And my brother pointed out to me that the part where the game character in TimeGate jumps through the portal looks almost exactly like in Timesplitters 2.

I think it's fine for this new series to be taking a step forward and backward simultaneously, as long as they are steps in the right direction.

For reference, I also dug up what Tim Child has said about Treguard/HM:

"...of course I'd like Hugo to be part of any revived show, but it won't be my say-so, and if it sits within a longer programming strand, then the existing hosts of that strand may host the inserted game. I don't know. One answer would be to clone our own Dungeon Master and insert him into the dungeon as a Help/Oracle. It also means Hugo could be just as he was in 1986. This would make him very happy - as it would me!"

If that still holds true, it backs up a lot we've been saying, and also shows another problem with a "real" Hugo introducing and such as opposed to an avatar Treguard within the game guiding the team.

I agree about having a Treguard avatar just for in-vision mixing a la series 1/2/3 when an image of him appeared in the dungeon every now and then. It would be his "dungeon manifestation" or something - very good for continuity.

We don't even know if there will be an antechamber. If there were no advisors, it would almost be superfluous. Perhaps the thought is to have Treguard as a face in the wall giving advice. I suppose if there was an advisor, there would be more reason to have an antechamber, and I'd agree it being "real" would be advantageous. I suppose having a Treguard avatar would still be useful- having him occasionally appear as a face in the dungeon instead of having to cut back to the antechamber every time he needed to say something.

I guess the live format is also an issue. How potentially problematic would it be to continually cut between the VR and a real antechamber compared to having everything VR? I have no idea what the answer to that is.

I suppose one consideration is the dungeoneer entering the dungeon to start with. The TimeGate video has the nice piece of them jumping through into the virtual world, which both looks good and sets up the real/VR distinction well. That would probably be hard to do live, although you could always record that one part for each dungeoneer., I guess.

So many questions.

In the original series, the ante-chamber was "real" and the dungeon was "illusion". If both the dungeon and the ante-chamber are VR in the new series, it would be difficult for viewers to make the distinction. It might be better to have Treguard and the ante-chamber real.

Besides, looking at the Challenge interview stills, Hugo's got nothing to worry about - he looks fine. There'd be no problem with having him real.

P.S.: I wonder if Hugo has seen it himself yet? And I wonder what he thinks?