Spoilers Off apply to all moment pages, so proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.
- Riven accomplishes scary using mostly music and lightning. Unlike in Myst, it's possible to explicitly die from being shot by Gehn by either using the trap book or signaling Atrus at the wrong time. It's not necessarily an Instant Death Bullet either, one bad ending has you living for around half a minute while Gehn casually discusses your poor choices as the poison bullet puts you under for good.
- There's also the bad ending of Riven where you trap yourself in the trap book while you're in Tay. Two rebels find your book, and the lighting implies that they're burning the book with you inside of it. They are quite literally burning you alive.
- Even when you do the right thing with the trap book, the implications are disturbing. You use the trap book in Gehn's presence, hoping it will trick him into thinking it leads back into D'ni. Through the window, you see him open the book, dressed fully for the D'ni climate, and check his rifle to make sure it's loaded— and then he lays his hand on the window, fully expecting to find (and kill) you and Atrus on the other side.
- A strategy guide for the game compounds on this, being written as a first-person account of the events of the game. As Gehn uses the trap book himself, the protagonist describes hearing Gehn's despairing scream as he realizes his mistake, and knows full well where he's going and what he's in for.
- In Riven, there are the wahrks (no, that's not a misspelling). The name is a portmanteu because the creatures are as big as whales, and as vicious and deadly as insane sharks. As you progress through the game, you see hints of the creatures all over, and you learn that they are used in Gehn's gallows, where they rip apart and eat people that have made Gehn mad. And where do you learn this little tidbit? In a school building. On a toy. Used to teach kids their numbers. And it doesn't end there. Eventually, you reach an underwater lab on one of the islands, where you have to solve a color puzzle using totem poles which sit in front of a massive underwater porthole. And guess what happens when you click the red one? The view tilts up and reveals a warhk that swims in front of the porthole and bares its teeth at you. Click it again, and the wahrk returns, but is clearly in a bad mood — he was expecting to find a meal dangling from the gallows above. And if you press the button a third time, nothing will happen for a few seconds... before the now extremely pissed-off wahrk suddenly charges at you and rams the window face-first. After all the the lonely atmosphere, and all of the depictions of the wahrk, a real one is so completely frightening that at least one player shut off his game in abject terror.
- A caption from the Stranger in the aforementioned strategy guide concerning an idol of the wahrk explains the Myst fanbase's general opinion on these things best.
The Stranger: "If I see one of these, I quit."- At one point, using the gallows itself is required to access a new area. It's never precisely spelled out in-game that that's the structure's purpose, but its location (next to the village, with a cell holding a Moiety prisoner built into the nearby cliff face), the wahrk motifs in its design, its rough resemblance to the game in the schoolhouse, and the manacles that descend when a switch is pulled all more or less guarantee that the player will figure it out.
- Note that the gallows are positioned directly across the lagoon from the village, in earshot of their homes and in clear view from the walkways and wharfs. Gehn wanted the local folk to see and hear exactly what was happening to those he'd singled out for execution. No wonder those little round huts' walls look so thick: they were keeping out the screams.
- Hard to get across now, but Riven was particularly shocking for many Myst fans because they were used to the deserted, almost immobile views of Myst, and then suddenly you have a situation where characters can walk into view and start talking to you.
- Including a scene in which you enter one screen in the treetop village, where a little girl is watching you then runs away, if you aren't expecting it, it can be a decent jump scare.
- The way the native civilians snatch up their children and flee at the distant sight of you is disturbing. Just what kinds of horrific propaganda has Gehn been feeding them about strangers, and what punishments would they face at his hands if they dared to let you come near?
- Gehn's lab is quite eerie, with the foreboding feeling that Gehn might walk in any second. A "howling wind effect" can be heard as part of the ambiance, further creating a sense of being in a vulnerable position.
- The Temple Music
probably one of the most disturbing tracks in the entire series. - Later when coming back into the temple. You see a giant floating hologram of Gehn's face watching you, a pretty decent jump scare. (This is due to the chair/machine within the temple creating an intended Wizard Of Oz effect for the villagers.) If you go to the chair, it's empty. But even worse that while doing this all of this, you're treated to the above creepy music.
- Even creepier to go back and see the temple's hologram-globe later, once you've seen evidence of Gehn's atrocities, and realize that sick s.o.b.'d been just around the corner when you saw his floating head.
- Finally meeting Gehn one-on-one. It seems all too likely that if he senses any threat, or at least a threat that's not outweighed by the Stranger's potential usefulness, then the Stranger will die (and if the player tries his patience too many times, that's exactly what happens). But John Keston plays him with insane amounts of charisma, he anticipates Atrus and Catherine's claims and does an impressive job of rebutting them, it's hard to dismiss the possibility that he really has changed his ways. Don't believe it. Trying Gehn's patience can be a very uncomfortable experience.
- Gehn's arguments are somewhat more plausible if you've read Catherine's journal. Compared to Atrus, she lets more of her emotions carry over into her writing, and she's been through at least as much as he has. A few pages approach Room Full of Crazy levels.
- Your first time meeting Catherine on Prison Island, while uplifting, does have an ominous feel to it if it done before you capture Gehn, with the sense that he and his followers are watching you on the surveillance systems due to her saying as such. It can be unsettling to hear her pleading for you to capture Gehn because he will kill Atrus if he finds his way back to D'ni, and all the evidence around the Gallows on Jungle Island are a hint that Gehn has killed before.
- The scene where the Fissure is opened. Whether the ending is good or bad, the way it reveals itself to you when you first break the glass porthole can be very unsettling. The sky goes dark, the metal skin slowly warps inward, then the telescope sharply drops out with a gushing steam tube - that hisses with a sound akin to a snake! And then it gets worse with rocks falling off the cliffside, then the giant dagger loudly falls over.
- And between Rivenese being of a Papua New Guinea language family and the presence of South American birds on Jalak in Uru Live, some fans have theorized that Star Fissures are more common than one would suppose.
- And between Rivenese being of a Papua New Guinea language family and the presence of South American birds
- The beginning: you link into what seems like a cage, a man walks into view and sees you, he repeatedly says something you can't understand and takes your book... and then someone else shoots him and he seemingly dies. And then someone else drags his body offscreen, creating the sense that you're truly behind enemy lines.
- Riven is an unstable Age, meaning it's on the brink of falling apart, to the point that throughout the game, Atrus is constantly rewriting the Riven book just so it won't fall apart with you in there...."The last few days have all but convinced me that the collapse of Riven is inevitable; and that, at best, I can only strive to delay it now, and hope that at some point the island will become stable enough to risk a rescue attempt." - Atrus's Riven Journal: 87.7.5
