Quantum Break – with graphics this good why does it need all the TV stuff?

GameCentral gets a go on the new game from the makers of Max Payne and Alan Wake, and speaks to its director.

Microsoft had a great line-up of exclusive games last year, but the only one we saw at E3 and Gamescom that we were never sold on was Quantum Break. In the end it was delayed into 2016, but despite having been announced, at the Xbox One’s unveiling, way back in May 2013 this is the first time anyone’s had a chance to play it. Which seems like a serious mistake, as now that we’ve had a chance to experience it for ourselves we’re suddenly a lot more enthusiastic.



Quantum Break is an odd beast though. On the face of it it’s a story-driven third person shooter, very much in the style of Remedy’s previous work on Max Payne and Alan Wake. The gimmick in terms of gameplay is time manipulation, but arguably the most unusual part of the game is that it’s supported by a series of 20-minute long live action cut scenes that play out between each act of gameplay.

This all smacks of Microsoft’s obsession with TV programming at the launch of the Xbox One, and the whole TV show concept seems to have gone through several changes along the way. How it works now though is that at the end of an act you watch a TV show from the perspective of the villain and get to make a binary moral decision (in the first example, whether to kill a protestor or turn her into a stooge) that is then referenced in the next gameplay section.


As you can see in our interview with director Sam Lake, our first question was simply, ‘Why?’ And why go to all the trouble of making it live action when the in-game graphics seem perfectly up to the job. Especially when the story itself doesn’t seem to justify the effort, being a seemingly straightforward tale of two guys who get similar time-bending powers and how they react to the fact that they may have broken time itself.

If Microsoft are happy to foot the bill for such extravagances though then fair play to Remedy for talking them into it. Especially as it’s an element of the game you can completely ignore if you want. Thankfully, we found the combat considerably more interesting, as it builds on the lessons learnt in Max Payne and Alan Wake and creates a considerably deeper and more interesting style of action.

The most basic of the skills is ‘Time Stop’, which allows you to freeze an enemy or object in a literal big ball of timey wimey stuff. It only lasts for a few seconds, but that’s enough time to either get to cover or shoot multiple bullets into it so that they all explode at once when time starts up again.

Within short order you also learn the self-explanatory Time Dash, Time Shield, and Time Blast. While there’s also a ‘Time Vision’ that is basically Detective/Instinct/Hand-holding mode for those too lazy to work out puzzles or spot enemies on their own.



All of these powers (and no doubt more later in the game) can be upgraded with collected items, with the Time Dash in particular allowing a brief period of bullet time at the end of it – which can be extended to last longer and longer if you so choose.

We knew about most of this from the previous previews we’d seen, but it makes all the difference in the world to go hands-on and see if they’re actually any fun or not. We always felt Quantum Break looked fairly mundane and predictable in videos, but in practice it’s much faster-paced and more fluid than we expected.

All the moves work on a short countdown timer but it’s very easy to chain them all together in useful and unexpected ways, to the point where we found ourselves using the (perfectly competent) cover system only as a last resort. A skilled player, which obviously we’re not yet, should be able to weave in and out of enemies at will; while learning to deal with more advanced opponents that can also manipulate time in similar ways.

We weren’t sold quite so much on the platforming sections though, which really are just as slow and plodding as they look. They’re not very long though, and Sam Lake’s description of them as a palette cleanser between combat sections more or less justifies their inclusion.

Overall though we came away feeling much more positive about the game than we ever have before. We’re still not any more interested in the TV show side of things, but the gameplay looks like it could well be the best thing Remedy has ever done.


Formats: Xbox One (previewed) and PC

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: Remedy

Release Date: 5th April 2016

Quantum Break – the main actor is Iceman from the X-Men films

GC: My main question about all this, is that I still don’t really understand why there’s a live action component. The graphics are really good, so why not just use them? You’re mixing two things – playing a video game and watching TV – that maybe people don’t want to do at the same time. Maybe they don’t want to do one of them at all?

SL: It’s a fair question. It is an experiment, sure. We have been mixing live action into our experiences before, in Alan Wake we had the TV show in the game and as part of our marketing campaign we had a prequel episode. And in American Nightmare we even did some of the cut scenes as live action, just as a test. And from the beginning I just felt that it is interesting to have these different mediums there, and we wanted to try something like this out.

It evolved a lot along the away. One important thing is that different mediums do have their own strengths, and I kind of feel that that is a big part of the idea here. The game is a cinematic action game, it’s a big action spectacle. And because the core gameplay is very much action… we do have a lot of story and cut scenes, but nowhere near as much character drama as we can do by having a show on the side.


If there was not a show we would never do this kind of a story structure, so I think that it also gave us an opportunity to do things that we wouldn’t have done otherwise. Which is, for example, that the two different sides of the experience serve their own purposes. Which is the game is the hero’s journey, you play Jack on his quest, and the show is about villains and gives you a different perspective into the story. I don’t think we would have ever have done that kind of a structure without having the show in there.

GC: This is almost certainly the wrong phrase to use, but it almost sounds like you’re using the show to draw out the poison of having too many cut scenes in the actual game. The perennial problem with using cut scenes is of course the second they start you’re no longer playing a video game, it stops being interactive.

SL: Of course, yes. And we have good examples of really, really successful games where there are no cut scenes. Half-Life is kind of the classic example. And I really admire Valve’s approach, of taking that kind of principle. But I do feel that cut scenes can serve a purpose. There are certainly types of story elements that work better if they are in a cut scene, and you would need probably to tell a different kind of a story if you would not be using cut scenes.

To your question, it does have a full story. Jack’s story, more or less, is fully there on the game side. But this allows us to also have a different perspective. The show gives you a different perspective into the story. So we do have cut scenes in the game, it’s not like taking the cut scenes out and having the show there.

GC: I’m sure you have a different perspective to me on this, but I’m often not convinced that video games are really a viable storytelling medium.

SL: I understand that.

GC: There are obviously examples of good story-based games but they’re such a tiny minority, it almost seems like statistical noise. And that’s not even really a criticism. Making a good video game and telling a good story are both incredibly hard things to do. The chances that anyone would be competent at both is naturally very low which is, I think, reflected in the industry at large.

SL: I do think that storytelling in games has advanced a lot along the years. The quality of storytelling. And you know, professional writers coming in to work on games, and people from different storytelling backgrounds coming in has clearly boosted it up there. From my perspective, my background is in writing. I started out as a writer with Max Payne and that’s always been my focus. These days I am a creative director at Remedy, so I’m looking at it from a broader perspective.

I was the driving force in creating the story of Quantum Break, but we do have, these days, a bigger writing team – much like in a TV series. At Remedy we have three full time writers, in addition to me working on just the game. And then separate writers working on the show. Obviously everyone sitting together in the same writing room, workshopping it.

I believe we can tell stories with games, and I want to tell stories with them. That’s my passion. But I can see where you’re coming from. I think the great thing about games is that there’s so many different games you can make, and I don’t think that having ambition in a story game, and pushing that forward, is a bad thing.

GC: Oh no, not at all. But I almost wish developers had to apply for a license to have cut scenes that run longer than a minute – that they can only get once they prove they know what to do with them.

SL: [laughs] I think that goes for all mediums, really.

GC: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true. But the other thing is that there are clearly understood methods that linear media uses to tell stories, and I never feel games work hard enough to establish their own unique methods. They just mimic what already exists, and was created for a completely different form. There’s no established language for telling stories in video games, there’s just borrowed phrases and ugly patois.

SL: As I said, different mediums have their own strengths. And I think that there are already proven ways of certain elements that work really well, and then there is a lot of prototyping and experiments. I’ve been doing story-driven games for over 20 years now, and I kind of feel that I’m learning more with each project, and almost every day.

Personally, one thing that we have been doing since Max Payne is the voiceover narration, in one form or another. Which is a device that, if you look at movies, it’s been used very successful but just from the perspective of best practices it’s kind of frowned upon. You should be showing not telling! But I still feel that, as a kind of a movie-like device…

GC: It works because you can still play the game while It’s going on.

SL: Yes, right! And games do have a clear need for the character helping out the player now and again, giving hints and clues. And I feel narration is a much more sophisticated and stylised way of doing that, than to have other characters babbling aloud to you like, ‘Oh, I guess I need a key to open this door!’

Quantum Break – you’re not the only one with time powers

GC: You don’t do it, but the one that drives me mad is audiologs. With people recording their life stories even while they’re being attacked by monsters.

SL: [laughs] Yeah, but I kind of feel that everything is fair game. You can use whatever suits the particular structure if you can get it to work. Sometimes it’s insane to start reinventing the wheel on everything, but then again there are certain areas that you can explore and experiment and push forward. And certainly there are elements in Quantum Break, with the show, that are trying new things and it will be really, really interesting to see what the reception is. I’m happy that we have done, I’m proud of the result.

GC: I wonder whether it’s a technology issue for games, whether VR or improvements in artificial intelligence will make the big difference.

SL: Yes, it will be very interesting. But I know that we are so far away from that happening with AI. But you mentioned VR, that is very interesting to me. Part of creating a game experience and a story experience is creating a believable immersive world for you to be in. And VR, in so many ways, is the definition of immersion. So I think that will push certain things forward. That will give certain new tools for interactive storytelling, definitely.

GC: Are you looking into it at the moment? The fact that you can’t really do fast-paced action games in VR does make storytelling that much more important.

SL: Certainly, we are always keeping our eyes open and looking into the next thing, and possibilities, and doing tests and trying things out. At some point – no definite plans – it would be interesting to do something with VR. I kind of feel that it hasn’t been found yet, exactly what does work and doesn’t work.

GC: Yes, yes. It’s all just tech demos at the moment.

SL: Exactly. But it’s interesting.

GC: So, in terms of the gameplay. I was worried all the emphasis on story might negatively impact your work on the combat. But it was really good, the third person action I thought was a lot of fun.

SL: [laughs] Thank you.

GC: It’s obviously difficult to tell at this point, because I’ve not had much practise, but the thing I was trying to get a feel for was how fluid it is. I got the feeling you could probably beat a whole set piece in just one giant linked combo, but obviously I’m not that good yet. Is that what your guys back at the office do?

SL: Yes! And that has been… we set out to do an action game. A cinematic action game. And there I’m not really talking about storytelling but how smooth and good it feels and looks, to give you a rush. We wanted to create a set of tools for the player that makes the experience deeper and more varied than in any previous game that we have done. Which immediately meant that we had to have multiple different powers, and also many different enemies as you progress, that will give you many different options, and many upgrades too.

GC: Is that a reaction perhaps to Alan Wake, where I think one of the main problems was that the gameplay really didn’t evolve at all through the course of the game.

SL: Yes, that was one thing we tried to learn from the game. The lack of variety and progress was one of the clearest criticism trends that we had from Alan Wake, and we decided that whatever we do next we want to create a deeper gameplay. And this is the result.

GC: What other games where you looking at for this? There are plenty of third person shooters, but this is much faster paced than, say, Gears Of War. It’s almost closer to something like Vanquish.

SL: Yeah, the goal definitely was to have a fast-paced action feel to it. And we did experiment with things that ended up slowing it down quite a bit, and made it more tactical. With some prototypes we had it almost made the combat feel more like a puzzle game. But that never felt good to us. We felt that we wanted to recapture the action spectacle we had going with Max Payne. But modernise it and make a deeper gameplay loop out of that.

Quantum Break – time keeps stopping even without your help

GC: The combat is great, but I have more of a question mark when it comes to the platforming. I can’t help thinking that if this was Mario he’d do it all in three seconds flat. It’d be nothing to him.

SL: [laughs]

GC: From a pure gameplay perspective, a Mario or a Sonic is unequivocally more fun; because it’s more challenging, faster-paced, and the level design is more complex. Which creates another difficult balancing act for you as a designer.

SL: It does!

GC: It’s a clear example, and again this a problem for many games, not just yours, where the gameplay is being held back by the pseudo-realistic setting.

SL: It is a balancing act, you’re absolutely right. It’s a very complex system and you have these different elements and you have to make judgement calls as to what is more or less important in each sequence. But yeah, fluidity of gameplay is hugely important. Mario is a really, really good level to aspire to.

GC: Not so much in terms of storytelling.

SL: [laughs] No, but we have the platforming side of things and we are thinking of those elements really as just light puzzle mechanics with the use of time powers. But still, first and foremost, this is an action game. And what you spend most of the time doing is combat, and other things are more like spices to add variety and give a change of pace now and again to keep it fresh.

GC: And sorry, just to finish, I have to ask the obvious question that I’m sure you’ve been getting all day: can you say something vague but optimistic about making a new Alan Wake game?

SL: [laughs] We have no news today. But as has been seen and pointed out there are nods and winks to Alan Wake inside Quantum Break.

GC: So, what did that Alan Wake’s Return stuff turn out to be in the end? Was it a TV show in Quantum Break, as if Alan Wake was real or as if just his TV show was real? What was it called… Spooky Door or something?

SL: Night Springs. But that’s a good question [laughs] It is also what we like to do with Remedy games. And going back to Alan Wake we had an element of Max Payne in the game, but it wasn’t as simple as, ‘Here is Max Payne and here is Alan Wake and they are in the same world’. It was more layered, and that’s kind of the approach here as well.

To me, as a creator, I kind of look at this whole thing from the perspective that there is a Remedy game multiverse. I do think games work really well with the idea of echoes and twisted mirrors and different layers of story to be discovered, that can reflect back in interactive form to comment on different elements of it. But with Alan Wake, first and foremost, we wanted to give something back to the fans and make it clear we haven’t forgotten him and that we have ideas…

GC: You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, so I’m curious: do you miss working on Max Payne? I don’t get the impression Rockstar are thinking of doing another one, but if they approached you would you jump at the chance?

SL: They did contact us close to the end of Max Payne 3 and wanted us to be consultants. We were playing the game and giving them feedback, and I had a nice opportunity of working with Dan Houser when he was creating the prequel comic book for Max Payne 3. But other than that we were not involved.

I don’t know… if that kind of opportunity did present itself I think it would be fun.

GC: Do you ever think about what you’d do if you were working on a sequel?

SL: Yes. You can’t help but have all kinds of ideas, but we did two Max Payne games. From a creator’s perspective it was actually nice knowing that we had sold the IP to Rockstar after the first one, and part of the deal was to make the second one. So through that whole project I knew that in all likelihood this was the last Max Payne that we would make. So doing that and saying your goodbyes to that franchise had a lot of closure for me. But who can say, if something like that would suddenly happen I’m sure that we could come up with something cool.

GC: OK great, thank you very much.

SL: Thank you.

Quantum Break – the Time Shield comes in very handy

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