Why Quantum Break is Xbox One’s Most Ambitious Game
Quantum Break is a time-bending, mind-warping action adventure shooter from Remedy Entertainment, the guys who brought us the first two Max Payne and Alan Wake games. It’s gorgeous and insanely detailed, with a big budget, live action TV series set to debut alongside it when it launches this year. It’s impossibly ambitious. How ambitious? So ambitious than Sam Lake, Creative Director at Remedy wishes he could go back in time to finish the game faster, just so you could play it sooner. In a video interview with Resero Network, Lake describes Quantum Break as “the biggest thing we’ve ever worked on”, and “the ultimate Remedy game experience”.
The folks at Remedy are taking every aspect of the game’s development very seriously. It’s a level of dedication that involves meticulously researching the science behind time travel itself. Stop laughing, they’ve even hired an ex-CERN physicist to consult on scientific accuracy. That isn’t to say Lake isn’t aware that he’s writing a videogame about time travel, just that he understands the importance of verisimilitude to the genre, adding that “The most important thing in a time travel story is to come up with your rules, stick to them and never break them.”
Getting the TV show in sync with the game and ensuring that they act as a cohesive whole has proven especially tough for the studio. “It’s challenging enough to create a big action game, and to do a show that connects on multiple levels… it’s a big, ambitious goal.”
However, reflecting on Remedy’s penchant for incorporating live action sequences into its games, Lake sees the big push for a full blown TV series as the next step in the studio’s evolution.
“A lot of hard work, and a lot of sleepless nights have gone into it, but it still feels exciting to us and a worthy challenge from the perspective of what a Remedy game is. It feels like a logical leap forward.”
Lake also confirmed that in order to experience every permutation and temporal twist and turn of the story, you’re going to have to play through the game several times. He declined, however, to give specifics on how long a playthrough might take. In closing, he assured us that what we’ve seen of the game isn’t necessarily indicative of what Quantum Break is. Remedy is still hard at work on the title, with a lot material being added and a layer of polish still to be applied. When asked what he’d do if he possessed protagonist, Jack Joyce’s ability to manipulate time, Lake responded with perhaps the most hardcore developer-esque answer imaginable.
You know, this kind of project is a lot of hard work, you’re always wishing you had more time, or in some cases you go through several iterations only to find out they don’t work. It would be wonderful to go back in time, come into the room and tell everyone, myself included… don’t go there, go this way.
Oh Sam. We could think of a thousand more mischievous things to do with the ability to manipulate time.