Even in the 8-bit days, the theme of time travel in video games was all around us. For some, it was a story excuse to visit
historical landmarks and offer. Other explored idea of what it meant to manipulate time Usually, they were some poorly-designed
movie tie-in. But each one offered an unmentioned promise that someday, somewhen, the ultimate time travel game would arise. Now, if only someone would invent actual time travel and send that game back to us in time for this episode!
Vinnk and Sean discuss their favorite (and sometimes not-so-favorite) time travel games, what they did right, what they could have
done better, and spend probably too much time gushing about Presto Studio's The Journeyman Project and bolstering the merits of the 1996 Doctor Who movie on Fox starring Paul McGann. But, mostly, it's about games. And we somehow forgot to mention Shadow of Destiny... (Don't worry; we'll try to cover that in the show notes.)
Show Notes
So much synergy this week! We'll go through it one at a time:
The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime
No sooner do we start doting on the Journeyman Project than we find out not only is Presto Studios still in existence,
and not only are the second and third games available on GOG.com, but
a successful wish list petition is getting Pegasus Prime made for GOG.com, AND Presto Studios has been showing the game this
week at GDC 2013 while we were prepping this episode! Reverse temporal engineering, or mere coincidence?
Even coolor, Pegasus Prime was the update of the original Journeyman Project game released for PlayStation. They are actually
working on the never-released DVD version of the game for GOG.com. Is that cool, or what?
We didn't discuss Chrono Trigger (because neither one of us have played enough of it), but Zac and aDam did (sort of) over at their new Powetcast spin-off No Topic Required.
I do not know HOW we missed discussing this, because it is one of Sean's favorite time travel games, full of great concepts and so-so execution.
The game actually has about five or six distinct endings, based on a narrow set of choices (out of many different choices) that you make during the game.
Unlike other games which might try a "good, better, BEST" ending structure, each ending tells you more and more about the overall story. As a result --
depending on how much you liked playing the game, of course -- is that you will be compelled to play again to find out what other paths you could have taken.
Every ending is true, and reveals something about the game story (which, since it's a time travel game, is kind of like an ouroburos or mobius strip without a beginning or end).
On subsequent playthroughs, you understand more about the characters and their motivations than they even realize about themselves. The homonculus, initially positioned as the bad guy,
ends up becoming something of the central character, and the only one who really understands what is going on, given his unique perspective of the situation and (inferred)
awareness of all the possible timelines.
It's a crazy idea, but after a couple of playthroughs it becomes hard to do again and again. I don't recall if starting over from a previous completion overtly changes the second
playthrough, but it does change the perspective of the player. It's exactly the exploration of time mechanics that Sean was talking about, and the sort of game he wants to see more of.
Shadow of Destiny was dpublished by Konami for
PS2 in 2001,
but has subsequently been released for PSP in 2010, and
for PC and Xbox somewhere in between.
Does the PS4 even have a standard Blu-ray player? Because that would be a reason to get one if you don't own a PS3.
