There's an anecdote I heard and can no longer source about either Arkane or Looking Glass Studios. How the games they worked on felt like complete disasters right until the very end of the development cycle, the last few months when every component finally falls into place. It makes sense for an immersive sim, where a change in a single system can drastically change the player experience. But I feel like it could also apply to Quantum Break, a game so ambitious and sprawling that only by the time the individual pieces should've fit together the seams between them became apparent to the leading team. As a result, we have a work that almost seems to be in conflict with itself, despite still showing us the ambition of its vision.
Quantum Break started off as a way for Remedy to bring their signature blend of action gameplay and TV drama even closer together, now using a substantial amount of live action footage to place the two media on equal footing in the overall narrative. So, on the one hand, we've got the designers going back to the frantic gunfights of Max Payne, now augmented by magic abilities that make combat more dynamic, varied and flashy. I'm gonna guess that everyone who couldn't stand the repetitive flashlight pointing of Alan Wake stood up and clapped when they saw the first slo-mo close up of an enemy falling dead on the ground in Quantum Break. On the other hand, every couple of hours the gameplay is set on pause as you are presented with around 30 minutes of television. Now, having only played the game years after it came out, I was expecting this half of Quantum Break to be awful. A YouTube short series ballooned into an attempt at prestige funded by all the Microsoft product placement. But it turned to be just... solid tv? A surprisingly okay-acted and well-paced tv series with an occasional inspired visual moment. Something in-between FX's Fringe and a CW show. But then one evening after work as I was thinking about continuing the game I remembered that I stopped right at the end of an act, meaning I had about 40 minutes of "non-gameplay" to sit through. I wanted to spend an hour by doing a fun activity, but instead I knew I'd spend most of it getting to the fun activity itself. And it's not even that I dislike cutscenes or anything. God knows these JRPGs I play so much have a ton of them these days. But there's something about the pre-defined regularity of these interruptions, the schedule you're on that makes it all out of joint pacing-wise.
And it just got worse over time as the gameplay itself became unevenly paced. If you try to look for secrets and collectibles in these kinds of games (and with Remedy's work that's usually worth it), you have a lot of additional material to get your hands on. E-mail threads, notes, diaries, most of them surprisingly well-written and engrossing. Some of them optional, yet vital to one of the game's key mysteries. Reading through them is generally a good time, but sometimes you just notice how long the reading takes you. It's especially jarring during segments when you're supposed to go somewhere and an NPC keeps calling out to you as you're trying to focus on this random e-mail. And then at some point the game throws at you a quiet level for a change. Some walk and talks, some chill exploration, light platforming. And about a dozen of these collectibles to read through in a condensed space, making what should've been a short break between the action into another half-hour of lore consumption.
You see, all of these pieces out of context actually bring me enjoyment. I like the messy chaotic combat encounters, the small platforming puzzles and set-pieces, I'm impressed by the visuals and the on-point needle drops, engrossed in the world built with thousands of optional words of text, and seeing Lance Reddick walk away from an explosion in slo-mo is the kind of cheese I live for. And I'm sure each individual team was proud of their work and hoping that when it all comes together into the final product, it would end up brilliant. But apparently, there just was no clear vision of what that final product would be in practice, and instead of peak couch time activity we're left with this exhausting mixed media monstrosity. At least as we've since seen with Control, Remedy would find a less ambitious and more effective way to iterate on the same concepts.
Quantum Break started off as a way for Remedy to bring their signature blend of action gameplay and TV drama even closer together, now using a substantial amount of live action footage to place the two media on equal footing in the overall narrative. So, on the one hand, we've got the designers going back to the frantic gunfights of Max Payne, now augmented by magic abilities that make combat more dynamic, varied and flashy. I'm gonna guess that everyone who couldn't stand the repetitive flashlight pointing of Alan Wake stood up and clapped when they saw the first slo-mo close up of an enemy falling dead on the ground in Quantum Break. On the other hand, every couple of hours the gameplay is set on pause as you are presented with around 30 minutes of television. Now, having only played the game years after it came out, I was expecting this half of Quantum Break to be awful. A YouTube short series ballooned into an attempt at prestige funded by all the Microsoft product placement. But it turned to be just... solid tv? A surprisingly okay-acted and well-paced tv series with an occasional inspired visual moment. Something in-between FX's Fringe and a CW show. But then one evening after work as I was thinking about continuing the game I remembered that I stopped right at the end of an act, meaning I had about 40 minutes of "non-gameplay" to sit through. I wanted to spend an hour by doing a fun activity, but instead I knew I'd spend most of it getting to the fun activity itself. And it's not even that I dislike cutscenes or anything. God knows these JRPGs I play so much have a ton of them these days. But there's something about the pre-defined regularity of these interruptions, the schedule you're on that makes it all out of joint pacing-wise.
And it just got worse over time as the gameplay itself became unevenly paced. If you try to look for secrets and collectibles in these kinds of games (and with Remedy's work that's usually worth it), you have a lot of additional material to get your hands on. E-mail threads, notes, diaries, most of them surprisingly well-written and engrossing. Some of them optional, yet vital to one of the game's key mysteries. Reading through them is generally a good time, but sometimes you just notice how long the reading takes you. It's especially jarring during segments when you're supposed to go somewhere and an NPC keeps calling out to you as you're trying to focus on this random e-mail. And then at some point the game throws at you a quiet level for a change. Some walk and talks, some chill exploration, light platforming. And about a dozen of these collectibles to read through in a condensed space, making what should've been a short break between the action into another half-hour of lore consumption.
You see, all of these pieces out of context actually bring me enjoyment. I like the messy chaotic combat encounters, the small platforming puzzles and set-pieces, I'm impressed by the visuals and the on-point needle drops, engrossed in the world built with thousands of optional words of text, and seeing Lance Reddick walk away from an explosion in slo-mo is the kind of cheese I live for. And I'm sure each individual team was proud of their work and hoping that when it all comes together into the final product, it would end up brilliant. But apparently, there just was no clear vision of what that final product would be in practice, and instead of peak couch time activity we're left with this exhausting mixed media monstrosity. At least as we've since seen with Control, Remedy would find a less ambitious and more effective way to iterate on the same concepts.