"By His Bootstraps" by Robert A. Heinlein, game's inspo?

[EbonyBetty]

The story of a blue-collar-but-trying-to-become-white-collar working man who's implied to be an alcoholic discovers that time travel is real by walking through a "Time Gate*." He comes up with a plan to continuously visit his past self at the exact same moment when he originally found the Gate, essentially creating multiple clones of himself that have the same memories as him up until that point.

*The Gate is circular, and Jan's ship is a circle which both produce clones? Hmm? Or maybe it's just a homage to Space Odyssey's Space Station V...

It's a great short sci-fi novella, definitely go read it if you haven't. Cause I'm about to go into some spoilers while speculating what type of choices the game, The Alters might get into.

[SPOILERS]

About 3\4 of the way into the story, it becomes clear that the protagonist is the villain of this story. His intentions maybe have been good in the beginning. He's desperate to create a better outcome for his future instead of being stuck as a blue collar laborer. So he charges clones to do certain tasks for him over the course of one year (making him ridiculously efficient since he can literally been in multiple places at once at the "right place and right time"). And he convinced his multiple selves to do these things by implying that once he gets his good future, they can just go back through the Gate and copy his choices and get theirs.

However as his keeps multiplying himself by going back in time, ordering his clones, and shaping the future into the outcome he wants, he gets a God-complex about being "The Original" of himself. Ostensibly becoming the very "abusive-boss-on-the-neck-of-the-working-man" he's been trying to get away from at his blue collar job.

As I played the demo with this story in mind, I kept choosing the dialogue choices for Jan where he'd remind his Technician-Alter that he's "the captain," and that the mind records are "originally his memories." Jan says these things assertively, but not abusively (yet) because this is prolouge, but I noticed that Technician-Alter's emotions raised his rebelliousness. I'm curious how far gamedevs are going to go with the "evil path" choices in this game, for both Jan's actions and how his Alters might try to oppose him. Especially if they've read, By His Bootstraps.

Cause Bob Wilson (Bootstraps' protagonist) does some really cruel things to his clones when they start to question his plans. There's a female acquaintance that he's known all his life and has no attraction to, but in one of his clone's timeline, they fall in love. But Wilson SA'd her to assert dominance over his clone. He even rationalizes the act as being the equivalent of medieval kings taking his subjects' brides on their wedding night.

He does things that he knows will psychologically breaks his clones back into submission because he's literally them. Only for the ending to reveal that his journal (which he's been using as a timeline tracker every time he goes back in time), has an entry that is written before he found the Time Gate. Implying that he was never the The Original to begin with, and he goes mad from the revelation.

I love the fact Jan and his Alter use the nostalgia of perogis to bond with one another. It's a really compassionate moment that's rooted in a love for their mother. The kind of love that her only son, Jan Dolski would know.

So imagine if Jan were to use this shared knowledge for cruel manipulation?

[DNLH]

I'll just preface this with [SPOILERS] because that's the part I'm replying to, so just to be safe



I don't really think the devs will go all the way with that, maybe even to the point that if that's the route/attitude you'll choose consistently, the things will turn abruptly and in an unnatural way. I believe that Jan will be forced/railroaded into co-operation and even with Jan Technician it does feel like the game just outright goes 'no, that's not the way to do it' and turns you back on the route of working together.

And even with that, Jan just doesn't strike me as someone who would follow that route, maybe not even by the lack of will, but rather lack of skill. But I do think that it is a possible plot point, one of the Alters will be more capable and will go 'why do we even follow this bozo, guys?' and OG Jan in the end will prove himself through the power of friendship and on the account of being only one who went to pet the sheep. Multiple times.

[EbonyBetty]

Originally posted by DNLH:

I'll just preface this with [SPOILERS] because that's the part I'm replying to, so just to be safe



I don't really think the devs will go all the way with that, maybe even to the point that if that's the route/attitude you'll choose consistently, the things will turn abruptly and in an unnatural way. I believe that Jan will be forced/railroaded into co-operation and even with Jan Technician it does feel like the game just outright goes 'no, that's not the way to do it' and turns you back on the route of working together.

And even with that, Jan just doesn't strike me as someone who would follow that route, maybe not even by the lack of will, but rather lack of skill. But I do think that it is a possible plot point, one of the Alters will be more capable and will go 'why do we even follow this bozo, guys?' and OG Jan in the end will prove himself through the power of friendship and on the account of being only one who went to pet the sheep. Multiple times.

@DNLH

I see your point, and both agree and disagree (but lean more towards agree). I especially agree with your observation that the devs are probably gonna railroad the player to the main path of we-gotta-cooperate-to-survive to which Jan and the Alters will, at the very least, tolerate each other in the end not matter how badly he treats them throughout the game. Plus I agree that Jan's "Evil Path" will probably not be the "canon" ending like how it is in most games that present good/bad morality choices.

However I disagree that Jan doesn't have the capacity for what Bob Wilson does, because the lead up to original-Jan's life feels very similar to the beginning of Bootstraps. Bob Wilson in the beginning of the story is an introverted man struggling to complete his Ph.D dissertation on mathematical metaphysics (it's how he finds the coordinates to the Gate). He's constantly questioning if he made the right choice in life going the academic route instead going into construction like his father wanted him to. He remembers doing a brief stint of construction but had such a bad experience that he put all his chips into graduate school. Wilson's father isn't a drunk like Jan's, just very stern and thinks Wilson is wasting his time by not getting settling for a "real job" yet.

Wilson can come off a little more abrasive compared to Jan at times, but Wilson also talks about his stressed feelings to a mentor professor, which signals to the reader that he's a sensitive man (because this novella was written during the 1950s when men were always supposed to be stoic and hold in their feelings).

Wilson is definitely written to be a sympathetic "everyman" in the beginning. It's what made his fall from grace that much more surprising to me when I read it! Plus, there's a little sprinkling of clues that Wilson supressess his darker side, since the two times he ends fist fighting someone is when he's drunk (he gets his ass handed to him and swears off the stuff the rest of the story.)

It's not an exact 1:1 (which is good!), but I still feel like Jan's father-son tension, unhealthy relationship with alcohol, and anxiety about getting a white collar job feels like a nod to Heinlein's story.

As a fan of the novella, I'd be sad if the inspo from Bootstraps in The Alters stops there, but I'd also understand and agree your point that maybe the devs don't want to go into such a psychologically dark direction with their story.