Quantum Break comes from Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Max Payne and Alan Wake. It is a time-bending third-person shooter that is one part hard-hitting video game and one part live-action show. A failed experiment at Riverport University has fractured time itself, and the choices you make as the story unfolds reshape the episodes you watch between acts, so the game and the show become two halves of the same story.
A Fracture in Time
Jack Joyce comes home to Riverport at the request of his oldest friend, Paul Serene, who wants to show him the research project he has been building at the university. Jack's genius brother William fears where that research is heading, and he is right. When the experiment goes wrong, time breaks, and both Jack and Paul are changed by it. Paul becomes hell-bent on controlling this new power through the shadowy Monarch Solutions, while Jack sets out to stop him and repair time before it tears itself irreparably apart.
The cast gives the story real weight. Shawn Ashmore plays Jack, Aidan Gillen brings a quiet, calculating menace to Paul Serene, Dominic Monaghan plays William, and Lance Reddick turns up as Monarch's formidable Martin Hatch. Remedy's trademark vivid storytelling, rich characters and dramatic twists run through every act.
Time-Amplified Combat
Jack carries conventional firearms, but his real arsenal is time itself. Quantum Break's firefights reward you for chaining powers together rather than hunkering down behind cover:
- Time Stop
- Freeze a pocket of time around an enemy or a cluster of guards, then keep firing. Every round you send in hangs in the air and lands at once when the bubble collapses, making it just as useful for pinning down a flanker as it is for dealing heavy damage.
- Time Dodge and Time Rush
- Blink out of harm's way in a burst of slowed time, or surge across the battlefield at superhuman speed to reach a new position or slam into an enemy up close. Constant movement is how you survive when Monarch's troops start closing in.
- Time Shield
- Raise a shimmering barrier that turns aside incoming fire, buying you a moment to reload, recover and plan your next move. It is the power that keeps Jack alive when a fight suddenly tips against him.
- Time Vision and Upgrades
- Time Vision picks out enemies and points of interest around you, and the Chronon Sources hidden throughout each level let you upgrade Jack's abilities, so your playstyle grows sharper and more aggressive as the story goes on.
Monarch's forces escalate to match you, fielding specialist units built to move through frozen time and heavily armored troops that punish careless play, so no two encounters ask quite the same thing of you.
Navigating Broken Time
As the fracture worsens, Riverport starts to come apart in stutters, moments when time freezes, skips and rewinds around Jack. Epic scenes of destruction hang in mid-collapse, then lurch forward and snap back again. Getting through them means reading the rhythm of the loop and using your powers to slip through the gaps, turning each set piece into a traversal puzzle as much as a spectacle.
One Story Told Many Ways
The story runs across five acts, and at the close of each of the first four you take control of Paul Serene at a Junction. With his ability to glimpse possible futures, you weigh the outcomes and commit to one, and that decision carries through everything that follows. A live-action episode then picks up the story, showing Monarch's side of events and reflecting the choices you made.
The emails, research notes and other narrative objects scattered through each act fill in the fine print of Monarch's operation and the people caught up in it. Different decisions lead to different scenes, which gives you good reason to return and see how the other paths play out.
If you have ever wanted to freeze a firefight in its tracks and then watch the consequences of your choices play out on screen, Quantum Break is ready for you. Take on Monarch as Jack Joyce, make the hard calls at every Junction, and find out how your version of the story ends.
