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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Maffewgregg on 2024-07-08 12:55:16+00:00.

Myst’s sequel Riven finally got remade after two years of hard work, so let’s talk about that one thing that is still debated amongst fans!

(Note: This wasn’t intended to be a separate post but it broke the word limit when it was half-done as a post in the HobbyScuffles weekly thread so here we are. Spoilers for a game released in 1997).

To greatly summarise: In Myst, you play The Stranger who discovers a book that sends him to an island. This is a key feature of the series, with Linking Books being used to send people to travel to different areas by touching the first page.

Later, you find the brothers Sirrus & Achenar who both ask The Stranger to help them escape their current situations but they’re both clearly bastards and helping them results in the bad ending. We find out later their Dad got sick of them being bastards and tricked them both into using Linking Books to desolate Ages that do not contain Linking Books to any other area. Whoever is stuck in that situation can see whoever is holding the Linking Book at that time, and the only way to get someone out of this predicament is to use the Linking Book yourself and swap places with whoever is stuck. Which will then stuck you there. With me so far?

In the good ending, you find Atrus who is stuck in K’veer because his bastard sons removed a page from the Linking Book there which disabled it. If you’re smart, you’ll have brought the missing page so you can both return to Myst (if you forget it then you find yourself stuck with Atrus forever and he isn’t particularly thrilled). Atrus burns the Linking Books his sons used so that no-one may be deceived into trading places with them and thus trapping them forever and that sets up Riven, the sequel.

So now we’ve established the mechanics let’s throw a spanner into the works (which is probably how you solve one of the puzzles in this series): Atrus gives The Stranger a very specific type of Linking Book called a Trap Book and tells you to use it on his bastard father Gehn. Gehn is already stuck in Riven but it’s a huge place so it’s not that bad compared to the other examples of being trapped in Myst. Atrus knows Gehn wishes to return to Myst so the Trap Book is designed to look like a Linking Book that will take him there. OK?

So you find Gehn who imprisons you but attempts to be nice because he is curious about this book you’ve got on you that certainly looks like the thing he wants. He’s not dumb though and asks The Stranger to use it first as he suspects it’s a trick. Doing so causes you to get stuck in the Book but you wait a bit and Gehn’s desire gets the best of him leading him to use it shortly afterwards, trading places with yourself and trapping Gehn.

Here’s the thing: When you use the Prison/Trap/whatever book, you don’t teleport/travel/link/whatever to a different location as established in Myst, you get stuck IN THE BOOK ITSELF, which is depicted as an endless black void.

Atrus tells us that by just adding in the right formula to an existing linking book, you can make it into a trapping book. The formula partially severs the link between the Ages. When someone uses the book, they become permanently trapped in the void between the Ages, unless someone else uses the book afterward and displaces the first person back into the place from which the last person linked. Anyone who didn’t know the formula would be unable to tell which is a real Linking Book, and which a Trapping Book. (RIVEN; Atrus Journal)

The game ends with Atrus being signalled to Link to Riven to take the book containing Gehn before sodding off back to Myst and leaving you to fall into the Star Fissure which Atrus hopes will take you home (it doesn’t, cheers mate).

Sirrus & Achenar would appear in later games thanks to a helpful retcon but Gehn or the book he’s “in” were never seen again. I guess it’s possible Atrus was willing to forgive his bastard sons but not his bastard dad.

Years after the game’s release, Richard A. Watson (Cyan programmer and lore creator/contradictor) caused general annoyance by stating the Trap Book broke the game’s kayfabe:

Q. That means that the method used to trap Gehn wouldn’t have worked as shown in Riven (using the Book to trick him to use the Book and set you free)?

A - You catch on quick! We were willing to sacrifice D’ni historical accuracy for a playable, immersive game with Riven, just as we did with Myst. In the D’ni historical accounts, the person helping Atrus had to use his/her wits in a different way to get Gehn to use the Prison Book. But simulating this was not an option with Myst/Riven’s intentionally intuitive, minimal, immersive interface (i.e. no dialog boxes, no “pick which one of these three preset phrases” conversation trees, etc.). Your end of any conversations had to be implied or determined by where/when you clicked the mouse button. We took advantage of the one-in-one-out concept implied in Myst to keep the interface simple while being clear to all who played Myst (since 95% of them don’t care enough about the nit picky details of the back story to see the problem anyway.)

Q. So if all this is true, then Sirrus and Achenar are only trapped in their Books because they didn’t take a Linking Book to Myst (or another Age) with them?

A. Right again. They were not in the habit of carrying their own Linking Books. Every Age they had ever visited always already had a Linking Book back to Myst.

Q. But Gehn _was_ in the habit of of carrying a return Linking Book.

A. Yes, he was.

Q. So he never was really trapped?

A. According to the D’ni historical accounts, yes, he was trapped.

Q. How was he trapped, then?

A. I think you’ve got enough info to work this one out on your own…

:)

(more of this here, his site is very comprehensive)

I can see why it annoyed people at the time (Myst fans take their games as serious as house fires) but it’s clearly different from the other books and no other books like this would feature in the games again. And weren’t the Prison/Linking Books supposed to show whoever is trapped in there? Wouldn’t Gehn have seen your dumb face staring back at him in an endless abyss?

And then years later Cyan would hand-wave the whole thing away by proclaiming that yeah Watson is right and those Trap Books are bollocks, with Gehn getting a passing mention in Myst V about being stuck in a Prison Age (like Sirrus & Achenar) but which one is never stated and that’s it.

So the remake finally got released last month and it was suspected that maybe they’d change some elements to reflect this but…no it’s the same as it was in the original (you can see it here if you’re interested) presumably because it would have been too confusing and more work to change it to something else which is fair enough. And probably would have had people complaining about the change because they haven’t played the sequels etc etc etc.

So yeah, that’s the post. Like the games themselves, there’s no proper ending here so go check out the lovely Myst community to continue debating what happened to Gehn and also how do you do that Animal Stones puzzle again?