"Forbidden" Areas (Previously unreachable Areas)

[3D_Space]

Hello,

I apologise if this question has been asked before:
I saw this beautiful project and have been watching some of the videos, and I was curious. Has the project thought at all about creating any areas that were not in the original game? (ex. player being able to leave Gehn's building, or go inside one of the Jungle Island village houses). If so, was that idea scrapped because it would be too much work or involve too much imagination?

Here's how I thought of that.
When I first played Riven (I was like 11 or so) I tried for ages to get out of the building in age 233 (out of the door that Gehn comes in from). I was wondering if there was a way to cheat and get to that area (without realising that the area had not actually been designed to be accessible by the original creators). Part of what made the game exciting was being able to see areas but not being able to go to them.

Examples of parts of the game I tried to get to but couldn't:
--Catherine's prison (beyond the elevator barrier- and where the outdoor barred walkway she goes to across the room leads to)
--age 233 outside- (what was Gehn doing when he went outside? DId he have a boat?)
--The village in the Moiety hive in Tay
--Other parts of the village (ex. inside houses, such as the one where you known and the girl opens and shuts the window) on Jungle Island village
--any others people know of?

Seeing one or some of these "forbidden" areas would be really creative and make it seem as if the player were exploring unknown Riven territory again for the first time.

[Yali]

That's what I think, but seeing as how the project is already a mammoth task to complete, the team have specified that first they will have to complete Riven as is while they've also stated that they would like to avoid the "Star Wars: Special Edition" effect, possibly tainting a classic with new additions.

Personally I'd be up for adding areas like the outside of Gehn's office, the Hive or the village huts solely because its been 20 years and myself and other fans have constantly tried to imagine those areas in the time since after we realized that they were innaccessible. Kind of cruel of Cyan to put the freakin' coolest, edgiest scene on the box and have us not be able to explore it.

It helps to know that Cyan intended to have those areas accessible initially but cut them from production due to budget limits/time constraints.

If someone asked me to design those areas (i.e. the Hive, 233's exterior or the village for instance) I probably could do a decent non-cringey job, mostly because I've been obsessed with this game since I was 9 and wanted nothing more than to explore that freakin' hive. I even drew storyboards for each still frame of the hive as if it was a DLC when I was 10.

[Jamie Marchant]

I think unless Cyan starts paying the Starry Expanse Team and they start working on it full time, we should just let them make the base game. Having said that if the team is up too it, such areas would make good DLC. As long as they are 'Riveny', I too am concerned about pulling a 'Gorge Locus'!

Yali do you still have those sketches, they would be cool to see .

[Yali]

"sketches" more like scribbles by a 10 year old. Long gone.

[Jamie Marchant]

When you said 'storyboards' I thought there where actually good .