Clockwork Revolution is a “time-bending steampunk first-person RPG” with distinct BioShock overtones, developed by Wasteland’s inXile Entertainment.
Can the BioShock-like be regarded as a genre? If so, it looks as though we can put inXile Entertainment’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 game’s aesthetic – all monorails and brass-fringed knobs and dials – certainly makes us think of BioShock and its second sequel, BioShock Infinite. The dystopian plot – seemingly about efforts to overthrow a city in the grip of fascist rule – 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. There’s a kind of timey-wimey bazooka, for example, which can be used to locally reverse the state of individual objects – 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 – 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.
It’s currently unclear whether we’ll be able to use these mechanics at will, or at specific, scripted moments, though InXile studio head Brian Fargo has written about “unprecedented narrative depth” on the company’s website, and adds that “the 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.”
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 Bard’s Tale IV and the Wasteland titles.
Clockwork Revolution is coming at an unspecified date to PC and Xbox Series X/S.
