Eternal Threads Will Have Us Manipulating Timelines In An Interesting Way

Eternal Threads

New details for Eternal Threads are out there to better explain how we will manipulate the timeline of Eternal Threads to get the best outcome

Here we go with a new and refreshing twist on a video game mechanic we have seen a few times, as Eternal Threads offers up a new way to work the time flow. For those that need some background, this would be the title coming out of Cosmonaut Studios that is a first-person narrative game that starts telling the story from the ending. In Eternal Threads it will be up to us to figure out how to alter the timeline and get different effects so we can help make the choices that lead to all characters living. It is kind of the reverse of what we see in some of the narrative titles that allow for multiple characters to die or survive based on the choices we made during the story. Now we have some fresh video to show off just how that will be going down.

You can see it all in motion below, but in Eternal Threads, we will have multiple branching points in the story where we can have the characters make different decisions that will affect the overall timeline. At the same time, it will lock off other choices and could lead to only some of the characters surviving this horrible fire and many others always dying. Our job will be to go back and replay some of the events to learn about the characters and then make the choices that fit what they will end up doing as the blaze continues. In a perfect example here for Eternal Threads, we see as one choice that causes an issue for one character's personal relationship for the night ends up saving him and another's life in the grand scheme. It could also potentially lead to another's death. It is all an interesting bit of a game that I hope innovates the decision-based genre for a while. Have a look at how it will flow out there.

Eternal Threads — A First-Person Narrative Game Of Time Travel, Choice And Consequence

Have you ever had one of those moments where you know that something is real, but it just feels normal, like a background element of everyday life? And then something happens and you’re staring at something that makes it feel very, very real?

Eternal Threads — Cause And Effect

Here’s a more in-depth look at the core idea and mechanic behind our game Eternal Threads – manipulating the timeline.

Eternal Threads is not a linear game. From the initial outset, you can visit any point in the current timeline of the story and watch the events that take place. You can jump forward or backward watching and rewatching any event currently available. You can watch chronologically, follow each character’s story separately, watch the whole story from back to front or even come up with some random viewing order based on the I Ching. How you watch these events and piece together the story is entirely up to you.

However, the current timeline is based upon the decisions that the characters make during the story. If you change a character’s decision in an event this can change the timeline, removing some future events and adding new ones. Ultimately your goal is to find a set of decisions that result in all six of the characters surviving the house fire at the end of the week.

You can try to predict the outcome of changing a decision based on what you have learned about each of the characters. Many will have obvious results, but others, like the butterfly effect, will be less predictable. Fortunately, as you can go back and forth changing any decision at any time, as many times as you like, you are free to experiment and can change things just to see what happens.

In this video we show some of the results at the end of the timeline and then experiment with changing decisions to see how that affects the outcome.

Eternal Threads — Time Manipulation

Eternal Threads is a single-player, first-person, story-driven adventure game of time manipulation, choice, and consequence. You have been sent to the North of England in May 2015, where six people died in a house fire they should have survived.

With our new time manipulation mechanic you are able to watch events in any order and change specific events to alter the timeline. Can you save them all?

What are your thoughts on Eternal Threads and the way the story is going to be told? Do you think that it will work out as well as the video shows it here or will it confuse too many gamers that have been forced into the linear path of choices for so long in their games? Could we potentially see some of the other bigger studios try to be innovative in this way instead of just giving us the idea that our choices in the game will lead to big changes, whereas this one is all about making the choices to get to the outcome we know is there? Let us all know down in the comments and then feel free to discuss it all as you wish. If there is more for Eternal Threads, it will be on the site for you all. Be sure to keep checking back in for all of that and more.