pre-rendered screens and angles. We truly live in an era of miracles. They're packing more stuff in too, saying it has "expanded storylines" and "new puzzles". They've brought back some good old stuff too, announcing last year that Riven co-designer and co-director Richard Vander Wende has joined the dev team, while fellow co-designer and co-director (plus composer) Robyn Miller also serves a role as a design consultant.

A group of Riven fans had been working for 13 years on an unofficial remake, The Starry Expanse Project, but this ceased when Riven announced their official effort in 2022. Cyan have said that they built on the fans' work, having "reached an agreement which allowed us to reference core pieces of their efforts to jump-start our development" and also hiring one of the Starry Expanse team.

Cyan's latest game, 2023's crowdfunded adventure game Firmament, drew controversy for using AI in development. They defended it saying "'AI Assisted' does not mean wholly AI-generated," and explained exactly what roles AI played in their process. "To our disappointed Kickstarter backers, we hope you understand that none of these tools even existed when we Kickstarted the