When I was younger, the statue of the giant fish (whose name I'm blanking out on) in the forest in Riven absolutely terrified me. Riven is really a great example of a world that feels lived in, even though you barely interact with people. The machines, the temples, the village, the gallows, the arcane lever puzzles... Well maybe not that last one.
Heh, yeah. Although at least they have an excuse, since it's hard to cram details into a song due to length and format.

Good choice ;)

I played it a little while back, but couldn't bear to finish it. I just didn't want it to end. I've always had a quiet but vivid fondness for those sort of first person adventures, probably due to my childhood exposure to Myst. In fact, the first game I ever tried to "develop" was a Myst clone. Using Hyperstudio. When I was 12. I had big dreams back then :P

But yes... Riven's world is awesome. And now that I think about it, it's almost entirely built on environmental storytelling.

Yeah, you're right. I think I'll replay it a bit as preperation for this article. Somewhat annoyingly, it's on my dad's GOG account (along with Journeyman Project, RealMyst, and the 7th Guest), so I have to log out and back in. Although I think I might've installed it on this comp already. I also have the 5 CD version in its cool packaging, but that's kind of a pain.

The Myst series is one of about three things I actually have nostalgia for on this site, actually (the other two being Empire Earth and my recent realization that I played Might and Magic 6 when I was younger).

Same exact thing here, actually. Myst is one of the few "big" GOGs that I actually played at a young enough age to acquire strong nostalgic memories. Which is a shame, because playing it now is just too bittersweet. I do have some nostalgia about games like Doom and Chasm (from back when I was 16 or so), but it's not very strong.

In some ways, I feel slightly jealous of people who get to be nostalgic about stuff like Fallout, Grim Fandango, and Arcanum. x]

I much prefer being able to play them without nostalgia. Nostalgia to me is just sadness. It's missing the feelings that you had while playing a game when you were younger, and replaying the game doesn't get those feelings back--it just makes you miss them more, and makes it harder to enjoy the game.

But then, the passage of time (and the subsequent losses) has always been far more bitter to me than I think it is to most people.

Well I think I tend to be a melancholy person in some ways. Often, my idea of ethereal beauty has a underlying hint of loneliness or the bittersweet. And as I said, the passage of time has always been a sad thing for me (which is perhaps a bit odd considering my beliefs).

Yeah, Myst was the first computer game my parents ever let me buy, and it brings back some pretty strong memories for me.

Speaking of player-driven storytelling, though, a friend gave me MYST: URU a few years back, and I absolutely despised it. But, the game gives you a journal you can write in, and to amuse myself I actually wrote in it like an explorer chronicling his journey. I had this whole alternate backstory written out, detailing my increasing misgivings about Yeesha, whom I suspected of being a cult leader gone mad with power... I'm probably the only person who deliberately turned URU into a horror game. :p

Ugh, URU. I wanted to like that. I do love games that give you journals, though. I've done that sort of thing in Elder Scrolls games.

Oh come on, URU ain't that bad. And URU Live is free now! \o/

I know what you mean. I have grown up a gamer who has had contact with pretty much every single genre early on (except the ones born before me, of course) and many old games automatically and subconsciously get some sort of bonus from me - and it's incredible for me how hard it sometimes is to convince someone else (who has become a gamer much later) of an old game's qualities. In another thread I mentioned a female gamer friend of mine who grew up with SNES games and became a hardcore PC gamer rather recently - she has a surprisingly good taste in case of newer games (for example she beat Far Cry and STALKER recently) but I die a little inside each time she says that she won't play Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or even Duke Nukem 3D because of the crappy graphics (while she has no hard time playing SNES style games). Sometimes that makes me cry.
This. Some of the games I had contact with in my earliest childhood such as Turrican, Shadow of the Beast or North & South give me weird unsettling feelings. I enjoy them but the joy is always accompanied by some sort of sadness. I must add that I generally get weird feelings when being reminded of certain times in my life, especially the earliest ones (for example I watched some very old Simpsons episodes recently and it was also uncanny in a weird way).

Heck, that makes me cry. Like a lot of people on this site, I imagine, I'm one of those who think gameplay trumps graphics. Now obviously if the graphics make it impossible to tell what's going on, that's bad, and I do draw the line at a certain degree of oldness, but I'm pretty forgiving for graphics. I've been playing Might and Magic 4/5 and 7 lately, and those would both probably be offensive to someone with a sensitivity to graphics.

I think many people just look at graphics from a technical standpoint, and not from an aesthetic standpoint. I do believe that visuals that are done with an eye for aesthetic pleasure will remain attractive even after they've become "outdated."