Riven takes place after Myst, and tells the story of the D'NI an ancient people that have the ability to teleport between the realms by describing where they want to go. D'NI is a parallel universe to Earth.
The objective, is to find and rescue Atruss' wife Catherine, and locate his father Gehn. Gehn however has decided that there is to much power in the books for good and has decided to use them for evil.

Cyan decided not to change the Myst engine, but instead concentrated on the story and the imagery. For the imagery this time around Cyan chose to use Silicon Graphics Workstations and SoftImage. The difference is amazing as can be seen in the images below.