Clockwork Revolution | new RPG from the creators of Wasteland

clockwork revolution
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Clockwork Revolution is a ā€œtime-bending steampunk first-person RPGā€ with distinct BioShock overtones, developed by Wastelandā€™s inXile Entertainment.


 

Can the BioShock-like be regarded as a genre? If so, it looks as though we can put inXile Entertainmentā€™s upcoming Clockwork Resolution in the same mental basket as, say, Atomic Heart or the unfairly overlooked Singularity.

Clockwork Revolution is a first-person RPG (with lots of action, by the looks of things) set in a steampunk city where Victorian architecture and fashion sits alongside robots, drones, and devices capable of manipulating the flow of time. The gameā€™s aesthetic ā€“ all monorails and brass-fringed knobs and dials ā€“ certainly makes us think of BioShock and its second sequel, BioShock Infinite. The dystopian plot ā€“ seemingly about efforts to overthrow a city in the grip of fascist rule ā€“ also feels distinctly BioShock-y.

Such comparisons aside, Clockwork Revolution's chief selling point is its time manipulation mechanic, which appears to allow the player to change the course of history in varying ways. Thereā€™s a kind of timey-wimey bazooka, for example, which can be used to locally reverse the state of individual objects ā€“ in the trailer below we can see a crumbling bridge restored to its original condition. Zooming further out, it also looks as though the wider city of Avalon exists in at least two states ā€“ all blue skies and crisply-maintained streets in one, decaying and Biffhorrific in the other, and that players will be able to zip between these two timelines to progress the story.

Itā€™s currently unclear whether weā€™ll be able to use these  mechanics at will, or at specific, scripted moments, though InXile studio head Brian Fargo has written about ā€œunprecedented narrative depthā€ on the companyā€™s website, and adds that ā€œthe choices you make on your trips into the past will change the people, the stories and the city of Avalon itself in extraordinary and (very often) unexpected ways.ā€

InXile was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, and Fargo said at the time that the deal would allow his studio to make triple-A games. Clockwork Revolution certainly looks like an ambitious project for the studio that previously brought us the likes of The Bardā€™s Tale IV and the Wasteland titles. 

Clockwork Revolution is coming at an unspecified date to PC and Xbox Series X/S.

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