I first played Quantum Break a couple years ago, but I recently replayed it this past week and loved it even more than before, definitely my 2nd favorite Remedy game after Control.
"The number one killer is time." How do you save the world when time itself is your enemy? From Remedy Entertainment, the masters of cinematic action games comes Quantum Break. A time shattering, reality bending, hard sci-fi superhero story all about fixing a fracture in time that will lead to the end of time itself.
The narrative primarily centers around protagonist and unlikely hero Jack Joyce and his childhood friend Paul Serene. After being gone from his hometown of Riverport, MA for years Jack returns to help his friend Paul with a presentation at the local college. Paul is primarily a businessman, not a scientist, but lately he's been expanding on the physics work of Jack's estranged brother, William, and has built a time machine. Naturally Jack is skeptical, but agrees to help Paul activate the machine and of course nothing can ever be simple, especially when dealing with theoretical physics. William appears and demands that Paul and Jack stop their actions or "time will break", but it's already too late. Something was off in the calculations and the machine becomes unstable dousing both Jack and Paul in Chronon radiation which gives them both time-manipulation based superpowers. Shortly after soldiers from the corporate juggernaut Monarch Solutions appear to steal the time machine's core...
After that? You'll have to play to find out what happens next. This is merely the first 15 minutes of the 10-15 hour complex yet easy to digest narrative fraught with plenty of mystery, drama and clever twists and turns along the way. This is easily one of the best stories involving time travel that I've experienced in fiction. Alongside taking inspiration from movies like Inception, Interstellar, Back to the Future and The Matrix I love how Sam Lake and the development team consulted actual real life scientists while creating the story for the game to make it feel believable and consistent with current real life theoretical physics and quantum physics.
The main cast of characters are all portrayed by a star studded cast of actors like Shawn Ashmore (Jack Joyce), Aiden Gillen (Paul Serene), Lance Reddick (Martin Hatch), Dominic Monaghan (William Joyce) and Courtney Hope (Beth Wilder) and all their performances are just top notch and make the characters feel that much more realistic and human. That said out of all of Remedy's protagonists I find Jack the least interesting, but all the other characters easily make up for him being a bit boring. I have to give a special shout-out to Aiden Gillen especially, his performance is one of the biggest reasons Paul Serene is one of my all time favorite characters.
Something that makes Quantum Break a very unique experience is how it's one part video game and one part interactive TV series. At the end of each Act of the game you'll reach a "Junction Point" where you'll play as Paul and choose one of two paths, this decision will have an impact on how certain events unfold in both the game itself and the TV series as well. Speaking of the TV series it's great, there's only 4 episodes of it and I honestly wish there were more because not only does it have some cool Jason Bourne styled action scenes, but it also really helps flesh out and humanize the antagonists Monarch Solutions more and while main characters like Jack and Paul rarely show up, the leads Liam Burke and Charlie Wincott do just as good and have interesting character arcs. While you can skip the TV series all together you would be doing yourself a major disservice because of how much it adds to the product as a whole.
Quantum Break is primarily a linear cinematic narrative driven experience and when you're not watching a cut-scene or live action segment you'll be doing a lot of reading via what are called "narrative items". These are various documents like e-mails between characters which further detail their motives and daily life or audio logs and video diaries where character's give their thoughts about a particular event that happened. Once again these can be skipped, but since it's a big part of the content of the game and helps you get more immersed in the world I wouldn't recommend it.
When not involved in the narrative the gameplay mostly revolves around 3D platforming time manipulation based puzzles which involve rewinding or slowing down time which give me some Prince of Persia vibes, utilizing your Time Vision to explore for secret Chronon Sources which act as skill points to upgrade Jack's various skills and most importantly the combat in the form of a cover based 3rd person shooter. Jack can find a variety of pistols, assault rifles and shotguns in the various levels of the game. However another factor to Quantum Break's uniqueness is the fact that it's a cover based shooter that actively encourages you to not be in cover due to the amount of powers Jack has at his disposal. You can stop time in a bubble around an enemy and stack bullets for massive damage, do a light-speed dash into an enemy to make them lose their balance or even pop open a time shield to protect from incoming damage in the middle of the battlefield. It takes a little to open up, but once you unlock all your powers you can create some truly devastating fast paced, stylish and fluid combos.
I can't state this enough, but the production values of Quantum Break are amazing. You can definitely tell this game was funded by Microsoft money. The set pieces are action packed, the environments are designed well and fit the story perfectly, the graphics are beautiful and make the character models look remarkably close to their real life actors and the sound design is some of the best I've heard in a video game with the guns having great impact and all the time related effects really capturing the sound of the distorted and warped fragmented time stutters.
Quantum Break is simply another masterpiece by Remedy with a complex narrative full of suspense, mystery, drama and many fascinating twists and turns, a fleshed out and detailed world and an engaging cast of characters. Quantum Break is a must play that will have you hooked all the way through its entire run time and long after that.
"The number one killer is time." How do you save the world when time itself is your enemy? From Remedy Entertainment, the masters of cinematic action games comes Quantum Break. A time shattering, reality bending, hard sci-fi superhero story all about fixing a fracture in time that will lead to the end of time itself.
The narrative primarily centers around protagonist and unlikely hero Jack Joyce and his childhood friend Paul Serene. After being gone from his hometown of Riverport, MA for years Jack returns to help his friend Paul with a presentation at the local college. Paul is primarily a businessman, not a scientist, but lately he's been expanding on the physics work of Jack's estranged brother, William, and has built a time machine. Naturally Jack is skeptical, but agrees to help Paul activate the machine and of course nothing can ever be simple, especially when dealing with theoretical physics. William appears and demands that Paul and Jack stop their actions or "time will break", but it's already too late. Something was off in the calculations and the machine becomes unstable dousing both Jack and Paul in Chronon radiation which gives them both time-manipulation based superpowers. Shortly after soldiers from the corporate juggernaut Monarch Solutions appear to steal the time machine's core...
After that? You'll have to play to find out what happens next. This is merely the first 15 minutes of the 10-15 hour complex yet easy to digest narrative fraught with plenty of mystery, drama and clever twists and turns along the way. This is easily one of the best stories involving time travel that I've experienced in fiction. Alongside taking inspiration from movies like Inception, Interstellar, Back to the Future and The Matrix I love how Sam Lake and the development team consulted actual real life scientists while creating the story for the game to make it feel believable and consistent with current real life theoretical physics and quantum physics.
The main cast of characters are all portrayed by a star studded cast of actors like Shawn Ashmore (Jack Joyce), Aiden Gillen (Paul Serene), Lance Reddick (Martin Hatch), Dominic Monaghan (William Joyce) and Courtney Hope (Beth Wilder) and all their performances are just top notch and make the characters feel that much more realistic and human. That said out of all of Remedy's protagonists I find Jack the least interesting, but all the other characters easily make up for him being a bit boring. I have to give a special shout-out to Aiden Gillen especially, his performance is one of the biggest reasons Paul Serene is one of my all time favorite characters.
Something that makes Quantum Break a very unique experience is how it's one part video game and one part interactive TV series. At the end of each Act of the game you'll reach a "Junction Point" where you'll play as Paul and choose one of two paths, this decision will have an impact on how certain events unfold in both the game itself and the TV series as well. Speaking of the TV series it's great, there's only 4 episodes of it and I honestly wish there were more because not only does it have some cool Jason Bourne styled action scenes, but it also really helps flesh out and humanize the antagonists Monarch Solutions more and while main characters like Jack and Paul rarely show up, the leads Liam Burke and Charlie Wincott do just as good and have interesting character arcs. While you can skip the TV series all together you would be doing yourself a major disservice because of how much it adds to the product as a whole.
Quantum Break is primarily a linear cinematic narrative driven experience and when you're not watching a cut-scene or live action segment you'll be doing a lot of reading via what are called "narrative items". These are various documents like e-mails between characters which further detail their motives and daily life or audio logs and video diaries where character's give their thoughts about a particular event that happened. Once again these can be skipped, but since it's a big part of the content of the game and helps you get more immersed in the world I wouldn't recommend it.
When not involved in the narrative the gameplay mostly revolves around 3D platforming time manipulation based puzzles which involve rewinding or slowing down time which give me some Prince of Persia vibes, utilizing your Time Vision to explore for secret Chronon Sources which act as skill points to upgrade Jack's various skills and most importantly the combat in the form of a cover based 3rd person shooter. Jack can find a variety of pistols, assault rifles and shotguns in the various levels of the game. However another factor to Quantum Break's uniqueness is the fact that it's a cover based shooter that actively encourages you to not be in cover due to the amount of powers Jack has at his disposal. You can stop time in a bubble around an enemy and stack bullets for massive damage, do a light-speed dash into an enemy to make them lose their balance or even pop open a time shield to protect from incoming damage in the middle of the battlefield. It takes a little to open up, but once you unlock all your powers you can create some truly devastating fast paced, stylish and fluid combos.
I can't state this enough, but the production values of Quantum Break are amazing. You can definitely tell this game was funded by Microsoft money. The set pieces are action packed, the environments are designed well and fit the story perfectly, the graphics are beautiful and make the character models look remarkably close to their real life actors and the sound design is some of the best I've heard in a video game with the guns having great impact and all the time related effects really capturing the sound of the distorted and warped fragmented time stutters.
Quantum Break is simply another masterpiece by Remedy with a complex narrative full of suspense, mystery, drama and many fascinating twists and turns, a fleshed out and detailed world and an engaging cast of characters. Quantum Break is a must play that will have you hooked all the way through its entire run time and long after that.