I'm a longtime fan of Cyan's games. Riven is my gold standard in terms of you are there realism. Everything from the placement/logic of the puzzles within the game to the characters creates a world that endears itself to you as if it were your own. Cyan going in had a high bar to clear and they knew it, bringing back Richard Vander Wende who gets a lot of credit from the creators for establishing the cool factor of the original Riven. This however is not simply a remake. They have done things here that they did not have the technology or hindsight to do with the original. Plot points that didn't quite make sense have been expanded upon. Different areas have been opened. The game itself feels more epic and fully realized than the original. While I understand the impossibility of translating live action (especially at the older standard resolution) to full 3D it does lessen the expressions some of the original performances carried but that does not have a large impact on the overall experience. Play the game for yourself. You will be more than impressed at this new and in many ways improved version of Riven.
