Poll of the Day > Is there any game that has time travel AND parallel universes?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I guess technically Final Fantasy 13-2, but... ehhhhhhhh

hmm, possibly Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Definitely parallel universes, not sure about time travel specifically, but I vaguely recall at least a bit.

also possibly Phantasmagoria 2, but again not sure of time travel specifically.

I don't know know the game but another candidate might be Eternal Darkness, not sure.

As part of the game mechanics? Or part of the in-game lore? Chrono Cross was first to mind in terms of time travel and parallel universes.

The Zero Escape (999, Virtue's Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma) sort of...

Radiant Historia was just time travel, but then the Perfect Chronology port/remake added what is effectively parallel worlds...

Radiant Historia kinda does?

You basically hop between two split parallel universes created from a major decision you make in the story. Though I guess they would be more "timelines" than actual parallel universes.

The 3ds remake sorta does give small jumps into actual parallel universes, but those are mostly sidequests, and not integrated into the main flow of the game.

T0ffee posted...

Radiant Historia kinda does?

You basically hop between two split parallel universes created from a major decision you make in the story. Though I guess they would be more "timelines" than actual parallel universes.

Yeah, I didn't consider the main split timeline to be "parallel worlds"

The 3ds remake sorta does give small jumps into actual parallel universes, but those are mostly sidequests, and not integrated into the main flow of the game.

I mean...it does integrate into the main game at the end, leading to a new ending...

InfestedAdam posted...

As part of the game mechanics?

game mechanics...

I think the simplest way is with 9 points... past/present/future of world A, B, C

There's a bossfight in RuneScape where you basically need to jump between time threads to deal with the boss repeatedly

Stranger of Paradise kind of does

I'm not sure if you'd count the 'alternate universe' parts as separate enough from the time travel, but other than that I'd say Life is Strange does. It's pretty much the whole main conceit of the game. (Though the more serious alternate-universe-type stuff is mainly in the end of Episode 3/start of Episode 4 and part of the endgame sequence.)

5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel

Star Ocean 4 has both technically I think.

Chrono Trigger,...the GREATEST game of all time!

reason posted...

Chrono Trigger,...the GREATEST game of all time!

Not sure that counts.

streamofthesky posted...

The Zero Escape (999, Virtue's Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma) sort of...

Was going to say this but that's kinda a spoiler. Especially if you, like me, start off with VLR.

demonfang178 posted...

Was going to say this but that's kinda a spoiler. Especially if you, like me, start off with VLR.

I'd say it's more of a spoiler for the first game, which plays it straight as a "choose your own adventure" type story w/ a rather mundane "Saw-wannabe villain trapped a bunch of ordinary people on a ship" setup. VLR is blatantly more sci-fi and "weird" right from the start.
And yeah, sorry... the subject of the topic is inherently spoiler-y for a lot of games that fall within the category. I tried to keep it vague, at least.

Ratchet and Clank have games with both of these but not together I don't think.

Bioshock Infinite?

Marvel vs Capcom.

Sonic 2006, but I hope you stayed away from that game.

Eternal Darkness

all 3 playthroughs are canon, all taking place in alternate timelines that allow Mantarok to destroy all three of his rival gods at once

Guild Wars 2's endgame dungeon system involves a bunch of parallel world and distant past/future scenarios. The Mists are a cosmic anomaly that binds everything together in a time-and-space inconsequential way, so fucky things happen involving The Mists.

Dungeon Fighter Online has a lot of time travel and parallel world shit. One class, the Knight, is deployed throughout the multiverse in search of the scattered fragments of god (and has an advanced class that is fueled by her multiverse comrades/selves). And there's a zone called Time Gate where you just participate in historical events that you canonically were part of all along because closed time loop shenanigans.

Super Robot Wars games are set in a number of different yet incredibly similar universes, with at least one character (Gilliam) being the same actual person dimension hopping around somehow across dozens of games. Another character has been shown to have the role of Time Diver, whose role is to maintain balance throughout the multiverse and across time.

I guess what I mean in a more abstract sense is a game with two-axises of dark worlding it.

My previous example was a 3x3 grid, but can go even smaller with a 2x2 grid.

Light World - Dark World
Past Light - Past Dark

I guess WoW is a game that has both parallel universes and time travel

Lokarin posted...

Light World - Dark World
Past Light - Past Dark

not aware of a game that has both as game mechanics. though I think in LttP there was some small implication that the two worlds were temporally related. locations exist in both worlds and the dark world versions felt long abandoned in comparison to their light world counterparts. it was almost as if the dark world had been created as a copy of the light world that then diverged over time or had been fast forwarded into a distant future.

Sahuagin posted...

I guess WoW is a game that has both parallel universes and time travel

not aware of a game that has both as game mechanics. though I think in LttP there was some small implication that the two worlds were temporally related. locations exist in both worlds and the dark world versions felt long abandoned in comparison to their light world counterparts. it was almost as if the dark world had been created as a copy of the light world that then diverged over time or had been fast forwarded into a distant future. (it's also in the title "link to the past").

To reiterate, I'm speaking in the abstract - it doesn't have to literally be a dark world and past/future, but just 2 (or more) axis' of world shifting

Lokarin posted...

To reiterate, I'm speaking in the abstract - it doesn't have to literally be a dark world and past/future, but just 2 (or more) axis' of world shifting

I can almost think of ones where first you travel to a magical world, and then in the magical world you can travel to other magical worlds. (Narnia, maybe D&D). but I guess what you want is that there are two separate methods of travel, and they both work in both/all places. (so, travelling to a place where further travel to other places is not sufficient.)

a question would be, is it necessary that if you use method A and then B that you end up in the same place as using B and then A? (travel to the parallel universe, then to the past VS travel to the past then the parallel universe.)

(WoW is basically there if you count Draenor as a "parallel universe" since you can time-travel to past events, including I think past events on Draenor. I can't remember for sure though.)