Overview
Clockwork Revolution is a first-person action RPG developed by inXile Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios. Set in the steampunk metropolis of Avalon, it makes changing history part of a conflict over power, wealth, and the working class. A time-travel device gives its protagonist access to the city's past.
Industrial decay, occult machinery, and dark humor define the adventure's tone. Its narrative connects personal decisions with changes to the surrounding world, extending the consequences of role-playing beyond individual conversations and into the city itself.
How does character customization work?
Clockwork Revolution features Morgan Vanette, a fully customizable protagonist whose build draws on gear, attributes, and skills. Character development includes technical specialties, with options to work on weapons and gadgets or hack the machines encountered as enemies.
The main character systems include:
- Character customization
- Gear and attribute specialization
- Weapon and gadget crafting
- Hostile automaton hacking
- Time manipulation
These systems connect progression to Avalon's technology. Mechanical threats are also targets for hacking, while crafting puts steampunk equipment within the character-building system. Customization covers both Morgan's appearance and practical capabilities.
Morgan Vanette belongs to the Rotten Row Hooligans.
Life in a divided steampunk city
Avalon combines Victorian styling with machinery that changes the shape of everyday life. Automatons patrol its streets, and steam trains fly overhead. Mechanical technology appears in public transport, policing, and the bodies of wealthy residents.
The city's class divisions have a visible form. Rich citizens replace limbs with ornate clockwork prosthetics, placing expensive engineering directly on display. Industrial rot exists alongside that privilege, keeping the setting's social conflict present in its physical design.
The story also includes betrayal among friends and opponents whose arguments carry uncomfortable weight. Dark comedy accompanies those strained relationships, giving Avalon a tone that mixes political hostility with absurd mechanical excess.
Mechanical servants attend to the demands of Avalon's wealthy citizens.
How does time travel change Avalon?
Time travel lets Morgan alter earlier events and return to a changed present. Lady Ironwood uses the same power to preserve her wealth and authority while keeping the working class disadvantaged. The central conflict concerns control over the historical events that produce Avalon's inequality.
Player decisions affect characters, their interactions, and events across the narrative. Both small choices and larger interventions can produce butterfly effects, making earlier encounters relevant to the state of the city later in its history.
Avalon's transformation gives the choice-driven RPG a physical expression beyond changing relationships. Time travel ties narrative decisions to the environment, with the protagonist challenging a social order built through deliberate interference in the past.
Storefronts are among the parts of Avalon that change when its history is rewritten.
