Wadjet Eye have done it again: proved that it's possible to create a really great 2D point-and-click adventure game, if you have a cracking story, characterful dialogue writing and voice acting that is nothing short of stellar.
I've been waiting to play this game for several years, ever since I saw a video of creator Dave Gilbert talking at AdventureX 2019 about an experimental game he'd produced for a jam. He showed a clip of it, in which a time traveller named Fia - some kind of agent in pursuit of a fugitive - lands in a city street and contacts her remote handler, Nozzo. "What's your status?" he asks. "I've got a splitting headache," she replies. "Didn't the Brass say this was a painless procedure?" She then discovers that her kit bag is missing. "Oh. Um. That's bad," he says. "Yes, Nozzo. That's bad," Fia replies with feeling. "How d'you expect me to find Monty without the tracker?" That was the extent of the clip, just 40 seconds long (from 13:55 to 14:35), but it sold it to me. I liked Fia's resolute but slightly stroppy attitude and her collegially affectionate relationship with Nozzo, and I wanted to see more of her and her adventures. So here she is at last in a full-length game, once again voiced by Sally Beaumont who brought her so vividly to life from a short sketchy script for the game jam.
Fia works for an organisation called ChronoZen, which sends rich clients on short trips into the past as a sort of temporal tourism. Playing as Fia, your job - with Nozzo's support - is to give them the experience they want (things they want to see, people they want to meet, even - within strict limits - things they want to change), while making sure that no harm comes to them or to the timeline. Of course, this being an adventure game, the missions are never as simple as they sound. In one, the client runs off by himself and Fia has to track him down and find out what he is trying to do, because he clearly has an agenda other than the one he declared to ChronoZen. In another, the person the client has longed to meet, because he was a role model for her, turns out to be a protection-money collector for one of New York’s gangs, so that Fia has her work cut out to prevent them both from being killed.
It's when Fia gets killed for the first time that you find out about the Emergency Rewind Protocol: if she dies, Nozzo can rewind time by a few seconds, or a few minutes, to give her another chance. This is no pain-free re-spawning, though, as in many an RPG; each time she's revived, Fia winces with agony, and she retains full memory of how she died. Here's where the game really shows its quality: it would have been so easy to reuse the same dialogue each time, but instead Fia's rising irritation with the repeating events and her failure to escape the death loop is reflected in her dialogue options. She starts to anticipate what her antagonist will say, or comes out with something like "Let's skip ahead to the part where you hit me." Not only does this cushion the player against getting bored or irritated, her use of irony to defuse and cope with adversity is expressive of Fia's character. It doesn't prevent her from being killed again, though. ("You know, I'm really fed up with getting shot in the head.")
The puzzles which advance the story are mostly solved through dialogue choices or through use of information gathered from other characters, the environment, or the biographical database to which Fia has access. No implausibly large inventories here; once again, the dependence on conversation, setting and history works to build a rich sense of the characters and the worlds they inhabit. Even when you get stuck on a puzzle, you can have Fia ask Nozzo for advice; he effectively acts as a built-in hint system, but one that deepens immersion in the game rather than breaking it, because giving helpful advice is what his character does, and it never feels like cheating to ask him for help.
As with Wadget Eye’s previous hit Unavowed, the game is divided into chapters, each of which represents a discrete mission with its own story arc. But again as with Unavowed, there is a larger story arc, which emerges gradually over the individual chapters. There are hints about this larger story right from the beginning. Fia, like all ChronoZen agents, is insulated from chrono-shifts, changes to the timeline; when historical reality is changed, through accident or design, she remains unchanged, with memory of the previous reality, and all previous realities. This means that she avoids becoming attached to things which may suddenly disappear. She doesn't have a favourite restaurant or favourite place; they change too much. For the same reason, as we learn during the course of her missions, she doesn't follow sport and knows nothing about art. In an early scene, she tries to pick up a man at a bar, and just as the conversation is starting to go well, there;s a chrono-shift and his disappears from existence. And what does she do, with an unexpectedly free evening? She goes into work, to see if there are any late clients requiring escorting. No matter how good at her job she is, no matter how dedicated, this is shaping up to be a life of personal isolation and non-commitment.
Without being heavy or overly serious - and there are some very funny moments in this game - Old Skies packs an emotional punch, prompting thoughts about meaning and purpose and the nature of a life well-lived. The questions confronting Fia are an amplification of the questions which confront every one of us, once we become aware of the inescapable change and impermanence of things. How can one leave one's mark on the world if everything is prone to erasure from existence? What. if anything, is it worth caring about, if it can be taken away from one in an instant? Does what we do really matter?
Having played the game through to its thrilling conclusion, I'm not sure whether Fia's story has a happy ending or a sad ending. Perhaps that doesn't matter. I'm very glad to have known her and gone through it all with her. And now it's over, I'm feeling bereft and lost. So sorry, Dave, but for me the countdown starts now. I'm waiting for your next hit game!
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