La propuesta de Xbox One inicialmente era no tener solo una consola, si no un sistema de entretenimiento. La televisión era una gran parte de la experiencia de Xbox One, y Quantum Break venía a reforzar eso: un juego sobre saltos temporales estructurado de forma que, tras jugar cada uno de sus 5 actos, hubiese un capitulo de televisión que avanzaría la trama, uniendo videojuego y serie en una misma experiencia. Esta idea de "consola" hizo en su día enfadar a más de uno. Microsoft tenía una apuesta muy grande por lo digital, su enfoque en el entretenimiento y en los servicios generó en su día notable rechazo. Es interesante ver esto en retrospectiva, donde estamos en una era crecientemente digital en los videojuegos, donde durante años usé mi PS4 como forma de ver Netflix y donde he jugado a Quantum Break en el servicio de Xbox de Game Pass, el "Netflix" de los videojuegos. Y es que pocas cosas me describen Quantum Break mejor que "un videojuego Netflix".

No solo la naturaleza episódica y sus capítulos televisivos hacen de Quantum Break un juego que remite a ver una serie de Netflix. Es que tiene la filosofia de un producto de Netflix. Un producto muy entretenido hecho para grandes masas, visualmente llamativo, con ideas refritas pero que añaden un par de conceptos interesantes, que luego resultan en un producto bastante genérico. La historia de Quantum Break parte de una premisa genérica como lo son los viajes temporales, tiene a unos personajes planos y clichés pero fácilmente identificables y le añade la propuesta interesante de que la historia no parece que vaya a ir tanto de ir dando saltos temporales si no de que el mundo inevitablemente va a terminar, ya que el tiempo literalmente se ha roto en el mundo de Quantum Break, dando lugar a momentos donde el tiempo se detiene en todo el mundo, donde el tiempo se aceleran y se desacelera, absolutamente roto. Todo esto se plantea como un cataclismo inevitable por parte del antagonista Paul Serene, que ha visto el futuro, sabe como va a terminar de forma inevitable, y quiere intentar salvar a los pocos que pueda. La propuesta, aunque sin ser nada del otro mundo, es interesante, dando un espacio muy bueno para desarrollar ideas interesantes. Y visualmente explora ideas interesantes (ver toda una estructura caerse a pedazos, mientras el tiempo se va deteniendo, retrocediendo y avanzando es un espectaculo visual increible), pero Quantum Break no aprovecha apenas su mundo ni explora bien el dilema de la inevitabilidad del tiempo. Al final todo se reduce a un buenos contra malos, con personajes genéricos (y en caso de algunos, como Liam Burke, absurdamente genéricos y malos), con una trama que acaba cayendo en los mismos clichés de las historias temporales (las maquinas del tiempo, los cientificos, el dispositivo capaz de salvar todo), y en general, toda su propuesta se queda en algo insustancial, algo entretenido, pero en lo que no profundiza. Y su serie no mejora la cosa.

Al final de cada uno de los 5 actos, antes de ver la serie, hay un "interludio" donde controlamos al antagonista, Paul, y podemos elegir una entre dos decisiones que "afectarán a la trama" (lo cierto es que afectan mas bien poco). Es una propuesta interesante, pero que acaba por ser una idea bastante regulera. Siempre suele haber una opción "buena" para el protagonista y otra opción "buena" para el antagonista. Nosotros como jugadores podemos saber información crucial que el antagonista no sabe, y poder hacer decisiones de una forma meta-narrativa. Se le podría perdonar esto si las decisiones fuesen realmente interesantes en ambas opciones y si realmente hubiesen consecuencias tangibles, pero no las hay. En mi caso, siempre intentaba elegir la opción que beneficiaba al antagonista, porque es lo que me parecía más interesante a un nivel dramático, pero estas decisiones se sienten como poco más que una falsa sensación de tener control sobre la historia.

Después de esos interludios vienen los capitulos de la serie, algo a lo que si soy sincero le tenia bastantes ganas (tengo debilidad con los juegos que exploran ideas de mierda, ya lo siento), pero para sorpresa de nadie, pues está ejecutado regular. La serie apenas tiene presupuesto, los personajes no son interesantes y a nivel de dirección es mediocre. Es una serie mala de Netflix, casi pensada para verse de fondo mientras comes algo. Y aún así hay un algo que me ha hecho disfrutar de ella. Supongo que es por la casi ternura que da que un videojuego intente experimir parte de su presupuesto a hacer una serie. Claro que va a salir mal, se nota que no supieron o no se pudo hacer gran cosa, pero aún así lo hicieron. Y hay cierto valor en eso, y se nota que intentan profundizar en ciertos personajes, pero eso no quita que efectivamente, la serie sea incluso más mediocre que el videojuego.

Los tiritos es seguramente la mejor parte de Quantum Break. Son muy satisfactorios y los poderes son muy interesantes, haciendo de base a lo que más tarde seria el sistema de combate de Control. Y para mi sorpresa, hay partes del gameplay que prefiero en Quantum Break sobre Control. Creo que QB tiene una mejor variedad de poderes (detener el tiempo en una zona, esquivar y relantizar el tiempo, lanzar una explosión de tiempo, correr a toda velocidad) y generalmente los disparos me han resultado más satisfactorios aquí que en Control, y esto me ha sorprendido gratamente y ha sido una de las cosas que más he disfrutado jugando, comparar ambos sistemas de combate. Lo que sin duda Control hizo mejor es dinamizar el combate gracias a las físicas y lo mucho más vertical que es el combate en Control. En contra, Quantum Break es un juego de coberturas en tercera persona mucho más tradicional, pero no por ello menos pulido que Control, simplemente tienen una base de diseño distintos, y capacidades tecnologicas distintas.

En fin, que Quantum Break es una serie de Netflix. Está hecho para ser entretenido, y te entretienes jugandolo. Tiene un par de ideas interesantes que tampoco acaban de llegar a ningún lado, lo terminas y te quedas con la sensación de no haber visto nada del otro jueves. Aún así he disfrutado de mi tiempo con Quantum Break, he disfrutado de sus experimentos raros y fallidos con la televisión, de ver la base jugable de lo que se convertiría en Control, y por qué no decirlo, porque disfruto de los juegos lineales en tercera persona con espectáculo visual con ideas reguleras. Me he pasado el juego en apenas 3 dias, como si de un maratón de una serie se tratase. Es el juego de Remedy menos Remedy de todos, también uno de los más "redondos" de jugar, pero también uno de los menos interesantes.

"I'll come back for you"

I still greatly admire and respect Sam Lake & Remedy's ambitious multi media experiment, race against time, 12 monkeys/primer inspired blockbuster adventure. Even if it falls short of those ambitions with the cheaply made CW live action episodes that feel more like homework and a chore to work through then substantial. A story that almost try's too hard to be convoluted but feels too stuffed with countless files, emails and collectibles that tie into the web series that amount to really nothing and almost wished I got just a couple of shorter cutscenes in there place just to learn more about important character motivations and goals and not hit the brakes between each act to watch a subpar web series. Despite in all of its story woes and weirdly placed moments where interactivity is taken away the gameplay is a blast even if it borders on surface level with stagnant AI that even on the hardest difficulty didn't make for much of a challenge. The narrative hits a couple of fun satisfying payoffs and concepts that make up for a lot of its paper thin characters, and boring worldbuilding. In the end Quantum Break mostly is a mixed bag of fun campy action thrills, middling cheaply written sci-fi melodrama, a weird web series, and beautifully impressive visuals that never really amount to any of Remedy's highest points or into an expierence I love or hate but find rather puzzling and inconclusive.

Sidenote: PC Gamepass/MS store version has a broken graphical glitch you should avoid this version as theres no fix.

Um dos jogos mais ousados no aspecto transmídia. O fato de criar uma série dentro da obra me parece ousado e fico feliz em dizer que, no geral, funciona muito bem. Por ela abordar outros olhares, há uma certa naturalidade quando transitamos entre o "virtual" e o "real", algo que já é comum vindo da Remedy. O jogo tem ainda mecânicas incríveis de combate e uma exploração simples, mas que apresenta o mundo de forma bem intensa. Talvez se perca um pouco na quantidade de info dump (vários e vários textos enormes são nos revelados de forma sequencial), ainda que tudo seja muito bem escrito.

Um jogo divertidíssimo e que deixa o desejo de uma continuação.

Just some awesome high-concept sci-fi action. Remedy has quickly become one of my all-time favorite studios. The games they make might not always land flawlessly, but they are constantly putting out stuff that feels fresh and high effort. These guys are always doing something outside the box.

Quantum Break really worked for me. My main, and pretty much only, gripe with it is the TV show aspect. It’s such a weird decision, and as I stated these come with the Remedy territory, that doesn´t really work. It simply is extremely less interesting and compelling when compared to the “game” section of this game. It feels and looks like cheap TV, the things that happen in it have no real impact on the game, and the game itself has no real impact on it, even though the game constantly tries to tell you that it actually does. These 4 episodes add up to about an hour of fleshing out very minor characters that barely show up in the game. It doesn't help that these handful of characters are extremely paper thin, and their respective performances are, as I said before, straight out of a cheap TV show.

These episodes are to be endured rather than enjoyed. I also find it extremely bizarre that the game, at least on PC, streams these episodes from some Microsoft server that will one day be inevitably shut down. There’s no option on steam to download these episodes, and if you play offline, you simply aren’t able to watch them. This adds to the idea that these poorly executed, extra-long, live action cutscenes, are just non-essential filler that could simply not be there at all without impacting the overall player experience.

I do believe that the whole “live action interludes that are affected by in-game decisions” concept could work if more budget and care went into it. And if they were actually developed in a way that complements the gameplay sections instead of as an addon that feels more like an afterthought.
At least the game itself, removed from the “TV show”, is a banger. The story is pure dumb fun sci-fi, with just the right amount of science mumbo jumbo, compelling characters, interesting macguffins and awesome set pieces. I didn’t really care for the “decisions” you can take in between acts, but it ties well into the whole time-travel/multiverse concept that the narrative goes for. Overall, great writing, great performances from a well-known cast, pretty much perfect pacing, I had a blast with it.

Graphically it’s a spectacular game. It looks gorgeous and way ahead of its time, especially the facial animations of the main cast. But it’s the overall visual design that really stands out here. Every location feels like a real space instead of a combat arena, populated with little dumb things everywhere to really sell them as real. The whole visual language they developed for the fractures and “time powers” is simply gorgeous looking and adds a lot of punch to the action. Great architecture and lighting too.

The gameplay is so much fun that it’s kind of a pity that combat encounters feel so short and few and far between. It feels as kinetic and engaging to move around and shoot as it did in Max Payne. Some of the powers available here are clear callbacks to the bullet time shooting present in those games. Everything here pushes you to zoom around the arena, evading baddies and just wrecking them. A blast to play through, I just wished there were more combat opportunities in it.

One other very minor gripe. While it is very much improved here, and there’s a little puzzle aspect to it, Remedy should really cool it with the platforming sections. Not their forte.
Great game brought down a peg because of the terrible “TV show” addon. Honestly, I’d say to skip them altogether when playing if the first couple of minutes don’t grab you, because the game is very much worth seeing through.

Definitely Remedy's weakest game in terms of the bit where you play it. Shooting and movement are fiddly, which the game is mostly aware of as they don't really put it to the test until the final boss fight - but damn, that fight is really annoying. I'm still glad I played it though simply because of its ambition. The TV series in it isn't great (though as usual Lance Reddick lifts the whole thing) but come on, it's a miniseries in a game! The time effects are extremely impressive at times, too. It stretched my PC a lot but it's pretty clear why when you see some of the things they have going on in the realtime part of the game.

As someone who likes Remedy, stories about time travel, and a majority of the cast for Quantum Break, I'm not sure how to feel about this story. On one hand I really enjoy the plot and characters, but at the same time the story is kind of convoluted and told rather sloppily. I think one of the biggest issues is the pacing. It's either moving too fast or not fast enough because of the bouncing between the game and TV show. It also doesn't help that during the game cutscenes there's a lot of framerate drops, taking me out of the immersion of the story it's trying to tell.

The concept of having a tv show that flows beside a game, lacing story elements in between, sounds like an amazing and revolutionary idea especially when the narrative revolves around time and parallel realities. If Quantum Break has shown me anything though is that it's not as amazing as I'd hoped. If you skip the tv show because you'd much rather just play the game than you're missing out on a large portion of the story and you're left not really knowing how the characters got where they're at, doing what they're doing, or why. It also left me wondering why couldn't all the narrative for the tv show just be in the video game in the first place, why separate it? I think casual gamers will like this experience more than I did, which I feel it is aimed more towards anyway.

I will say most of actors like Shawn Ashmore, Courtney Hope, Aiden Gillen, Dominic Monaghan and Lance Reddick did outstanding jobs playing the characters in both the TV show and video game. Unfortunately some of the side characters in the show were a little annoying and I thought the acting was a kind of bad. It left me not really all that invested in their motives or struggles with characters such as Liam and Emily Burke.

Another issue with the plot and something Remedy does often, is how they choose to end their stories. Alan Wake and Control both end with ambiguity, or a sense of the story never really finding any closure and Quantum Break also suffers from this. Strangely, I really liked the ending, but it also left me feeling frustrated that we may never see a sequel.

If there is one thing Remedy excels at it's world design and much like Control, the world of Quantum Break is gorgeous. Remedy did a stellar job with the photo realism of their character models and sometimes I'd forget that I was playing a video game because of how life like the characters and world seemed. If I were to rate the game by just it's graphics alone than I'd say Remedy easily knocks it out of the ball park.

Even though the world is beautiful, the game is very linear which isn't really a problem in this game because there are plenty of files to read and things to see. Also Jack offers a lot of thoughts or opinions on the things he interacts with which adds a lot of story and depth for the characters. However, when playing the game it doesn't feel like exploration is encouraged. When the game is left idle for even a few minutes I was harassed by Jack or accompanying NPCs to rush to the next objective rather than to take my time in seeing what the game had to offer or just to search for collectibles which was really irritating.

The gameplay mechanics and combat are designed around the theme of the game like Jack having the ability to stop time to shield himself from bullets, being able to freeze enemies in place, and using abilities like rewinding time to solve puzzles. The combat is your typical third person shooter and shares designs from that of Uncharted. You have to pick up weapons outside of your handgun from fallen enemies and refill your ammo from backpacks found throughout the game. This game also shares another feature with Uncharted which I find to be annoying, is that this game has no health meter on the screen. The way you know you're taking damage is by the screen changing colors, the redder your screen gets the closer you are to game over. A word of warning for anyone that chooses to play this game, the final boss is terrible so you might want to look up a guide or video because the game doesn't give a whole lot of hints on what you need to do.

Throughout this game there are cinematic moments of gameplay called time stutters and while both graphically and developmentally impressive I found these segments to be very frustrating at times because you have to use your quantum powers to move objects out of the way to be able to proceed and the game doesn't give you a lot of reaction time even on easy. So needless to say I found myself dying quite often in these parts because I wasn't quick enough to move Jack through.

One of the most interesting part of this game is the moral choices the game gives you at the end of each act. What makes this so interesting is that these decisions aren't made by Jack, but the antagonist. I thought this was such a fascinating idea from a story telling prospective and surprised other games haven't done something similar. These choices affect both the show and game by changing scenes, dialogue, and what files you find in the upcoming acts afterwards. This adds for a lot of replayability, but sadly, even with these decisions it doesn't change the over all ending of the game. So it kinda makes having multiple choices feel kind of pointless. But than again maybe that goes along with the whole theme of the story...


Overall:

I found Quantum Break to be a good game, not great, but good. I had a lot of fun with the gameplay outside of the terrible final boss fight. I really liked the cinematography, most of the characters, and story, even if it was kinda hard to follow at times. I think having a TV show in between gameplay was an intriguing idea, but unfortunately one that really didn't pan out and I think it threw off the flow of the game. For anyone that has Gamepass, I'd highly recommend giving the game a chance and I hope in the future Remedy will make a sequel to Quantum Break because I feel there is still a lot of story left to tell.

Pros:
+beautiful graphics and cinematography
+fun combat and gameplay mechanics that involve time
+multiple choices add replayability
+good story despite being confusing at times

Cons:
-horrible final boss fight
-game feels poorly paced because of TV show
-little reaction time during stutter segments

An ambitious game with some very interesting ideas. The project was an attempt to combine a live action show with a video game where the decisions you make in the game alter the direction the tv show goes in.

The result was a bit too abstract for its time. Personally I ended up enjoying it - it has a fantastic cast of actors and I think the premise of the game is interesting. It's also by the folks behind Alan Wake and Control at Remedy and features the same actress who plays Jessie as Beth in this game.

The level to level gameplay has you following Jack who gets caught up in his scientist friend's time travel experiment gone wrong and ends up with time powers, then promptly ends up getting hunted down by a shady organisation and hijinks ensue. The story ends up doing the usual temporal gymnastics with you travelling to the past and the future while trying to understand what became of your friend and trying to prevent a future where time is completely broken.

Sadly the story itself is far more interesting than the gameplay. The time travel powers make for pretty lacklustre combat designed to intermingle with the middling gun-play and is at its most interesting during the puzzle platforming sections.

If you can put up with the pretty repetitive and dull gameplay sections the story is quite good. I appreciate that they went all out with this and while it didn't end up going as Remedy would like the result is something completely unique that explores a multimedia game to provide an experience no other game has (for better or worse).

Eu fui de coração pra Quantum Break, eu realmente queria curtir principalmente por querer conhecer mais da Remedy depois de curtir Alan Wake e o que joguei de Max Payne, mas não deu, foi um game que eu tava pedindo pra acabar logo, eu tava cansado do jogo e nem sei exatamente o porque, o combate não é ruim, tem mecânicas legais e os gráficos são bonitos com vários atores, mas eu só não consegui me importar com nada, como a história que essa ideia de misturar com série era interessante mas eu não tinha interesse de assistir então ficou tudo meio confuso obviamente e eu simplesmente só queria seguir, eu tinha até parado no meio mas resolvi ir até o final e só consegui porque coloquei música e podcast pra conseguir me entreter, além disso aconteceu vários glitches, bugs e no final o áudio ficou todo cagado. Recomendo você testar, talvez curta e se tiver com boa vontade assistir a série é a forma ideal de curtir a ideia do jogo que não acabou servindo pra mim.

Playing Quantum Break right off the heels of Alan Wake 2 and a replay of Control is a very interesting thing. Add to that the fact that I had no idea this game existed at all prior to looking up Remedy's catalog lately, and it did make for a pleasant surprise.

This game really feels like a stepping stone for future Remedy games. Many of its faults have been adressed in future games. For instance, jampacking all the narrative pickups in cramped corners just completely kills the flow of the game. In Alan Wake 2, there's way less flavor text of the sort, and it's trickled through the environment at a much more pleasing pace. Improvement.

The same could be said about the FMV episodes. They are an interesting experiment which has some merit, but always cut the gameplay when I just felt like shooting bad guys. Once again, it was handled so much more seamlessly in Alan Wake 2.

The best things about the game are absolutely the time stutter sequences. They have that signature Remedy vision about them of creating something wholly unique in a game that is such a pleasure to experience.

And so, the game kind of works. It's also got a decent story with mostly generic and unremarkable characters, but hey, its functional. From my perspective, it was more of an fun experiment to play this to see the process of Remedy maturing into a new form storytelling and game design.

The studio still has stuff to improve on the Alan Wake 2 formula, but if we compare the progress made between that and Quantum Break, we can estimate that we have some truly fantastic games to look forward to in the future.

Pretty cool next step in Remedy's evolution for combining live action and gameplay. A lot of the time abilities made combat a fun time to go through, and the time stutter set pieces had a lot of potential for some really cool platforming.

Big gripe is the story being a bit too generic for my liking especially after coming from the Alan Wake games. There's also way too much stuff to read to get the full context of the story, especially a lot of it being walls of text that I brushed my eyes over.

Ambitious in a lot of ways, as well as being really cool with the time mechanic and amazing graphics for the time. Though, I kind of wish it had MORE for gameplay sections and abilities.

Control did so much more with it's balance of gameplay and story, and as much as I am a merchant for story, a lot of the game being scripted events early on hurts it a bit for me. It has so many cool gameplay mechanic though that I wish we're definitely expanded on in the future.

For it's live action show, I gotta respect them and it feels definitely remedy in that sense. Did think it was handled well and the acting was cool. RIP the GOAT Lance Reddick.

It's definitely the weirdest game remedy made, and maybe cause the big Phil Spencer eyes on them, there may have been a lot of restrictions at bay due to it being advertised as one of the xbox one's flagship.

It's nice though that they bounced back hard with Control. It's like they took two sets forward one step back in retrospect.

Hope they take these ideas somewhere in the future but I doubt so as Xbox owns it.

Anyway, the return to Bright Falls.

remedy doesn't disappoint, but even they can hit mid sometimes.

not a bad game at all, in fact the combat is super fun, i don't know if i didn't explored as much but it felt a bit lacking in that cheeky remedy style that they have throughout the game ( i didn't find sam lake), the cast is rather interesting and i like the plot twists they throw on you, there isn't a character that i didn't grow to like by the end of the game.

still, plot taking too long to get steam, the game being optimized by ducktaping and prayer and the cutscenes having to reach for a streaming service in order to play (why..) prevent me from loving it as much as i love the other remedy games, but thats not to say i dislike it, on the contrary, i wish other mid games i played were as fun and plot whack as this one, it just doesn't get to a alan wake level