Eternal Threads Review

What would happen if you could go back and change a single moment in time? What would it be? I’ve pondered that exact question many times in my life, wondering what would have occurred if I had gone down a different road. It’s an age-old riddle full of untold threads and unexplored pathways. 

Eternal Threads explores the possibility of changing an event; one that caused the death of six people in a house fire in the mid-2010s. The question is, can you save them all? 

The game starts in a time machine, sometime in the future. You learn that you are just a number and work as a time traveller going back to certain events in hope of fixing things, changing timelines. But that time travelling in the future has gone wrong and time radiation has eroded reality. Your job is to go back and sort things out. 

Your destination is 2015, your location being a house in Northern England. It’s here where there was a fire and everyone died. What you do first is employ some time devices in this burnt-out shell of a house, allowing you to go through the timeline of events over a week before the event, attempting to work out how you can change the future. 

This is all about a story in which with each event you watch a scene of the six housemates, working out their anxieties, dreams, and jobs. We have a landlord who has a secret operation in the basement, and there’s an older woman escaping a loveless marriage. Alongside those are a couple who could be pregnant, a gamer and drinker, an artist with a dark secret from the past, and someone who has to resolve some issues. 

In Eternal Threads you go into these events – up to 150 of them – activating things as you go. Bits of the story are played out and then they get to a point in the conversation where you have to choose how to react. This choice will determine the outcome of that person’s future events, and might, just might, even save their life from the fire. 

Also in the house are locked doors and safes with combination codes on them. It’s here where, through listening to the events at play, you work out where the keys are or find the code to a safe with careful observation. You also have the ability to explore the rooms in the house, scanning for documents or interesting items that might help you in the investigation and open up more possibilities. 

It’s a fascinating journey, well told through different time points and the story is a good one; almost like a soap opera where you are taking apart each moment and trying to find the best route through. It’s easy to feel lost at times though, especially in the beginning moments. And there’s no doubt that being able to save all six needs some special powers of investigation. 

The game looks good, and it does a clever job with the design even though the area you are exploring isn’t massive. The reaction to the scenes is like watching in on some ghosts, and sometimes the facial lip reading isn’t spot on; but it’s fine. I like the smaller details though; the stuff found in documents and items you discover around the rooms you explore. 

The sound is good too, as are the effects, but it’s the voice cast that does a great job bringing to life the characters and their stories. And if you are playing through Eternal Threads, try and get the secret ending as well, which gives an insight into a larger universe. 

Eternal Threads comes with a unique game mechanic that does a brilliant job of playing out the whole drama. But that does mean that those not interested in a story, or struggle without instruction, may find things to be a bit tough going. Personally, the ability to look, analyse, and change a story, all whilst hunting for clues is the most interesting part. 

It’s quite the challenge to keep everyone alive, but in Eternal Threads it has enough intrigue to keep you going until the very end of the timeline.