This is a copy of an email sent to the Riven Lyst by RAWA, Richard A. Watson, Cyan programmer and ultimate D'ni historian. The plain gray print indicates what is written by Richard Watson.

From: Richard A. Watson
To: Riven Spoiler Lyst
Subject: Assorted ramblings... Very Long...
Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2000

- - - WARNING - - -

This disgustingly long letter has taken me three days to write, as I've had time here and there to work on it, so it may be a little disjointed in places. Hopefully it'll still be coherent enough to be understood. :)

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There's been a lot of confusing/conflicting viewpoints on what happened to Sirrus and Achenar at the end of Myst.

I've been too busy to answer these as they come up individually, so I'm trying to address them all in one more general email. I still have over 200 unread lyst emails, so I may not address all the questions raised in these threads, but I'll probably hit many of them.

I want to start by pointing out that Myst/Riven are Cyan's attempt at recreating some of the events in the life of Atrus in a semi-non-linear medium (i.e. a game). Since it's a game where the player can do things that didn't happen in the account of Atrus' life, we've got to take some artistic license with his story - like the "losing" endings of Myst and Riven.

When making the games, we have to carefully pare everything down to the basic elements needed to play the game, leaving out almost anything that isn't required for gameplay. Myst Island, for example was made much smaller, and only the buildings/places relevant to playing Myst were included. Atrus definitely had other "places of protection" for his Books other than the ones shown in Myst. We throw in as many "extras" as we have time for, but for the most part, there isn't much time for things that aren't specifically needed for a playable game.

So the most accurate answer for many of these kinds of issues (e.g. "Why do the remaining Books coincidentally happen to be the Books with 'places of protection'?) is simply "artistic license". If we didn't have hardware limitations, storage capacity limitations, time limitations, money limitations, etc. and if we had a billion monkies working on a billion computers for a billion years, we could make the Ages more complete, which would be cool from an exploration point of view, but wouldn't make the games themselves any more playable. In fact with all the "non-game related" things thrown in, there would be a lot more "red herrings" and people would be even more confused when they write to me. :) (If I had a nickel for everyone who wrote to me asking what one of the few "extra" items in Myst did...)

The upshot of my ramblings so far is that there is a distinction between "The Complete Story of Atrus" (i.e. the D'ni historical accounts), and what we were able to portray in Myst/Riven. The problem is that you (the players) don't have direct access to "The Complete Story of Atrus". Unfortunately, this means that people often are forced to look to Myst itself to answer questions it wasn't intended to answer. Its purpose was not to be a course in D'ni history, it was designed to be game based on Atrus' life story.

"So what?!?!" I hear someone yelling in the back there. So... this means that there are different "correct" answers to many questions depending on if you're interested in the "real" answer (based on the background story not accessible to most people), or the "Myst" answer (based on the info available in the game). Sometimes the answers are the same. Sometimes they are different.

This wouldn't be a big problem if we stopped making D'ni related games. We'd just let you live with the "Myst" answer, in most cases you'd never know it wasn't right so you wouldn't even know to be unhappy with it, and the "real" answer wouldn't matter. Those who do think things through enough to be stumped with what they come up with may be bothered enough to try to get the "real" answer from me, which happened often enough for this Sirrus/Achenar question to be listed on the FAQ.

But as we make more of that background information available (hmmm, Mudpie, anyone?), the people out there who scrutinize these kinds of details are going to point to my "official" answers and say "Hey, that contradicts paragraph 3 of page 5 of blah, blah, blah" So, I've made a concious effort in the past to answer questions in a way that applies to both the "real" answer and the "game" answer as much as possible, and basically avoiding questions where the two answers blatantly contradict one another.

I've also avoided these topics because the answers just lead to a lot more questions... :)

If anyone's made it this far... Here are my answers, most of which have been on the FAQ for Myst for years (in case you just think I'm making them up off the top of my head right now :).

Q. What happened to the red and blue books at the end of Myst?

A. Atrus tried to ensure that the boys would not be able to escape the Ages they were in. In Myst this is shown by the scorch marks where the Books used to be. The historical accounts are not specific as to how he ensured their captivity. Very little artistic license taken here - burning the Books seems a very reasonable, logical way of showing this.

Q. Does destroying the Book destroy the one occupying it (aka Did Atrus kill his sons?)?

A1. (game answer) - Clearly, from the evidence given in the game, the answer is no. Burning the Book, in essence, isn't much different than tearing pages out of it - either one "breaks" the Book. The boys were obviously alive when the Books were missing pages. The main difference is that a burned Book is more difficult to put back together. :)

A2. (historical answer) - The boys would be unaffected by the destruction of the Books, except that it would make it rather difficult for them ever to be rescued.

Q. Are they in some kind of void/suspended animation?

A1. (game answer) - From the evidence in the game, no. They are aware of the passage of time. And since they're still alive after all this time, they must have access to food/water/air/etc.

A2. (historical answer) - They were in complete Ages (and probably pretty nice ones, I would guess, if the panels were to show an Age that people like the boys would be so anxious to go to.) They just had no way out of them.

Q. So why do we only see black when we're in the Book?

A1. (game answer) - Because it's night with a moonless, overcast sky, and you don't have any firemarbles/flashlights/candles (you should have brought the matches from the safe in the cabin! :)...

A2. (real answer) - We didn't like the idea of "rewarding" the player for setting one of the brothers free with another Age to see/explore.

Q. If the red and blue Books were ordinary Linking Books but leading to "Prison Ages", why do you switch places with the brothers when the Book is complete?

A. - A whole boatload of Artistic License. Completing the book is the player's way of saying "I want to free this brother." And we simplified that to its most basic elements - you're stuck in the Prison Age; he's out.

You want the complicated, more historically accurate way to free a brother?

1) complete the book so you can go to the Age he's trapped in 2) you'll have to find a spare Myst Linking Book somewhere or neither of you are coming back. This complicates the interface, and changes the game if you can carry a Myst Linking Book around with you the whole game that you can use at any time. 3a) go to the prison Age without a Linking Book - the brother and you are trapped together forever, or as long as the brother lets you live (how long do you think that will be?) 3b) Bring a Linking Book. The brother bops you on the head and links out, damaging the Book in the process so you can't follow him. 4) You're stuck in the Prison Age; he's out. We've had to do a lot more filming, modeling, rendering, changing the interface, etc. to essentially get the same ending as Myst already shows.

Don't worry, we'll fix it in "ultimateMYST: the 'See Sirrus and Achenar's Prison Ages' Edition". (Settle down, it's just a joke. :)

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Now that those of you who've thought they had things all figured out to the smallest detail have had the rug yanked out from under them... go think about the implications of this information for a while. The dominoes are going to start falling, and you may be in for a few "aha!" experiences. :)

Once you think you have a handle on this new info, and you've come up with all your questions, and thought about what the answers might be, come back and finish reading this email.

I'll try to answer a few of the biggest issues that this will probably raise.

(That means stop reading now - maybe even for a couple of days, if you're like me and like to come to these conclusions on your own and you'll be disappointed by my just blurting them out...)

If you're not interested in doing that, continue... :)

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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...

<RAWA removes his "blatant Spoiler" hat and burns it, returning to his usual uninformative, unhelpful self.> :)

Shorah,

RAWA

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