An Easter Egg is a hidden feature or novelty that the programmers have put into their software. It can be an image, sound or movie sequence and are hidden to some degree.
Some Easter Eggs can be seen during the course of a game but some are deeply imbedded and may require very specific steps to find them. To view the best hidden eggs in Riven you have to move through the "Click Spots" hinted to at the Spyder pages.
On the first screen upon your entry into the hidden passage (after you crawl under the locked doorway), you can see Rand's three daughters; Kinslee, Kerryn, and Kara on the right hand side in the rocks. The children's faces only appear when the doorway to the rotating room is not blocked.
If you look over the cliff by your starting point, and look up in the top left corner, you will see an image of two children. These are Robyn Miller's children, Grace and Alex. They are only visible when 'Cho' is gone.
In the beginning of the game, turn left and look up after exiting the cell. On the bottom border of the screen you will see two children's faces. They are Richard van der Wende's two daughters Helen and Evelyn. These images was hidden by Richard himself, and they are probably the best hidden of the three groups of kids.
After Atrus holds up the Riven linking book, this face appears about six times within the other blurry images. The identity and purpose of this face is not known.
By the maglev landing on Temple Island you can find these tiny letters printed on a rock. The signature belongs to Riven's Lead Programmer and D'ni Historian Richard A. Watson. If you are a subscriber to The Riven Lyst you probably know that Richard is a colorful person who cares about the fans. Richard has said that he put the letters in himself. He also states that others may have put theirs in, but that he don't know about any.
This text can be found in the top left corner of a screen with the ladder going up to the spherical trap at Boiler Island. Robyn Miller has now confirmed that Alex is the name of one of his children who wandered into his office one day while he was doing some minor retouching on some images.
While you are making your way through the Click Spots in hunt for Riven's Real Easter Eggs (look below), you will find an unusual view. After taking the sub to the Bridge Controlling Room on Jungle Island and looking out of the the little hole, you can see the sub back at it's starting place on top by the village.
Riven's Real Easter Eggs are much better hidden than the eggs above. To find them you have to follow the steps described on the Spyder pages. To view these, you first have to click through the Clik Spots. Click once on each of these objects:
Then you have to go to the places described below.
This movie can be accessed on the left viewer at Gehn's Underwater Throne on Survey Island. Sit in the chair and hit the button to face the window. Pull the left hand lever and then look down at the view screen. Finally, click on the small round, brown bolt just off to the right of the view screen to view the movie.
The movie is a splice of two old TV commercials. The dialogue says:
Narrator: "Instructions on self defense in every packet..."
Sailor: "Hello there. You know, I've been all around this wonderful world of ours, and in all of this world, nothing else is silly putty."
The first part of this movie is a commercial from the late 1960s for a men's cologne called "Hai Karate." Supposedly, this cologne made men so attractive to women that it came with a self-defense manual to fight them off. In the first part of the spot, a very mild-mannered, nerdy guy puts on the cologne, and his date immediately goes wild. The ending, which we see in this egg, is him trying to save himself from her. The actress is Valerie Leon, who used to appear in the old "Carry On" films where both her natural assets were used to full advantage.
The second part of the movie is a Silly Putty commercial from the 1950s. Silly Putty was originally supposed to be a revolutionary compound that was used during war-times (i.e. substitute for rubber tires). An accidental mixing of compounds in the lab produced the toy most americans know of today as "Silly Putty." In Europe this rubber like clay is also known as "Wonder Plast." This scene was probably a pre-emptive wartime newsreel lauding the benefits of such a substance, before someone fudged up in the laboratory.
This Easter Egg was made by Michael Sheets who was on the development team for Riven. It came about as he was working on the movies for the scopes in the Wahrk room. He had set up a project in "After Effects" that provided lens distortion, color and other effects for the movies of Catherine in her "prison." He needed a movie to test the effects setup with, so he used this commerical from the 1950s that he had on a CD.
In this movie Gehn (John Keston) shows us one of his hidden talents. After clicking the center of the star on the wall carpet in his bedroom, Gehn walks in from the right and sings us the first verse of the famous italian 'O Sole Mio (lyrics by Capurro, music by Di Capua). This is the part Gehn sings:
Che bella cosa e' na jurnata 'e sole,Richard A. Watson at Cyan has told us that when they were doing the filming for Gehn's speech, John Keston suddenly burst into song, the cameras kept on rolling and they decided to keep it an as an easter egg because it was so good.
This picture can be seen by the village on Jungle Island. Walk from the place you first find the sub towards the hut where you can knock on the door. When you are looking down the ladder, turn right and you will see this easter egg. The picture shows the wireframe version of the landscape surrounding the lake.
If you walk into the jungle on Jungle Island, take the wahrk totem elevator all the way up and then walk past the dome and up towards the control throne. When you are about the middle of the stairs, turn around to face the dome. Down on the path underneath, you can see some lights by the side of the path. Click on the light farthest away from the dome to see the egg.
This picture can be seen in Ghen's Temple Room on Temple Island. To turn on the lights you have to stand as close to the exit to the maglev station as possible. Then click on the second lamp from the left, and viola! The view will definitely bring you in the right spirit.
There are three walls in the Gate Room on Temple island with D'ni inscriptions. Their headlines are "nahvahot", "relem" and "rekortee" - "Our master", "The ink" and "The books". Now if you stand at the centre of the Gate Room and look at the wall with "nahvahot" you'll notice that the headline "nahvahot" is mirrored! However, it will appear correctly in the closeup of the wall. In case you're not familiar with the D'ni language: start a new game of Riven, go to the centre of Gate Room and turn left two times. Now compare the inscription you see with the one you get if you click on the wall for a closeup.
Take a walk through the cave that ends up by the Maglev to Temple Island. Stop a few steps before you get out and take a closer look at the edge. It looks exactly like the silhouette of a frog, and the wood eye is located at the place the frog would have its eye!
In the Sunner Lagoon on Jungle Island, go behind the rocks and look at them. You should be able to see the ball. The rocks look like a Wahrk.
This triangular handle can be found on the stump by the mine car from Jungle Island to Book Assembly Island. It is not related to any of the puzzles in Riven, and you can't do anything with it. The handle is similar to the one you pull down to summon the cone elevator, so maybe it originally was there to summon the mine car from Book Assembly Island.
Did you know that there was a big hole in the ceiling over the spinning dome on Book Assembly Island? Many players do not see this when they play the game. On the 3D Pin Map at Survey Island this can be seen as a hole where the spinning dome is supposed to be.
If you go to the cliff on your right after starting a new game, you can see the man who took your book. He is probably unconscious. Later in the game 'Cho' vanishes from the cliff. In Gehn's journal you later read that he survived, and told Gehn the news of your arrival.
The first time you exit the idol's mouth on Jungle Island and walk up the stairway into the jungle, a little girl will appear on the path in front of you. She will run off, and you won't find her again. You will only see her once in the game.
If you are standing in the Sunners' Lagoon on Jungle Island facing the walkway, you will probably see some faint scribbling in the sand. It is very hard to see if it really is letters, and even more difficult to see what it says.
If you walk down the blue cave connecting the jungle with the bay on Jungle Island and turn left at the halfway you will see this faint blue pictogram. The painting depict how Gehn punishes the Moiety rebels. Gehn uses the Wahrk Gallows to lower the bait (read: the people) into the mouths of hungry wahrks. This is also being told in Gehn's Journal and is shown by the number game found inside the school house.
If you go directly to Gehn's lab on Book Assembly Island (Temple Island -> Jungle island -> Book Assembly Island) you will see that he has left his gun and his pipe on one of the desks there. If you return later in the game the pipe and the gun will be gone (Almost. Look below).
If you return to Gehn's lab after exploring some of the other islands you will see that the pipe and gun are gone. But, if you stand in front of the table in a certain position and look upwards you will see the top of the pipe still on the shelf. MYSTic...
If you proceed from the start in such a way that you visit Spike Island fairly early on, you will catch an image of a figure in white robes. This is one of Gehn's scribes, played by Tony Fryman. To see him, do the following: From the beginning, take the maglev to Jungle Island. From there, take the mine car to Book Assembly Island. On Book Assembly Island, crawl through the vent to Gehn's lab (note his gun and pipe on one of the tables). Summon the nearby maglev with the blue button, then go out the opposite door and directly down the stairs to the maglev landing. Take the maglev to Survey Island. When you arrive, turn the maglev around before you exit. Walk down the hall to the elevator, take the elevator down and walk down the hallway. Just before you get to the junction, you will stumble upon this figure strolling down the hall reading a book. The person will see you and flee to the nearby maglev. If you follow, you will see him turning the maglev around and escaping.
If you look closely about halfway through the maglev rotation movie in the maglev to Temple Island you will possibly see the mask of a well known father in the shadows. The father is Luke Skywalker's and his name is Darth Vader. The similarities can only be seen in a couple of the frames and it is very vague, so you have to want to see it. The movie (812_jtmgtrn.mov in j_Data2.MHK) can be viewed with the Riven Movie Player.
This spectacular view of the lava on Jungle Island is a sight many Riven players overlook. If you stop right inside the gate in the jungle and turn left (or right) and then look down you will see the red hot lava glowing up at you from beneath.
If you had a look out the window in Gehn's bedroom, you might have seen a person in rivenese clothing standing on the rocks on the bottom right of your screen. It is not a person. Richard A. Watson at Cyan has made a post to the Riven Lyst concerning this: "The figure out the bedroom window is an optical illusion, just part of the rocks. It's hard to judge distance and scale from these few shots, but those giant rocks are thousands of feet high, so if that were a person, he'd be about a hundred feet tall."
If you have used Riven Movie Player / Riven Movie Snoop to open the file b_Data.MHK on CD #1 and played movie 80 (304_bpress.mov) and 81 (304_bpressup.mov), you probably have seen this picture. It shows a book press that Cyan later decided to remove from the game. During testing, very few people identified it as a paper press. Most assumed that it was something to open/unlock a passage somewhere. For that reason Robyn told Jason to take it out of all the shots. But, he didn't remove it completely. If you stand in front of the boiler mechanisms on Book Assembly Island, put your cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen, even if it doesn't turn into an "up" hand, and click, you can see this picture. If you look in the bottom left corner of the screen you can see the top wheel of the book press. Thanks to Karen Bahnsen for pointing out this one.
On Cyan's Riven picture page and in the Riven calendar you can see a view where the elevator is coming down to the glowing room. This movie is not as easy to see in the game as it seems, but some smart people has figured out a method anyway: Put the elevator at the top and go to the maglev. Enter it and turn it around, go to the spinning dome and link to Gehn's Age. From here, link to jungle island, take the wahrk idol elevator all the way down, stopping at the middle pushing the blue button, and take the maglev to Survey Island. Walk through the corridors, and you can finally see a closed door with a blue button. Press the button to summon the elevator.
In the village on Jungle Island, you can knock on the door of one of the little huts. If you knock five times (note the five symbol on the door), someone will open a part of the door and take a look at you before shutting it again.
If you have been in Gehn's underwater throne long enough and turned on the different colors of lights, you'll have noticed that the red light summon a majestic creature known as a wahrk. Turning it on a second time summons the beast again; only this time he's a little put off that it's only you. The third time, he just swims by with an angry snort. By the fourth time, the wahrk is very angry. He swims right up to you and tries to attack you. Fortunately, there's some kind of transparent glass between you and that beast! Pretty scary, or what?
When you go across the bridge toward the jungle, there is a doorway in front of you. At one point in the game there is a little crawling beetle on the post to the left. You can get a very close look at it if you click on it. It will fly away if you attempt to move the mouse over it.
Outside the golden dome on the lower walkway, you will find an elevator you can activate without being on board. So, when you're facing the elevator (not inside), you can push the button to make it go up and then see what's underneath. Down there you see a drain covered by a steel grid.
If you turn your monitor's brightness to the top and look very closely at these books in Gehn's lab, you will see that the front book on the shelf has a questionmark on it. I have no idea what it is doing there. This picture is an "equalized" (a histogram function) image of the front of the book to show the questionmark as clear as possible.
Someone had said that in Softimage 3D, whenever you open an existing file of a 3D model, there is 1 in every 15 occasion that Softimage will unable locate an existing 2D texture for that particular model, once it is unable to locate it, the programme will load a question mark icon as a 2D texture on the 3D model to inform the the 3D animator that he/she need to reload the 2D texture again.
This design can be found in the stone walkway outside Gehn's lab on Bookmaking Island. I have no clue what it is supposed to be, but it may look like some sort of dome rendered in dots.
On the elevator walls on Temple Island you can see at least three skulls. On at the top, looking upward, on on your way dows, and one on the bottom. There may be even more skulls on Riven elevator walls, but I don't think these were wanted to be skulls by Cyan.
Here is what Rand Miller wrote about this: "Notice the smaller than normal pupils (barely noticeable) indicating D'ni blood... It's Gehn, almost as if he's watching you from the start, hmmmmmm... (Added by Richard Vander Wende when he put together that sequence.)"
Cho is the name given by Cyan to the first man you see on Riven, because the first word he says is "cho." Mark DeForest Write this: "Cho was instructed by Gehn to watch the caged linking spot in case someone (Gehn hoping for Atrus) will show up. When someone does, Gehn also instructed Cho to say a few D'ni phrases. However, Cho has been watching the cage for a *long* time and really thinks that no one will ever show up. Then you link in, surprising Cho but in a way he is excited to see someone new and starts talking to you in Rivenese. Then Cho remembers that he is suppose to say a D'ni phrase that he has memorized (but not too well, its hard to get good help). After messing that up, he decides to do the next thing on Gehn's list, which is to take any linking books. But of course, with the help of the rebel, he screws that up too."
This was answered by Richard A. Watson:
"What Cho says: tahg-em-ah... re-ko-ah (stutters) tah... tah... tah... tahg-em-ah b'soo re-ko-ah
translates roughly to: give-you (command) the-'ko-ah' (whatever that is).... gi... gi... gi... give-you (command) to-me (not pronounced quite right) the-'ko-ah'
What he's 'supposed' to say: tah-ge-mah b'zoo ah re-kor
give-you (command) to-me the-book.
which is: Gimme that book!"
Riven was the 5th Age that Gehn wrote, and during his long imprisonment there Gehn had become obsessed with the number 5, but the number wasn't otherwise special to the Age of Riven, nor was the D'ni culture obsessed with it. As Richard A. Watson put it, "Five is special to D'ni in the many of the same ways that 10 is special to us. Gehn just blew it way out of proportion, trying to connect everything around him to five."
That was one of Gehn's scribes, played by Tony Fryman, Cyan's President.
Edited from original source: D'ni Desk Reference
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All Myst, Riven, D'ni, Uru, End of Ages images, text, sound and music © Cyan Worlds, Inc. Myst III: Exile images, text, sound and music © 2001 Ubi Soft Entertainment, Inc. and Presto Studios, Inc. Myst IV: Revelation images, text, sound and music © 2004 Ubi Soft Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
