Introduction
Tim Cain, the co-creator of the Fallout series and a seasoned RPG programmer, regularly shares fascinating behind-the-scenes stories on his YouTube channel. Among his many "what-if" tales, one stands out as particularly ambitious: a first-person time-travel RPG called Time Walker. Though it never progressed beyond a pitch document, the concept reveals a game that could have redefined storytelling and gameplay in the genre.
The Lost Pitch: Time Walker
In a recent video, Cain discussed Time Walker, a proposal he drafted at Troika Games alongside longtime collaborator Jason Anderson. The duo had previously worked together on Fallout and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. The game's core premise cast players as a "temporal agent" tasked with traveling through history to preserve their own timeline. Enemy agents would constantly attempt to rewrite events, forcing players to counter their actions or risk erasing their own existence.
A Temporal Agent's Mission
Time Walker was designed around a unique balancing act: as the timeline became increasingly unstable, the player's equipment would grow "more fantastic and improbable." However, if the player's reality ever became impossible, they would simply cease to exist—no game over screen, just oblivion. The goal was to guarantee the survival of your own reality, after which the game would end.
Kill Historical Figures and Create Paradoxes
Cain laughingly described the game's feature list: "One, visit 15 different time periods. Two, meet interesting historical figures. Three, kill them." Example missions included assassinating a pharaoh in ancient Egypt, giving a young girl a specific doll on her eighth birthday to manipulate the butterfly effect, and even preventing the invention of time travel itself—creating a paradox that would destabilize the timeline. The game embraced the chaos of temporal manipulation, allowing players to witness the consequences of their actions firsthand.
Gameplay Inversion and Skill Trees
Reverse Difficulty Curve
One of the most intriguing aspects of Time Walker was its planned inversion of typical RPG progression. Instead of becoming easier as players leveled up and acquired powerful items, the game would become easier as time unraveled. Anachronistic technology—like futuristic weapons in medieval settings—would give players a distinct advantage. Restoring order and securing your reality's existence would gradually strip away these advantages, leaving you with a standard first-person shooter loadout by the end.
Open-Ended Solutions
True to the design philosophy of earlier CRPGs like Fallout, Time Walker would have featured an open-ended skill tree and multiple solutions for each mission. Players could approach objectives through stealth, combat, diplomacy, or clever manipulation of the timeline. The sheer variety of possibilities—especially when factoring in time travel across 15 distinct eras—would have made for a deeply replayable experience.
Ambitious Scope: Multiplayer and Multiple Eras
15 Time Periods
The game planned to let players explore 15 different historical periods, from ancient Egypt to far-flung futures. Each era would have its own unique environments, characters, and challenges. The requirement to account for player actions across such a vast temporal canvas would have been a monumental design challenge—one that Cain noted would make even his head spin.
Xbox and Online Multiplayer
Remarkably, Time Walker was also intended for release on the original Xbox and would have included online multiplayer. This was an ambitious goal for a first-person RPG in the early 2000s, far ahead of its time. The collaborative and competitive potential of multiple players manipulating the same timeline could have led to emergent storytelling unlike anything before.
A Legacy in Development
While Time Walker never materialized, its core ideas live on. Jason Anderson is currently working at inXile Entertainment as principal designer on Clockwork Revolution, a first-person time-traveling RPG that clearly shares DNA with his earlier pitch. That game, announced in 2023, promises to let players travel through a steampunk Victorian era and alter events—a more focused version of the grand scope originally envisioned for Time Walker.
Conclusion
Tim Cain's Time Walker remains a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been—a game that dared to ask what happens when you give players the power to rewrite history, assassinate icons, and create paradoxes. Though it never left the drawing board, its influence can still be felt in the RPGs we play today. For fans of speculative game design, Cain's YouTube channel offers a wealth of such untold stories.