Who wants to look back?

We are what we are because of our own experience and relationship with the world, but it's easy to get obsessed with our past, specially with our mistakes, what would I do differently if I knew how things will turn out? I think everyone has feelings like this every once in a while and if there was a way to turn things around I bet we'd try it at least once, I could be rich, I could marry my college girlfriend, I could have a successful career, I could be someone of worth. Amusing daydreamy thoughts about changing our story is kind of childish yet we do it from time to time in moments of nostalgia and regrets, we are what we are because of our past but what if we could change our own history? what if that power was ours to wield?

In the new game from Wadjet Eye Games called Old Skies the idea of tweaking past events is a common service payed by people who can afford it but also those who can't let go, these people that can pay for time travel come from a position of self indulgence but somehow their desires are not evil in nature but come from their own selfish desires, something we can all relate to, either we like it or not. Traveling in time is not only expensive but also heavily restricted, chances are that you're already rich and famous or maybe both, even for people in that position their obsessions with the past come from their normal every day people worries, what if I could save her? what if I could understand him? Maybe I could do it better than they did? those questions come from a place of doubt and insecurity, things that can disturb us all no matter who we are. That's why everyone looks back from time to time, we all have regrets.

Going back in time

In Old Skies we play as Fia Quinn, an agent of Chronozen, a company dedicated to get time tourists to a when instead of a where, the service usually consists on amusing costumers with some classic nostalgia trips: Seeing an old friend for the last time, eating at your favorite restaurant before it was closed, catching the sunset by the bay before the sight was obstructed by buildings... These kinds of travels are completely innocent, reliving precious moments, but there are others kinds of services available, there are people who are more than nostalgic, they want to change their past, the narrative device to justify these alterations to the timeline is somehow brilliant and simple, there are events and people who just don't matter a lot, you can't go back and kick Henry Kissinger in the nuts 'cause his fucking meddling with world affairs is far too relevant for how history turned out but maybe you could save your dog from a car accident and everything would probably stay the same, the simple truth is that most of us are really not that important in the grand scheme of things.

Time travel stories try to make a big deal about changing past events, usually this is at the center of their plots, also there's the tired concept of multiple timelines —a trope that is beating into the ground if you ask me— but in Old Skies not only we have one time stream but altering past events are another day at the office, when a client comes and requests a timefall (nomenclature used for time travel) Chronozen analyzes the validity of the request via a bureaucratic process in which the client is put under risk assessment, despite the complicated approval process things go under the gazing eye of the committee pretty much all the time —It wouldn't turned out into an entertaining adventure game if due process was perfect, right?— and even so, after passing all of this evaluation process if the client is approved to go into a timefall they'd still need to be under the vigilant watch of a Chronozen agent, Fia Quinn in our case. Assuming that everything is OK and we can go back with the client and change some details of their past, the timeline will need to adjust to our poking, normal people will never find out about this, the ripples in time settle and suddenly your local book store no longer exists but it doesn't matter because it never did, you never knew about it, the same goes for people, you never know who's going to get chronoshifted (term used when some piece of reality gets displaced from the timeline) just trust Chronozen to do their job and keep everything from falling apart. Chronoshifting comes with an opposite kind of mechanism, chronolocking (sci-fy mechanism that permanently locks in the time stream of someone or something) Chronozen agents are chronolocked and thus they always stay the same, it doesn't matter what changes, they are permanent and the only ones who remember everything.

As you can imagine being a Chronozen agent gets you lonely fast, you have coworkers but your private life doesn't exist in a traditional sense, we are what we are because of our past, but the agents don't have a past to be tether with —if everything changes and you don't, you don't have a past, you don't have a history, you don't exist— Fia and other agents are all selected for the job for their particular psychological profile, they are resistant to change, unbothered by it, the game implies that most of them are orphans, lonely souls with nowhere to go, nevertheless they are resilient and built for adversity. Fia's partners at Chronozen are Nozzo and Duffy, Nozzo is a Handler the one who operates the whole technological aspects of the timefall, Duffy is another agent and the one who trained Fia when she started at the company, the trio relationship brings to light their unnatural state of their living, they are all workaholics in some sense of the word, Nozzo never misses a report and rarely drinks outside of company time, Duffy's mantra is "focus on the job" while heavily drinking at a bar that he himself requested to be chronolocked , their routine consists on going from timefall to the bar, to bed and repeat, when you don't have a life your job becomes your life, the agents and handlers at Chronozen don't have a history or a past to grab to so they stopped being (their own) themselves?** and became cogs in a company machinery, we never see anyone from the top of the company in the game and we never see any kind of repercussion from our actions making me wonder if the people who run Chronozen even care about anything that doesn't imply earning money from their clients and their aching nostalgia.

"Fixing" our past selves

In practice, changing the past has the same effect that making choices in our present, we can't be certain of how it would turn out and I think it doesn't matter, people with the ability to change the past would never be satisfied "What if I changed this or that" would become their daily routine, learning to live with yourself will become impossible cause you'll never experience any consequences for your actions, everything submitted to review by your ever correcting presence, would you really be happy like that? people with absurds amounts of money in Old Skies change their lives whenever they want —just like in real life— but that doesn't stop them from being miserable bastards —also just like in real life—, as much as we sometimes have a hard time looking back we can't stop going forward and the path we take from now on is solely determined by who we were and what we do with it.

The game introduces the concept of timeline malaise (a term used for time travel induced depression) not being tied to anything, not mattering to anyone, being invisible to the world that is ever changing while you stay the same is not a good thing for your mental health, the agents at Chronozen are chronolocked and that means they are out of time itself, the agents repeat Duffy's mantra "just focus on the job" but that can get you only so far, then the job starts to get you and suddenly you start to get your own desire to change the past. This is when the main conflict at the core of the game starts to arise, what would you do when you realize that you don't matter at all and what would happen if you'd have the chance to matter to someone? Being important sounds selfish and it kind of is, but we don't live alone in the world and our well being is related to the good we do for others as being alone is a miserable existence. The timeline malaise is not only depression that affects these time travelers but it's also the isolation that the profession brings, the pain of being alone in a world that goes forward leaving you behind, lives that you didn't got a chance to live, friends that you didn't have a chance to have, and lovers that you didn't have a chance to love.

As the story progresses we start to see how these changes affect Fia, she stops being professional, she makes mistakes, she takes huge risks, she's clearly affected by her work and the people who hire her services, getting to know people who care about her eventually being chronoshifted away from her life doesn't help either. Fia's is presented with a dilemma, she has the power to make the past as she pleases but must avoid using it for her own benefit. We see all kinds of people doing time travel for reasons more profound that simple nostalgia and Fia (in between the jobs)** her need to do something that matters begin to arise, eventually she takes a job based on her pure desire to be remembered, the case? Successful business people are (struggling for taking credit on) *** over who was the brilliant mind who took their startup from small fry to big fish, the job turns out to be riskier than they imagined, the clients are petty and they don't really need anything of what they are asking, Chronozen has the ability to deny this timefall based on the implied risk, nevertheless Fia goes down the tunnel and does it anyways, why? 'cause she wanted to leave a mark, do something that was so risky that it was going to be remembered even with chronoshifts, Fia was struggling for meaning in an ever changing world, she wanted to fix her unnatural state of living, the result of her huge effort was mixed to say the least, maybe things didn't turn out as she expected but at least she learned that nothing good came out of these selfish people engaging in petty discussions about who was more entitled to the fruits of their collaborative labor, they all wanted the credit but they never took a second to think about what it was that made their work so successful in the first place, team play, they all tried to fix their past and they didn't realize that they just needed to grow up and go forward.

It doesn't matter, it never did

I'm not going to go deep into this game, it deserves to be enjoyed mainly for its story so if you're reading this please go ahead an play it, saying it is wonderful comes up short for this incredible game, nevertheless I wanted to close my thoughts on this game by saying that we really aren't that important to the whole world but that doesn't mean we don't need to be important to our own little world instead, the one inhabited by our loved ones, people who deserve our best selfs as we're nothing but slaves of time, our bodies decaying and our minds drifting by the constant assault of time (and will be short of it )* sooner than we think. Old Skies didn't make me (throw away these worries) unworried about my past but It made me hope for the future instead, is our future of successes, failures, joy and sorrow, we can learn from our past but our future is what is meant to be built, shared and lived until we eventually fade. All of this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, most of us would not change history and never will, but what we can do is change what matters to us and our loved ones even when sometimes things don't go our own way, when Fia learned that mattering was not a thing about self indulgence but about caring for someone else is when she started to be a real person, before that she was only a worker, by caring she became a person that lives and dies as all of us do, thanks for reading and go play Old Skies already.

Citations

• Old Skies - GOG - Steam