Quantum Break (Xbox One)

Time travel is a risky business when it comes to sci-fi stories, the concept quite easily able to break the audience’s immersion due to how hard it is to remain logically consistent with something that opens up so many possibilities. There are a few ways to integrate it relatively cleanly without harming the plot, one being just not having a serious plot to begin with where logical inconsistency isn’t a problem. A story that wishes to have dramatic tension and stakes though usually has to rely on the two other means of maintaining the suspension of disbelief. One way is to try and make sure the rules for time travel have some clearly defined limits that prevent it from running rampant and undermining every moment of the story, and while these don’t need to be perfectly solid since this is impossible science fiction we’re dealing with, it is important you don’t constantly ask why time isn’t being rewound or stopped to prevent all the problems. The other and much simpler means is just to have the time travel exist more as a narrative device to help along a plot focused on other details like character interaction and philosophical arguments.

 

Quantum Break mixes together the two more serious options in its use of time travel, as it is a story heavily relying on time travel for not just its gameplay, but pretty much all of its plot and character interaction. However, there are some pretty strong rules in place governing how time travel can work. To move forward or backward in time relies on huge, cumbersome time machines that can fill a warehouse, are difficult to run and maintain, and time travel can only take an individual to that time machine’s location at different periods of time. Time travel is therefore limited to only going back as far as the first activation, and thus, some stable time loop characteristics are in effect that work within the game’s internal logic. Certainly holes can be poked into any time travel story, but Quantum Break does manage to keep time travel the focus without crumbling under the weight of any questions it brings up, instead allowing the player to focus on the plot and its relationship with time travel. Quantum Break tells the story of Jack Joyce, who by all accounts seems like a regular man caught up in everything, but he’s refreshingly reasonable. He knows when he’s out of his depth, and when a character is apologizing to him for being forced by the villain into makings things more difficult for Jack, Jack just repeatedly assures them he in no way holds it against them since he completely understands. Jack kicks off the main plot when he is asked by his friend to help with the activation of a time machine, but while it does end up working, it also begins to set into motion some disastrous unintended events, time itself damaged by the machine’s activation.

 

With time now damaged, the world begins feeling its effects, some regions of space completely freezing in time in isolation, others oddly rewinding and fast-forwarding due to misalignment with the rest of the world, and ultimately, the end of time itself is approaching where time will completely freeze and never start back up again. However, with the end of time fast approaching, there is barely any time to find a solution, and a cast of characters all scramble to try and solve things how they think best. Jack aims to try and find a countermeasure that is said to be able to stop the end of time, but a man named Serene comes back from the future, having seen the end of time and having his own idea of how to fix this temporal anomaly. Serene is an incredibly reasonable and intriguing antagonist in the story, as not only does his idea of developing a refuge outside of time to hopefully work on a way to fix it seem reasonable, but this isn’t even Serene’s first attempt at trying to save time from stopping. When Jack meets Serene, Serene has been through time again and again, constantly trying to find a way to prevent the temporal damage or at least work on some means to prevent its end… but he’s found nothing. He’s been worn down, he’s tried to do things the heroic way in the past, tried to alter other events to prevent things from unfolding, but time trends towards its current form regardless, the message of inevitability part of the game’s time travel logic. Serene ends up resorting to hiring armed men to work for him and doing things he does regret all because he thinks he has the only possible way of even potentially saving reality, and since Jack is pursuing a means Serene doesn’t believe in, they stand in opposition to each other, one always trying to stop the other due to their mutually exclusive plans.

Jack and Serene even have a personal history as well on top of it, only making the moments between them more tense and even tragic. Jack’s sort of everyman status makes him a pretty good base line for him viewing just how much time travel impacts everyone else who engages in it. Multiple characters get wrapped up in going through time or otherwise working on the time machine, and it’s pretty clear that this potentially revolutionary technology really just has a negative effect on the world entirely. Jack’s close allies are worn down by the gravity of how moving through time could impact an individual, and they’re not the only ones seeing just how terrifying time travel can truly be. Quantum Break does a great job of making time travel scary, especially as time continues to fracture more and more. Hidden throughout the game world are files, computers, and other items known as narrative objects that can be picked up to get a look deeper at Serene’s operations, character’s histories, or the impact the temporal disruption is having on the world. While the narrative objects aren’t totally necessary, they still do come with a recommendation to find them, not only because certain characters like Serene’s right-hand man Martin Hatch have important details about their history hidden in these documents that can seem inexplicable in the main story otherwise, but also because of unexpected highlights like the hilariously goofy and intentionally poorly written “Time Knife” screenplay you can find between all the notes that otherwise work towards world-building and character development. Reading notes about people not even realizing time had been frozen until the room they were in is suddenly filled with dead bodies or trying to cope with how they have no control over their fate as time breaks more and more sells the stakes of this battle between Joyce and Serene pretty well, the idea if the wrong character wins, the world would truly be doomed eternally. There is still hope to be found in the plot, and despite time being such a terrifying force, the interesting visual effects like temporally fractured areas looking like shattered glass helping to blend the sci-fi with the fairly realistic locations of the game’s story.

 

Despite time being the big danger of the game, it is also your main weapon in Quantum Break. Since Jack Joyce is at ground zero of the time machine’s activation, he gets blasted with the temporal particles unleashed its flawed start up, his body now able to impact time in different ways. At its most basic, Quantum Break is a third-person cover shooter, the player able to get a selection of guns like pistols, machine guns, shotguns, snipers, and a few heavy duty options here or there.  On their own, these are your fairly typical options, and since the shooting is well-designed to be satisfying on its own, it could have been a fine supplement to the story, but the time powers are where it really gets interesting. While there are ammo refills and enemy guns to scavenge, fighting in a firefight normally might drain you down to your weaker options, but if you mix in some powers, you can make battles both more interesting and use your ammo more intelligently. Jack is given abilities like the ability to stop time in a radius, create a time shield bullets can’t penetrate, the ability to speed up his movements to dodge foes or flank them, as well as a special sight benefit that lets him spot useful things in the environment or enemies. Rather than feeling like a sequence of similar gun battles, Quantum Break encourages you to use your time powers to overcome your foes who can gun you down with ease if you aren’t smart about it. As the game goes on, your enemies became better against your time powers as well, some able move freely in temporally still areas and some even having ways to suppress your time powers, but for the most part the game lets you continue to use your interesting skills even when your enemies become better equipped at dealing with them. You can level up your powers as well to make them more effective, and they may even find some usefulness outside of combat. Navigating areas sometimes requires reversing the state of damaged objects, and while platforming isn’t the game’s strongest suit, it’s never emphasized so much that it drags things down when it crops up. Most areas are designed for their use in gun fights, as an area used for story purposes, or as an area to scrounge around for narrative objects. You may even end up in areas where time is completely stopped for everyone but you, constantly shifting between its appearance at different points in time, or cracking at the seams from so much time damage, the environment sometimes an even deadlier foe than Serene’s men.

Besides just handling time travel in an impressive manner, Quantum Break has a few other interesting narrative choices that make its plot even more riveting. One big one is that at the end of each of the game’s chapters, you actually get to play as Serene for a bit. Here, Serene is forced to make a difficult decision in what are called junction points that will impact not just how he moves forward, but the course of the plot, Quantum Break’s story changing based on how you make Serene act in this moments. Serene being a sympathetic antagonist makes it much easier to try and decide as him rather than just choosing what seems the best for Jack’s side of the story, but these choices still aren’t so cut and dry. With his own temporal powers, Serene can get brief flashes of how his choice may impact the future, the player often having to pick a double-edged sword no matter which one they go with. For example, the first choice is between Serene being more ruthless in his efforts to stop Jack, his hired gunmen doing whatever it takes to stop him but at the same time turning the public against Serene, but the other choice involves Serene playing into PR, convincing the public Jack is a dangerous terrorist but needing to be more even-handed in how he uses his armed forces to combat Jack as a result. An option may seem more narratively fulfilling or better for the gameplay, and since you’re in the shoes of the guy you’re fighting against the rest of the time, these choices seem more weighty than if Jack had been asked to make similar ones. On top of all that, these junction points and other optional narrative moments in the story can have an impact on the T.V. show.

 

While Quantum Break may scare some players off with a hefty additional 70+ GB download it offers, these are actually part of a T.V. show related to Quantum Break that is normally streamed live from Microsoft’s servers but can be downloaded if you don’t have a reliable internet connection. The T.V. show is a fully live action complement to Quantum Break, the course of the show actually impacted by the choices you make in-game with a focus on those junction point choices most of all. Rather than following the main cast still though, the show follows some secondary characters who work for Serene or against him, the damage to time forcing them to act with or against each other. Most of the story follows one of Serene’s main enforcers Liam struggling to figure out what to do after he learns time is stopping and he might not be saved when it does, the main plot of Quantum Break and the after-chapter episodes weaving into each other at moments that make one required to understand and enjoy the other but better for the other’s presence. The live action show component is an interesting sci-fi character drama and suspense story, and while it’s not on par with the best television has to offer, it does feel at least on the level of things like a typical crime focused show. Serene and Martin Hatch feature prominently in the show as well, and perhaps one of the reasons Quantum Break’s antagonist and story in general feel so well established is because we are given these long looks at almost pure plot focus. The main game knows when to pull back and make things more about story as well, the game’s focus on the narrative allowing it to be more than just a shooter with some time mechanics to make it more fun.

THE VERDICT: Time travel is at the heart of everything in Quantum Break. The gunplay that makes up the playable action is enhanced from its standard design into something more involved and strategic through use of your time manipulating abilities, but while it makes you powerful, the story is all about how dangerous time can be. As time unravels, Quantum Break shows the terrifying reality of how even small time shifts can impact a person, and at the core of it all, even the protagonist and antagonist of the story are against each other only because they both want to stop time’s end in different ways. Serene is a fantastic foe not only because the game takes the time to explain his motivations through the associated T.V. show, but because you can see his thought process and understand it quite easily, even having to make decisions as him in devoted segments. By making time such a force to be reckoned with, Quantum Break comes out with memorable characters and memorable moments without ever breaking the player’s immersion or restricting their enjoyment.

 

And so, I give Quantum Break for Xbox One…

A FANTASTIC rating. On their own, the time manipulating mechanics already make the gunfights in Quantum Break enjoyable enough to hold up their own game, giving the player limited uses skills that make the battles more engaging since the power balance can constantly shift to favor either side. A fight is tipped against you due to enemy numbers and weapon strength, but the time powers are your equalizer, allowing you to overcome the odds in confrontations that continue to shift their form as the game progresses. However, Quantum Break kept going after that, incorporating a plot that weaves in its time travel as the true main threat as well, the unraveling of reality giving you interesting areas to battle in and a powerful force to battle against. The story is definitely the main attraction despite having that strong gameplay side, with the characters well established by way of how time impacts them and how that makes them interact with the other characters in their efforts to overcome this temporal disaster. Character motivations make sense in game and in the show, the desperation of the situation forcing heated conflicts between every player.

 

There are a few things you could pick apart, the platforming is barely present but not great when it is there, temporally placed individuals called Shifters have an unusually small presence ultimately, and no doubt there will always be some illogical element in a time travel story… even though the fact time is damaged could be an easy explanation for it despite the already impressive consistency on show not seeming to need it too much. This is definitely a time travel story where time enhances the characters and their interaction through its presence, Quantum Break not treating it as some lightly used convenience but the core of everything taking place. Because of how well the temporal elements are weaved through everything to improve the game and make it interesting, Quantum Break ends up being a wonderful time.