Quantum Break

Remedy’s game-television hybrid is a product of its time, for better and worse

- Alex Spencer

Time has shattered in Quantum Break. As Jack Joyce, beneficiary of one of those laboratory explosions that bestow so many superheroes with their powers, you spend much of the game wandering around stuttered instants that have pressed pause on reality. So it’s apt that revisiting the game now feels like stepping back into a very specific moment, one that’s been preserved in amber.

Quantum Break was unveiled alongside Xbox One, at a press conference that’s mostly remembered as an hour-long stumble for Microsoft. The event put the emphasis on the console’s intertwining with television, and brought in Steven Spielberg to reveal a Halo live-action series. This was May 2013, right at the peak of Xbox Entertainment Studios, Microsoft’s attempt at venturing from Redmond into LA, and a month after the launch of Defiance, which was simultaneously a Syfy TV show and a Trion Worlds MMO.

Factor in Remedy’s own fascination with television, something that had been evident since Max Payne squeezed a Twin Peaks homage onto cathode-ray sets scattered through its levels, and Quantum Break starts to make sense. Well. More sense. After all, this is not only a game which incorporates a live-action TV show, it’s also a convoluted time-travel narrative with a fractal approach to storytelling, a tripartite structure, and a sprawling cast who rarely cross over between those parts. Not that this was all apparent that night on the Xbox campus.