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.
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Edge.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Edge.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Hi-Fi Rush
A progress report on the games we just can't quit
Dragon's Lair
An old-fashioned dose of movie magic - but one that trades in a novel type of glamour
DAMBUSTER STUDIOS
How the former Free Radical found the fun amid corporate crises
THE MAKING OF... HARDSPACE: SHIPBREAKER
How Blackbird Interactive cracked the formula for a sci-fi tale of dystopian deconstruction
DREAM TICKET
As Media Molecule prepares to move on, we get the inside track on Tren, its spectacular swan song for Dreams
SILENCE IS GORDON
Why does the mute protagonist still loom large over the landscape of firstperson-viewed games?
AS ABOVE SO BELOW
After 13 years, Remedy is ready to make the game of its dreams
LAIKA: AGED THROUGH BLOOD
This apocalypse is not for the birds
FOREVER SKIES
Though its knightly get-ups remind us of the Arthurian tone of Dark Souls, and its gothic environments carry the miasma of Bloodborne’s Yharnam, it doesn’t take long for Hexworks’ Soulslike to spill beyond the mould in which it’s been set.
LORDS OF THE FALLEN
Though its knightly get-ups remind us of the Arthurian tone of Dark Souls, and its gothic environments carry the miasma of Bloodborne’s Yharnam, it doesn’t take long for Hexworks’ Soulslike to spill beyond the mould in which it’s been set.