Quantum Break is a 2016 action-adventure third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios. The game centers on Jack Joyce (Shawn Ashmore), granted time manipulation powers after a failed time-machine experiment, as he comes into conflict with former friend Paul Serene over how to deal with an apocalyptic "End of Time". Environmental puzzle segments incorporate 3D platform game elements, and "junction points" can affect the game's outcome. Episodes of a live-action television show, featuring the same actors as the characters, are integrated into the game, with segments that change based on the player's actions.
The game originally was envisioned as a sequel to Remedy's previous game, Alan Wake. The game's focus was shifted to time travel, as Microsoft wanted a new intellectual property with interactive storytelling. The team consulted scientists while creating the fictional science in this game. While the video game portion was developed internally by Remedy and directed by studio veteran Sam Lake, the TV side of the game was produced in collaboration with Lifeboat Productions and directed by Ben Ketai. Alongside Ashmore, the game features actors Aidan Gillen and Lance Reddick portraying important roles in the game. The game was designed to appeal to a broad audience, with Remedy describing the game's story as a "summer blockbuster movie". The game uses a new engine developed by Remedy, the Northlight engine, and a technology called Digital Molecular Matter.
The game was announced in mid-2013 and was set to release in 2015, but its release was delayed to avoid competition with other Xbox One exclusives. The game was released in April 2016 for Windows and Xbox One. It was well received, with critics praising the game's graphics, gameplay, presentation, performances, and story. Critics had mixed opinions regarding the platforming elements, the convergence of video game and television, and the overall quality of the TV show. The Windows 10 version was criticized for its technical issues. Quantum Break was the best-selling new intellectual property published by Microsoft since the launch of Xbox One, though the record was broken two years later by Sea of Thieves.
Gameplay
Quantum Break is an action-adventure video game played from a third-person perspective. Players play as Jack Joyce, who has time manipulation powers in a world where time stutters, making everything freeze except Joyce. Players face a variety of enemies, including Monarch security guards; Strikers, who are equipped with specially designed suits which allow them to manipulate time; and Juggernauts, heavily armored enemies equipped with very strong firearms. Different enemies have different behaviors, and the game requires players to deploy different tactics and strategies in order to defeat them.
To defeat enemies, players can make use of various offensive and defensive abilities. Jack can find four types of firearms: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and carbine rifles. He also possesses several types of time manipulating powers. "Time Stop" freezes time around enemies with a time bubble. If the player shoots an opponent trapped in the bubble, its power amplifies, and the bullets will kill the enemy when the bubble vanishes after a short period of time. "Time Rush" allows Jack to dash next to an enemy and perform an immediate melee takedown. He can also use this power to speed up time and dodge between cover to confuse unaware enemies as to his location. "Time Blast" levitates enemies and freezes them. The defensive ability "Time Shield" deflects all incoming damage, while "Time Dodge" allows players to dash quickly to evade attacks. Most of these time manipulating powers have a short cooldown period after use. In combat, Jack automatically takes cover when he is standing next to environmental objects. However, the artificial intelligence in the game is designed to push the player out of cover by coordinating enemies with each other.
Jack has other time powers that are not used in combat. "Time Vision" reveals points of interest, and highlights interactive objects and enemies. "Time Echoes" allow him to replay past events, providing additional information about the story. The game features several types of collectibles known as "narrative objects", including quantum ripples, documents, computers, and media. Players can collect "chronon sources", which can be used as experience points to purchase time power enhancements. There are also less action-oriented segments in the game, where players have to solve environmental puzzles, which usually function as a 3D platformer. With time stuttering and collapsing, objects may get trapped in a time loop and either become platforms for players to proceed into the next section of the game, or create dangerous environmental hazards, which are extremely unstable. In the latter case they become obstacles that block the player's path. Jack can overcome them by using his time manipulation powers, such as slowing down or stopping time, so that he can proceed without getting hurt. He can also revive frozen non-playable characters at several specific points of the game.
The gameplay splits into five acts. After playing through an act of the game as Jack Joyce, players take control of the antagonist Paul Serene for a pivotal concurrent decision that impacts the plot, before an episode of the digital show will play. In the game, the video game portion tells the story of the protagonists while the show tells the story of the antagonists. Players can make choices at the beginning of each episode of the TV show, also known as "junction points." These decisions influence the state of the game. As Paul Serene has precognitive power, players can view the consequences of each choice before making a decision.
Synopsis
Overview
Quantum Break is set at and around the fictional city of Riverport, Massachusetts, where, due to miscalculations by Paul Serene, a time travel experiment goes wrong. Doused in chronon radiation, the material that makes time travel possible, Jack Joyce and Paul Serene are granted time-based abilities; for example, both can freeze time and move at higher speeds, whilst a higher dose of chronons means Serene can see into the future to decide which choices to make in the present. Additionally, the collapse of the machine damages the structure of time, causing a "fracture" that sporadically freezes the passage of time for all without time-travel abilities or the correct equipment. Joyce and his ally, Beth Wilder, are subsequently pursued by Monarch Solutions, a corporation founded by Serene.
The rules of the story stress that time cannot be changed through traveller actions as per the Novikov self-consistency principle; Paul Serene gives an example of trying to save a dead vagrant he and Jack discovered in their youth, only to startle the vagrant and cause the fall that killed him when he goes back in time. Another enforced rule is that travelers can only move between machines located at different times using the same core: as such, it is impossible for the characters to travel back before the first power-up of the core, nor would they be able to travel between different time machines as the cores would be different. The game features narration from Jack himself.
Plot
Jack meets his best friend Paul Serene at a university in Riverport. He learns that Paul has been expanding on the physics work of Jack's estranged brother, William, and has built a time machine that works using chronon particles. Paul activates the machine, only for it to jam shut and break as William appears. Will demands Jack and Paul stop their actions, or else "time will end." The machine becomes unstable and douses Jack and Paul in chronon radiation that gives them time-based powers. Monarch Solutions soldiers appear and steal the time machine's core. Jack and Will meet the soldiers' leader in the library: an older, ruthless Paul. Paul demands that Will abandon trying to fix the time fracture. When he refuses, Paul orders the library demolished, leaves Will for dead, and takes Jack prisoner along with two witnesses, Nick and Amy. Paul, who can see possible futures, decides to suppress the night's events by force or public relations.
Jack escapes Monarch during a time stutter and rescues either Nick or Amy. Working off a clue with Beth Wilder, a friend of Will's working as double agent inside Monarch, Jack heads to the abandoned Bradbury Swimming Pool where he finds that Will has built his own time machine and a counter-measure to fix the fracture, called the Chronon Field Regulator (CFR). However, the time machine is inoperable. Jack suggests they kidnap Dr. Sofia Amaral, Paul's head of chronon research, in order to fix the time machine and go back in time to find the CFR. Learning she will be attending a Monarch gala, Jack surrenders to Monarch and learns that Paul was accidentally sent to the end of time, the terminal state of the time fracture, and escaped only by traveling in Will's machine back to its first activation in 1999. He spent the following years acquiring wealth and influence through his advance knowledge of events and founded Monarch Solutions. Escaping through the Monarch Labs, Jack and Beth pull Amaral out of the path of a hacked drone before it explodes. Beth escapes by the sea with Amaral while Jack steals Paul's car.
Paul is revealed to be dying from chronon syndrome. He lashes out at his second-in-command Martin Hatch, as Amaral was the only one capable of administering his treatment. Now paranoid, Paul places all of his trust in either Amaral or Hatch, who claims that Amaral left willingly with Jack. Paul recognizes Beth from security footage. She was also at the end of time and attempted to kill him.
Taking Amaral to the Bradbury Pool, Jack and Beth force her to help repair the time machine. With Will's documents noting that the CFR disappeared in 2010, Jack and Beth plot to head to 2010 and steal it, closing a causal loop. Beth steps into the machine as Amaral sabotages the computer and alerts Monarch. Leaving Amaral with Nick/Amy, Jack heads to 2010 and finds Beth, much older and disturbed. Beth explains that Amaral sent her to the end of time, where she met the younger Paul. Failing to kill him, Beth followed him back to the first activation in 1999 and stopped him from murdering Will. After directing Will to create the CFR, she has waited eleven years for Jack to arrive in 2010.
Beth and Jack reach Will's workshop and find the CFR, but Paul corners Beth and shoots her when she refuses to co-operate. The CFR is accidentally activated, causing a chronon burst; the exposure throws Jack forward to 2016 again and causes Paul's chronon syndrome. Beth shuts off the CFR but is executed by Paul while Jack can only watch through time.
Increasingly paranoid and ill, Paul is informed that, despite his lab being destroyed by Hatch, one damaged treatment has been recovered. Paul either decides to take it and buy time for himself and his plan or succumb to paranoia and illness. As stutters become nearly constant, Jack fights through the Monarch HQ with the guidance of either head of surveillance Charlie Wincott or Wincott's close friend Fiona Miller. Reaching Paul's lab, Jack finds and receives Wincott's aid or fights high-level Monarch security officer Liam Burke. Acquiring the CFR, Jack learns that Paul was using it to power a lifeboat, a small bunker where researchers could devise a solution to the end of time while protected from it. Unable to work the CFR, Jack uses Monarch's time machine (equipped with the stolen university core) to travel back to its first activation: the night of Will's death.