BioShock is so stylized that it's hard to compare to Riven's attempt at photorealism. But the big difference with prerendered, even 15 years old prerendered, is the lighting. You can't get this kind of light quality in a modern realtime 3d game:
Sure you can; you prerender the lighting information. It's a bog-standard technique. You can't necessarily get it with dynamic lighting in realtime (it depends on exactly what you're asking for), but then again, you definitely don't get dynamic lighting in a prerendered scene, so....
http://myst-aventure.com/gallery2/d/6020-1/Maglev.jpg