September 29, 1997
In one month, Riven will be released. Around two months after that date, the Riven Journals will be complete.
Before you ask, no I do not have an advance copy of Riven. I am just getting the site ready for the story. The prologue does not reveal anything about the game and will not spoil it in the least. If anything, the prologue is just a teaser chapter.
Do I have any inside secrets? Well, yes to one degree or another, I do. This summer I had a chance to beta test Riven while I was on vacation, so I did get to see a small portion of the game. However, I signed a non-disclosure agreement, so I have agreed not to reveal any details about the game until the release date. For more details, read my account of my trip to Cyan Headquarters (coming soon).
Writing the story is going to take at the very least two months. And that won't even start until I've successfully finished the game and gone over the notes I've collected. I still remember a good deal of the sequence from the beta testing, but I would rather not rely solely on those experiences.
Also, writing the story for Riven is going to be more difficult than Myst from a sequence point of view. While Myst was very much a non-linear storyline, there still was a more defined structure. Myst was broken up into seperate areas of gameplay by the worlds linked to from Myst Island (Selentic, Mechanical, Stoneship, and Channelwood). And each world was independed of the others, meaning I didn't need to solve a puzzle in the Mechanical Age to proceed further in the Selentic Age. In Riven I don't have that luxury, because the story takes place in one single Age (an Age that spans 5 or 6 CD Roms, I might ad).
So, I ask for patience. I have a good idea of where I am supposed to go when I start out, so it shouldn't take too long to get to the end. When I start the actual writing I'll update this page saying so.
November 19, 1997
A few days ago I have received my complimentary copy of Riven in the mail. Two days ago, I finished the game. Right now I am briefly experimenting with some of the bad endings of the game.
In the course of gameplay, I have put together 39 pages of notes in an attempt to add realism to the story and to get a sense of how the story should be outlined. However, there are some answers that I would like to check over more extensively. In some cases it seemed to me that the only solutions to some puzzled relied solely on guesswork. I also want to experiment with rerunning some gameplay sequences for accuracy and to see how they may affect the ending of the game.
November 19, 1997
To prevent confusion between The Riven Journals web site and this site that I created, I have decided to name the story, The Riven Expedition.
November 1, 1999
I noticed that from one of my earlier notes on this page that writing this story would take at least 2 months. Well, I suppose it is truthful, but I didn't expect it to take 2 years.
While the story is done, there are still some changes that I want to make. Most are editorial, and some involve technical errors I made in the story. However, the overall story will not change.
I'll continue to make updates to the CLOC page as they are made.