The only way I can imagine being able to do this in a CS game is to have some sort of ‘central’ engine that checks all the variables and sets others in response. Every time anything was changed in the past, you’d have to run that engine again to set the variables that might have been changed and the text throughout would have to written to use those variables. The possible combinations could be enormous for a large game.
Could be an interesting project, definitely not something you could just write on the fly though, sounds like a good candidate for some thorough planning beforehand!
I love well-done time travel! So many cool and interesting twists can happen.
I totally agree with the original comment from no-no’s, I don’t like when they ‘take back’ ideas. The X-Men movies did this. Undoing entire movies or decisions is weak.
Time travel done well is great!
Predestination and Donnie Darko. Wow, so awesome.
12 Monkeys and Looper are both cool too (Go Bruce Willis!)
Even the funny ones: Back to the Future, Bill and Ted, Groundhog Day
My feelings on time travel are sort of mixed. I love it in linear fiction like movies and books, but I don’t love it in games. All the same, if I see it mentioned I’ll always give the game’s demo a try, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought one.
Frequently they’re confusing. First there’s the pseudo-science, then often it’s not just time travel- it’s into an alternate/fantasy world, or we’re going back and forth and there’s a huge cast of characters to keep track of and it’s just a bit much. The potential for branching is enormous once you remove time as a barrier. When it’s not too much choice, it can be too little. Why can’t we use time travel to fix every problem? Oh, because the plot demands. That works in a linear story, but it feels frustrating and controlling in a game.
I think it’d be easier to do well in choice fiction/games if it’s the “one time only” sort of time travel. You’ve traveled to the past/future and that’s it. Now you’re stuck and you have to adapt and make the best of your new world. I’d be pretty interested in a game that went into the past where you had to learn how to fit in and survive. But in that case, it’s less of a story about time travel and more of a fish out of water story that uses time travel as a means to an end.
I’m neutral in general towards it; it won’t put me off just by its inclusion, but I don’t go looking for it either.
I think some of it is fantastically well-done. The big thing there for me is that whatever the logic or rules of the time-traveling, it needs to remain consistent. It can’t be difficult because of x, but magically x is resolved when it’s convenient. Or if there are dangers of ripples, they can’t pop up in one case and not in another when an equally disruptive action took place in both. That being said, the rules/logic don’t have to be serious or heavy - some of the most enjoyable time travel stuff is light-hearted (like Back to the Future) without getting into loops and scientific theories, etc.
I disagree with a couple of the comments that if there’s time travel, the story must then revolve around time travel.
I’ve liked some books where that type situation was in play, and the time travel was not the focus. However, the time travel was seen over the series to function a pretty specific way and only for some, so there were rules and so-on, so the time travel option wasn’t there at any moment and was seen to have a severe impact and cost.
100% this.
I also like alternate history/parallel timelines-universes type stories as mentioned earlier in the thread, but those I don’t consider time travel stories (I’ve generally just thought of them as “What if?” stories).
Time travel is one of those double edged swords. If it’s utilised well, it can be amazing and stunning. If it’s inconsistent and doesn’t make sense, it’s one of the worst things you can have in a novel.
For a good example of time travel, do yourself a favour and watch the tv series Steins;Gate. Hands down the best time travel I’ve seen in entertainment and it’s been critically acclaimed, not just as an anime, but as a tv series.
So I guess people will be unhappy when I introduce time travel into Rebels and people travel to the future to discover it’s actually set in the Star Wars universe?
I think the problem people have with time travel is that it too often becomes a handy fix-it button for the story’s problems- the characters go back in time to fix whatever went wrong, and the problem is solved. Sometimes just getting to the time machine is the goal of the story, and everything afterwards might as well have credits rolling over top of it. But I think a lot of people find that mashing a universal reset button isn’t a very satisfying resolution.
I’m of the opinion that time travel can work well, but it’s better when it’s the cause of the story’s issues than (just) the solution to them. If it is used as a solution, there should ideally be consequences to that use- going back in time to save your best friend is going to make a lot of butterflies after all, and they’re not all going to have effects you like. My personal favorite time travel show, Continuum, takes this and runs with it- multiple factions of future people go back to the past hoping to change their future, except by the time their butterflies finish flapping into each other they’ve collectively created a future nobody wants to live in. It works because it specifically avoids treating time travel as a silver bullet; instead, it’s a dangerous tool that’s just as likely to backfire on you as it is to help you, especially when your worst enemy can use it just as well as you can.
It is true that there are very few TV shows/books/films deal with time travel in this way. The only other program I can think of that treats time travel like Continuum does is Star Trek. Of course, with Star Trek being Star Trek there has to be some sort of code in place (the temporal Prime Directive).
Star Trek at least verbally considers time travel to be dangerous, true. But I never felt like that fear panned out when time travel actually appeared in the show, though that could just be insufficient knowledge of the show on my part.
I am one of those people who do like Time Travel, but it can be tough to implement into a game. Say what I might, but the Hosted Game Paradox took a real hard look at cause/effect, but considering it was rigged to a bad ending the more you changed, I didn’t enjoy it (not that all games have to be that way, this just boils down to personal taste).
@Eiwynn mentioned Harry Turtledove, and I can be a big fan of alternate history, but you have to be rather explicit that is going on (Alternate history doesn’t necessarily come from Time Travel, though Time Travel could be used as an example to split things off).
I know that I’ve been kicking around a story/game where Time Travel has a role. Not something the player would create, but more of a time slip. I thought it would be interesting to have something where the player encounters someone their own age (say around 6 or 7), and notices they are wearing ‘funny clothes’…and references, etc. are different. However, they could become acquaintances/friends…only as the MC gets older do they realize that they when they meet it is someone in the past.
Possible hooks is if something happened to the past NPC, does the MC try to change history? If so, it would just be on a small scale…no ‘stopping someone from getting slammed with a car causing WW 3’ eyes the old Star Trek
And yeah, there would be overtones of childhood crush/sweetheart of the player wanted it.
Then again I realize such a story probably wouldn’t have broad appeal…so if I did something like that, it would be more for personal enjoyment.
Or it might. (Of course maybe with a bit of a hunt for finding the audience who would enjoy it, but even then.) One of my favourite books from when I was younger was Something Upstairs by Avi, which has in part some similar themes and involves time travel, and though it was first published in 1988, it’s still being reprinted now.
I kinda thought so. I remember there were some references to a “Temporal Cold War” or something in Enterprise, but I don’t think it went anywhere.
What I’ve always wanted to see is a show that focuses explicitly on the time traveler. Like the characters spend the whole first season going about whatever adventures, and then at the end of the season things go horribly wrong and the main character has to jump back to fix things- but then, instead of doing a skip back to the present and saying “…And that’s how I fixed things!”, devote the second season to watching the character relive the events of the first season, except everything’s different because of the things he’s changed (intentionally or not). The solution to the problem in Episode 3 doesn’t work anymore, because something’s different. The solution to the problem in Episode 4 does work, but he knows that way too easily and people start to get suspicious that he started it. He met a pair of bitter enemies in Episode 6, helped and befriended one, and became lifelong friends with the other; this time it’s the other way around because something minor was different, and he finds out that there’s another side to the story he originally heard. He finds out the allies he relied on at a certain point in Season 1 are completely destroyed before he even meets them in Season 2, because oops something he changed caused a catastrophe.
Done well, I feel like it could be something really interesting. Now if only someone out there was willing to throw millions of dollars at my half-baked ideas.
