Clockwork Revolution Features True Reactivity, Says Fargo, Who Then Shares His Favorite Scene from the Game

When Clockwork Revolution appeared at this year's Xbox Games Showcase, fans were surprised to see actual pre-Alpha gameplay from inXile's next game. As reported prior to the announcement, it's a steampunk roleplaying game led by the makers of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and powered by Epic's Unreal Engine 5. Unlike Arcanum, which was played from an isometric point of view, the upcoming project is a strictly first-person game.

In a recent appearance on The Fourth Curtain podcast, inXile CEO Brian Fargo talked at length about Clockwork Revolution, from his decision to hire Jason Anderson and Chad Moore to the central importance of time-travel-based reactivity, which he illustrated by sharing a particular scene from the game.

I got the guys, and I'd worked with them before, that had made Arcanum: Chad Moore and Jason Anderson. I used to get a Twitter all the time: you should redo Arcanum, you should redo Arcanum. I knew there was interest in the category and I've always liked steampunk.

I thought, you know what, there hasn't been a steampunk RPG since Arcanum. Now, there's been Dishonored and Bioshock, but I don't put those under RPG. Wonderful products, but not exactly RPGs by the way we define them. So I thought, all right, I can get these guys to come work and that'll be exciting.

Then I just got really more excited about Clockwork Revolution. We started talking about time travel and then that really was like, okay. I mean, it hurts my brain from a reactivity perspective, but the idea that I could go back in time and change some stuff and see the ramifications, it's kind of the ultimate reactivity. We're just leaning into it so hard to make sure... It can't be a parlor trick, it has to be like true reactivity that you're doing.

I'll pimp one scene, which I'm not supposed to talk about, but whatever. As an example, my favorite scene so far in Clockwork Revolution is, there's this serial killer. He's in a cage like Hannibal Lecter. He's nuts, and all his victims are up on the wall. You go back in time and you meet him, but at this point, he's not killed anybody. He hasn't done anything yet. So you can kill him, but it feels a little awkward, you feel a little shitty because he doesn't know what's going on. I mean, you know what he's going to become and you don't know why, but all you know is he hasn't done anything at this time.

He's begging for his life. You can let him go, you can kill him, or you can kind of like shoot him and then halfway through go, okay, never mind. Forget it. When you come back to the present, he's not a serial killer, he's an advocate for victim's rights, for people who break into homes and shoot people. I love that dark humor. That kind of stuff, whether we're paying it off in a big way, like okay, now it's run by the crime syndicate or now it's the church is in charge.

Or even something like that on a smaller scale. Maybe you went back to the past with a red hat and they're like, oh my God, we love your hat. You come back, and you started a fad. Everybody loves red hats now. It's that stuff I think is highly entertaining.

In Clockwork Revolution, players will create their own character and roam around the Victorian-era metropolis of Avalon. Soon, though, they'll discover that the city's present state has been carefully crafted by the nefarious ruler Lady Ironwood through the use of time travel. After discovering Ironwood's machination, players will be able to use the Chronometer themselves to go into the past to influence the course of history, though the outcome can sometimes be unexpected.

There is no release date yet; however, you may already add it to your Steam wishlist. As with all Xbox first-party games, it'll be available on PC and Xbox Series S|X, as well as the Game Pass subscription service.

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