[chungy]

Conceding that it was a technical necessity, the replacement of live actors for in-game CGI rendered characters feels off in the Riven remake to me. Necessary because now you can walk all the way around them, the game can't assume a single viewing angle for videos to play out. Nor would it be practical to record new actors playing the roles (the old assets must surely be too low-quality to pass in a modern game, even if they go back to the source).

Part of Myst and Riven's charm in the 1990s was the immersion it offered, the world felt real, and the actors playing out characters added to it. The original point-and-click format feels dated today, but at the time, it was convincing enough to be believable.

[sjm-lbm]

Yeah, I do agree with that. Honestly part of me wishes they would have used the old assets - put whatever you have thought the best available upscaler, and lock the player's position while the video plays. I mean, your position was locked in the original game.. so that should be possible without breaking things, right?

That said, I really do think all of the tradeoffs that they did make were understandable - pretty much like you said. Doesn't keep me from being nostalgic for the 90s, though.

[MBCook]

> put whatever you have thought the best available upscaler

I kind of suspect all they have had at at this point is the over compressed video files that must have been what, 240p at most?

I suspect it may have been just so low that even if they wanted to they would have no choice but to recast and reshoot.

At least they got to reuse the original audio, IIRC.

I’m guessing the original video source was either lost or also possibly low quality/degraded.

[tobr]

All the footage has been archived by The Video Game History Foundation, and is available in their public archive. It’s significantly higher quality than in the game.

https://archive.gamehistory.org/folder/934c3e91-4721-49bb-b8...

[fao_]

Oh wow! Yes, those are much better quality than can be seen in the Riven release. I wonder if it's possible to mod them into the Riven rerelease!

[starburst]

I feel like they could’ve innovated using novel technique, like 3D gaussian splatting (and upscaling the video or better yet record new videos). The vast majority of the time, you’re still pretty much locked unable to move when those CGI character show up, except for turning the camera around (from what I remembered). It could’ve been faked and still work and be much better as I felt it was the only downgrade to an otherwise fantastic remake that I really enjoyed.

[ehnto]

They did use real characters in Obduction, which has similar locomotion options to the new Myst and Riven remakes. They used some interesting workarounds to make it work, like only ever seeing characters through gaps, windows or TV screens.

[lukas099]

I would kind of like to see some more point-and-click adventure games. There's nothing really fun about walking in games and point-and-click means that every moment of the game can be a perfect painting exactly as the artist visualized.