The end of riven

li'aman · **Joined:** Tue May 30, 2006 6:10 am **Posts:** 52

crrash wrote:

thing is if riven would return it wouldn't be our riven, it would be different... at least we wouldnt have the same adventure, also we cant forget that as we have seen in myst 5's Myst, much can happen to an age in 200 years

Or Yeesha could find a version of Riven which never suffered the eventual meltdown that was it's hallmark. A utopic Riven if you will.

crrash · **Posted:** Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:05 pm

sure but was myst unstable? no and still its messed up... ok maybe because no one was keeping it clean and repaired and Riven obviously has inhabitants that care for it. and who knows what the rivenese would do with the gehn stuff. Or if there is no gehn made stuff its not so interesting anymore...

li'aman · **Joined:** Tue May 30, 2006 6:10 am **Posts:** 52

Personally, I'd love to go back to Tay and maybe even some others of Katran's stranger ages. The one mentioned in the Book of Atrus sounded particularly exciting.

Loridion · **Joined:** Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:07 pm **Posts:** 6

Yes, I agree. Riven was one of the most beautiful and visually stunning Ages of all. Although I have a great liking for Spire as well. It would be a great Age to get away to just to think. Being imprisoned there however...

I do have a question though concerning our understanding of the Art. I have read in several different threads the idea of various "versions" of the same Age. As in this thread, different versions of earth and Riven have been mentioned. Yet I can find nowhere in any official form that this is part of the mechanics of the Art.
As far as I can tell, this has been the assumption and speculation of explorers that the Art involves an ability to link to alternate realities. In the Book of Ti'ana when Aitrus is explaining the Art to Ti'ana he says that a link can be formed to any place in time or space, but he never mentions various realities of the same Age.
Also, I have never come across anything like a volume of Linking Books that go to alternate realities of one Age. It seems strange to me that if this was possible the D'ni would not have experimented with this.
Perhaps one of my fellow explorers could clear this up for me or confirm to me that we are merely speculating.

li'aman · **Joined:** Tue May 30, 2006 6:10 am **Posts:** 52

Well the assumption is based on placing the theory of The Art inside of the Theory of Multiple Dimensions, which states that there exist an infinite number of alternative dimensions different from this one in only slight ways. This means that some realities will be indistinguishable from our own because the difference is insignificant.

It touches on this in the Book of Atrus when Ghen deletes a number of key changes from one age all at once and Atrus theorizes that it's stranded the unstable age and reformed the link to another, more stable version of the same age and dimension.

It's also safe to assume that with The Art, you can actively change an age up to a point. Let's call this point The Threshold. After The Threshold, you force the link to reforge to another dimension in which the age more closely resembles your description.

Loridion · **Joined:** Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:07 pm **Posts:** 6

Hmmm. I will have to revisit the Book of Atrus. I haven't read it since the first Myst came out.

I'm assuming then that it is the changing of key lines that would change a link and other lines that can be written in that would change the Age itself. It obvoiusly would be in what is written. Catherine was very good at "bending the Art" as she put it to do things like this. I like the way you put it with the Threshold explaination.

Interesting. Thank you for the help.

Unitearica · **Posted:** Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:39 am

I agree about the threshold limit, its a lot like what RAWA explained a long time ago and was then written in an article called "Linking Explained". (anyone wanting to read it, pm me, I'll send u a copy of the article if u cant find it) I agree, Riven was great; but it had its time and passed on... much like the progression/degredation of Myst island throughout the game series. I would like to see Tay though, especially since we know Yeesha and Catherine continued to travel there together. I'd love to see the many mysteries that were never explored in Riven that are contained within that age.

crrash · **Posted:** Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:42 pm

the only problem of tay is, its full of people, if we'd go there it would need lots of NPCs or they need an excuse like "everyone went hiding because a scout announced our arrival"

Jinglish · **Posted:** Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:38 am

Riven was just the best of the worlds/experiences, hands down. And Gehn the nastiest guy of all... And yes, the challenges of the age and task that Atrus put to us...hard, yes, but it all made sense. And the ending...beautiful.

I would like to see 233 and Tay again in some way via Uru. Wonder whether Gehn is still alive...? If so...uh oh.

Jinglish · **Posted:** Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:40 pm

And Riven did look pretty durn dead in the opening moments of Exile...! No going back there, unless Y can send us back in time...or to a "close tree of possibilities" version of Riven...

goofy · **Posted:** Tue Jun 20, 2006 3:30 am

Thing is all the ages we've been to are in fact planets. Possibley in our own dimension or another and as we all know planets die sooner or later.

What atrus accually did was (IMO) is keep the link stable to the age itself. I read somewhere that if you change anything in a discriptive book it will change the link to another age thats simular to the original. What I personally believe is that you accually can changes things in the discriptive book, but if done to much it will cause a cascading effect with the discriptive book which can cause the link to change or completely make the discriptive book useless. which is why the D'ni didnt do it.

Now unless atrus had knowledge that wasn't spoke of. which is possible. Which makes me wonder if the original Riven was really destroyed or just the link in point was.

Remember the link in point was rather close to that fissure. Now if we linked in from one of the other link in points from other ages then maybe we would know if the age was accually gone. Mainly because the link would not work. Basicly if the accually planet was destroyed then none of the links will work. The linking books are short discriptions of the area within the age. once that area is destroy or drasticly changed then that link in point might be broken.

This is only my opinion, but to me it seem right.

crrash · **Posted:** Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:49 pm

goofy wrote:

What atrus accually did was (IMO) is keep the link stable to the age itself. I read somewhere that if you change anything in a discriptive book it will change the link to another age thats simular to the original. What I personally believe is that you accually can changes things in the discriptive book, but if done to much it will cause a cascading effect with the discriptive book which can cause the link to change or completely make the discriptive book useless. which is why the D'ni didnt do it.

mmmh imagine the great tree of possibilities. our riven is on a certain branch. if you change the descriptive book just a little, the link will move to a version a little higher up in the branch. but there is a threshold... (specially if you end up writing something that negates something you have written before) if passed, the link we have, backtracks all thew way back to another branch. Atrus couldnt try to maintain the link... he maintained the age. he tried to keep it as llong as possible stable. the descriptive book has only one way to become useless. that you do any change to it that could make the world unstable.

goofy wrote:

Now unless atrus had knowledge that wasn't spoke of. which is possible. Which makes me wonder if the original Riven was really destroyed or just the link in point was.

thats what we are talking about. is the planet still there? just a little destroyed? did all the stuff go through the star fissure? was there a supernova? we have no possible way to know how riven was destroyed, we only know that there is nothing left (at least nothing we could recognize as riven).

goofy wrote:

Remember the link in point was rather close to that fissure. Now if we linked in from one of the other link in points from other ages then maybe we would know if the age was accually gone. Mainly because the link would not work. Basicly if the accually planet was destroyed then none of the links will work. The linking books are short discriptions of the area within the age. once that area is destroy or drasticly changed then that link in point might be broken.

if you write a descriptive book (a new one, even if directly copied from the original age 5 book) will link you to a completely different version of Riven, it could be a destroyed one or one which is yet to be destroyed, the only thing we can be sure of its one that Gehn has never visited.
To write a linking book you have to write it at that point where you want to link to, as far as i know. so no linking to a moon or something... specially because there might be no moon or any planet or anything for that matter...

Jinglish · **Posted:** Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:31 pm

You know, it would be cool to go to a non-broken Riven...one with the great tree intact, and the islands not broken apart, and one where Gehn had never held sway...and created anomolies in the age description that made it flawed...at the very least seeing that other Riven would be a nostalgic experience for those of us who spent some time in the "broken" age...

Age 5A...

braziliana · **Joined:** Wed Jun 21, 2006 3:05 am **Posts:** 1

Yes Riven was indeed the best experience of them all. It was the first age I visited and I just fell in love with the game. The newer ones, altough very good games, can't compare to it in graphics, realism and originality. The village, the caves, the islands. It was so real and yet imaginary in the same time! I loved walking around sometimes, just exploring the view.

Also, the clues in Riven made so much sence! Everything had a purpose.

Best Cyan game, IMO. If I ever see a book linking back to Riven...I think I'll be brave enough to go. I'd be curious to see what it's like now. I'll let you know, but I havent's come across one yet.

crrash · **Posted:** Wed Jun 21, 2006 7:34 am

Jinglish wrote:

You know, it would be cool to go to a non-broken Riven...one with the great tree intact, and the islands not broken apart, and one where Gehn had never held sway...and created anomolies in the age description that made it flawed...at the very least seeing that other Riven would be a nostalgic experience for those of us who spent some time in the "broken" age...

Age 5A...

yet i feel, what makes riven special is what gehn has done to it and that it isbroken, an age wich is dying...

The end of riven

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