Clockwork Revolution is inXile Entertainment's "most ambitious title, probably by a factor of 10," according to studio head Brian Fargo. His team has been hard at work on this time-bending steampunk RPG for six years, and Fargo wants it to "bring the level of reactivity from our isometric titles into something first-person." A bold ambition given the heights the studio reached with Wasteland 3.
This ambition manifests all throughout Avalon, a sprawling metropolis where the choices you make ripple through history. Clockwork Revolution looks exceptionally complex, as if inXile picked 'Prince of Persia aficionado' and 'Dishonored devotee' as key background traits when it began development. "I can see why people make those connections," he laughs.
"Any time you're playing with time mechanics, Sands of Time is going to come up. And we did hire one of the key artists from Dishonored, so that aesthetic influence is real. We seem to be striking a lot of different chords, which I'll take as a compliment because they are wonderful games. But the actual genesis of Clockwork Revolution was far simpler: we wanted to make a steampunk RPG."
Time Comes For Us All
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Fargo believes the Steampunk genre "hasn't been well-represented in roleplaying games", so inXile is being the change it wants to see in the world – hiring "several key people" behind the legendary Arcanum to get this right, including Clockwork's game director Chad Moore and principal designer Jason Anderson. "Steampunk is in their DNA," he adds. "If players are picking up vibes from Dishonored or Prince of Persia along the way, we're in good company, but we're aiming for Clockwork Revolution to be its own definition for time travel and reactivity."
Clockwork Revolution casts you in the role of Morgan Vanette, an exhaustively customizable character who discovers a way to wield temporal manipulation. From there you are thrust into an adventure across time – where the choices you make on your trips to the past can change the city, the people, and the stories of the world around you on micro and macro levels. "inXile very much hangs its hat on reactivity," Fargo continues, explaining that the studio is hellbent on creating a truly malleable sandbox.
"For me, roleplaying means I can play a role and actually affect the world around me. If all paths lead to the same outcome, the immersion breaks, and you start to feel like you're just playing a game rather than living in one. But when the world is constantly reacting and reflecting your choices, both in big ways and just as importantly in small ways, that's when immersion really sets in."
While Clockwork Revolution currently has no release window, when it does land it'll be inXile's first AAA first-person RPG – and its first fully-fledged release as part of Xbox Game Studios, following the 2018 acquisition. The studio is wielding the resources to deliver an experience that's definitely deep and purposefully complex, packed with a staggering degree of content and variables. "We probably build roughly 30% more content than what any player could see in a single playthrough. We want players to be able to approach the game as a different archetype, whether you want to be good, evil, or something in between."
"We probably build roughly 30% more content than what any player could see in a single playthrough"
Brian Fargo, studio head
Morality is a tricky thing in Clockwork Revolution. The RPG will always be weighing your decisions and reacting appropriately, and Fargo is keen to stress that everything – from the grandest acts of altruism to the smallest of micro-aggressions – will help to define your character. No matter how you want to play, be it savior of the downtrodden working class or the next great scoundrel of history, inXile wants to get out of your way and observe the carnage.
"Here's what's really important to us: if you don't allow the player to be bad, to really go down those rabbit holes and see the consequences play out, then they never had free will to be good in the first place. They're not choosing to be good, they're just being forced down a path. We think it's essential that players are making that choice, not having it made for them," says Fargo. "We also have a very dark sense of humor, which makes all of it even more fun."
Layered into all of this is an expressive approach to character progression, gadget upgrades, and weapon development. Honestly, it's a little dizzying. inXile is keen to make you feel like a true steampunk tinkerer, something which is perhaps reflected best in the weapon systems. Once you find a gun it's yours to keep throughout the entire game, transforming over time as you experiment with hundreds of different permeations. "The complexity is very intentional. We're intending for this to be a game where players go online and debate what the best build is, or share tactics and discover emergent strategies we didn't even anticipate, and that requires a lot of variables," says Fargo.
"We want players to navigate the world and combat in a way that suits their playstyle. It's the same philosophy we bring to the narrative side – we make that flexible so people can make it their story. Whether it's how you spec your character, how you modify your weapons, or how you handle a conversation, the goal is for players to feel like they're authoring their own experience."
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