‘[They] ship together as one item’
It’s been over two years since I first side-eyed Quantum Break, the television show and third-person shooter hybrid from Remedy (Alan Wake, Max Payne). Quantum Break finally has a release date it probably won’t be delayed out of (April 5, 2016), but this version of the game is a lot different than the initial reveal. It’s even different to last year’s gamescom showing as Hollywood actors have replaced the original characters.
There’s Shawn Ashmore (X-Men) and Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings), who play brothers, which is good because I am still mixing them up. A couple of familiar faces from The Wire, Carcetti (Aiden Gillan) and Daniels (Lance Reddick) also show up.
What’s weird, though, is that while my suspicion and low expectations haven’t changed even as the game has, there’s some magic in hearing Remedy’s Sam Lake tell it. Few can string together scripted nonsense like “intense story-driven action game spectacle” and still seem genuine with a kind of unassuming, unironic grin. It’s adorable
At one point Lake noted that the team destroyed yet another giant ship in the demo we were shown. “We are destroying another ship here as we did at last gamescom,” Lake said, explaining that Remedy doesn’t hate ships or the shipping industry. “We love shipping. Shipping games.” Pause. “Hah hah.” That was a “hah hah,” not a laugh, and a perfectly delivered one.
So we’ve seen “I’m a super badass baby-faced dubstep killer” wreck house on crews of heavily outfitted corporate military already and it’s a little goofy as the guy in jeans and a Guess jacket brushes off assault rifle fire. He’s aided by the time powers granted by a failed time travel experiment that is bringing about the end of time (hah).
Time Rush allows Jack to run forward with time stopped, either to avoid environmental obstacles in platforming sections or to combo into running punches. Time Dodge is a quick dash out of harm’s way or into an enemy to bump them a bit. Time Blast is an offensive projectile, Time Shield is a bubble shield, and Time Stop freezes time in one focused area. Some of Monarch’s soldiers are outfitted with fancy backpacks that give them some of these powers, too, so you’re not just up against folks shooting you.
Quantum Break is “a story about warring philosophies,” Lake says. The fatalist antagonist thinks the future can’t be changed or fixed no matter what, the protagonist thinks that’s bogus. The game focuses on the perspective of the latter, while “the show is about villains,” focusing on the Wire half of the cast and what’s happening at evil Monarch.
So how does it work?
“You first play through an act of the game, Lake says. “It culminates in a special scene that is the junction moment, where you make a choice,” which opens up an episode of the show “based on the choice you make.” So you get roughly 22 minutes of programming tailored to your decisions. And all of Quantum Break is “shaped by your choices.”
The given example of a junction moment is where evil corporate bad guy Paul Serene has to either: 1) kill a student activist who’s witness to some shady things or 2) threaten to murder her family to bend her into submission. Both bad, one less bad, I suppose. Her death, should you choose, is reflected in the protest scene from last year’s trailer. On the other hand, should she live, she becomes Jacks ally, helping to dig up dirt on Monarch.
Sometimes these two parts of the game weave even closer. A live-action conflict between Monarch folks who’ve captured Jack ends at an anticlimax as their guns disappear and Jack is shown to have gotten away. On the game side, there’s a cutscene of Jack waking up in the back of the van, noticing the conflict outside, and escaping (and gun jacking) during a time skip.
With Xbox having killed its original programming arm, Lake also clarified that, “the game and the show ship together as one item.”
