Release Date: 05/04/2016
Played On: Win
Available On: XBO / Win
Time Played: 9h 41m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft Studios / Xbox Game Studios
There are some developers who always pique my interest thanks to their track record and Remedy Entertainment are no exception. While some studios can be known for a franchise or a singular gimmick, Remedy have what I like to call a recognisable signature to their games. As with other developers of their calibre, this underlying style manages to go a whole lot further than a franchise or mascot ever could.
On one hand there are some recognisable mechanics and systems in their games that are super identifiable, such as bullet-time in Max Payne, or the torch mechanics in Alan Wake. However, these are disparate and exclusive to their series they inhabit, which is a lot of fun to play with, but hardly what you'd call synonymous with a studio's signature style.
What I'm trying to talk about is something a little more elegant and subtle. It's something that only a few talented studios manage to achieve, as it reaches far beyond any individual release. There's a reason that when I play an id Software game, I immediately fell like I’m playing an id Software game, even though they're not all hyper-fast first-person shooters. It's why the level of detail in a Naughty Dog game never surprises me, as they're the masters of excellent animation and world building.
In the same way, when I think of Remedy Entertainment, I think of their gunplay mechanics and how they deliver their narrative. All you need in order to know you're in a Remedy game, is to fire a gun through a cut-scene, and talk to an important NPC while you're running around exploring at will.
Of course I’m being reductive, but for a moment let's cast ourselves back to the original Max Payne, which was released way back in 2001. At the time I played the game on my PC and had never seen anything as remarkable in my gaming life. Sure the bullet-time was awesome, and the noir/graphic novel story-telling was a breath of fresh air, but those aren't the first thing I think of when I think of Max Payne. In fact, the thing that pops to mind immediately, is one of the smallest aspects of the entire game: the bullets.
When you shoot a gun in most other games, they use something that's commonly known as a "hit-scan" system. This basically means that when you pull the trigger, an invisible line is drawn between the gun and where it's being aimed. If it happens to make contact with something that can be hit, the thing gets hit. Seems pretty reasonable, but at the same time there's no delay between pulling the trigger and whatever's on the other end being hit. So essentially the game scans where the gun is pointing, then hits it accordingly.
The obvious difference between this method and reality, is that there's no actual bullet being fired from the gun. There's no physical object that is launched through the air in order to damage whatever it hits. If you're left wondering why, then the simple answer is that it's easier for a computer to just draw a line and hit whatever's in the way, than it is to create an entire object (a bullet) and send it flying through the air. Plus, when you think about how quickly these things happen, using a hit-scan system doesn't really break the player's immersion.
At least, that's how things used to be done all the time, and even though many games still use a form of hit-scan for their gun shooting systems, many have adopted an actual physics system where bullets fly through the air. Partly thanks to better and more powerful hardware being available these days, but I would also argue thanks to games like Max Payne and studios like Remedy Entertainment.
Max Payne was one of the first games I played where every bullet you shot was an actual object in the world. This wasn't the first time this sort of thing had been done, but it was the first time I ever noticed it as a useful and recognisable gameplay mechanic. It might not seem like such a big deal, but when you're flying through the air in slow motion thanks to bullet-time, it makes a big difference to see the bullets fly out of your gun and travel through the air.
As I already said, this isn't the first time this had happened, but it was one of the first times I actually noticed it as a core part of a game's design and style. It reminded me of how cool it was to fire rockets in Doom while side-strafing fast enough to see the sprite fly through the air. With bullet-time slowing everything down, watching the bullets fly through the air and hit (or miss) their targets was something to behold.
By now you might be thinking "that's a lot of crap to preface a post about Quantum Break", but if you've read any other posts here you might not be surprised. Ultimately, I don't feel like I can accurately talk about Quantum Break without first outlining why I always love any game Remedy Entertainment create.
When I talk about their signature style as a developer, I'm mostly talking about their shooting mechanics that I first encountered in Max Payne. These same systems can be found in just about all their games, including the entirely new IP Quantum Break. However, it's not just physical bullets flying around, it's about shooting things while cut-scenes happen.
Returning to Max Payne for a moment; this was a game that approached cut-scenes and story-telling in much the same way as other contemporaries like Half-Life did. This was one of those games where everything happened in-engine, and even without taking control away from the player. There are many "scenes" in Max Payne where you are free to wander and explore an area while some NPC talks away at you.
This might not seem like much of a big deal these days, but many games back then would stick to pre-rendered cut-scenes. Again this was largely thanks to technical limitations and artistic intent, as pre-rendering a scene allows for much better graphics than home PCs and consoles were able to deliver. In this way, Quantum Break has made some questionable choices, but we'll get to their story-telling later on.
The point I'm trying to make about Remedy as a studio, is that everything in Max Payne was rendered in-engine (while you're playing). This meant that even when the camera zoomed in on some bad dude you just shot, you could keep on shooting and see the bullets flying. To this end, the game gave you way more control than most others on the market at the time. I can't remember any other game that let you move around and shoot during cut-scenes as freely as Max Payne did.
In a way, this is what ruined Max Payne 3 for me, which unfortunately didn't get made by Remedy Entertainment, and was handed off to Rockstar instead. Sure they kept bullet-time in the game, but everything else felt wrong mechanically. Cut-scenes were largely pre-rendered, or they took control away from the player completely. Bullets didn't feel as visceral as they once had, and everything was a little too polished and generic,. Suffice to say that the game had lost that signature Remedy style that had made the previous games so great.
Now it's time to get onto Quantum Break itself, as this was the first bit of new IP that Remedy had produced for a long time. Max Payne was already put out to pasture, and even Alan Wake was in the middle of publisher hell as companies fought over the rights. Then along comes Quantum Break, which promised to be as original and unique as the original Max Payne had been. This was Remedy's chance to let everyone know that they're still an incredible studio capable of amazing things.
For the most part, I think they've managed to nail it, even despite the huge flaws in Quantum Break, this is undoubtedly a game by Remedy Entertainment. However, the greatest compliment I can give after all this preamble, is that Quantum Break manages to embody that signature Remedy style of bullets and story-telling.
The story is basically a fairly straight forward science fiction about time travel and a dystopian future. You play as some chump whose oddball brother has invented a time machine, but he got funding from a big bad corporation who eventually try and take control of everything. It's not really a spoiler to say that you get caught up in the mix, and apparently you pick up some time-bending powers along the way.
Although, so does the prime antagonist and your arch-enemy, who obviously supports the corporate takeover and has time-bending powers of his own. Turns out that time travel isn't all that stable and the world is about to end, so it's up to us to stop the bad corporation from leaving all us peasants behind to die. It's nothing too surprising, but it's serviceable enough for a time travel story, which will always invite plot holes and spaghetti logic to keep everything making sense along the way.
The cool thing is that all these time related abilities end up being kind of fun to play with. It might not exactly be bullet-time, but there are many ways to mess with your opponents. From being able to move quickly from place to place, to slowing down time in a specific area in order to flank bad dudes, or platform over moving terrain.
I won't go into too much detail on the powers, as they're essentially just excuses for illogical movements during gunfights. It's a way to let the player zip around like a superhero and justifying it by saying "time stuff". However, the real meat and potatoes of these time mechanics, comes into play during certain scripted areas.
Every now and then we're asked to move through a location that is at the centre of some kind of quantum collapse. The gist is that everything in the area is in a state of flux, so buildings are being ripped apart, vehicles are flying through the air on a loop, and basically everything's messed up and wonky. It makes for some fun moments where you need to manipulate the environment by slowing down time, or reversing it completely, just to get from one place to another.
Unfortunately though, the downside is that these sections are only available in predetermined locations that have been purposely built around those mechanics. Most of the game is spent running from one location to another, fighting the bad guys who are in the way, and finding something that progresses the story.
Thankfully, that Remedy Entertainment signature is still present in the shooting mechanics and general gunplay. When you enter a room full of bad guys, you need to use a little bit of strategy and diligence to plan your attack, while successfully avoiding too much damage. After all, the player character is not a hardened fighter, just a dude with funky powers, so it's nice that you actually can't soak up a lot of damage at all.
The enemies themselves get harder throughout the game, but they don't actually pose much of a threat. Aside from some stronger versions later one, most of them are regular grunts who have been augmented with a single time ability. There are those that can dash around super quick, those that can toss a time-bending grenade, and so on.
Hence why I was pleased to discover that shooting these rather generic enemies, was actually a lot of fun. There's one ability in particular that allows you to freeze time, shoot as much as you can at an enemy, then time resumes and all of your shots hit at once. It makes for some interesting tactics where you have to run right into the line of fire, before dashing around to flank, manipulating time, then blowing them away.
Plus, when you kill the last guy in a room, you often get a close up slow motion animation of him falling to the ground. I was very pleased to discover that you can keep on firing and moving around during these animations, much like Mac Payne let you do so many years ago.
It's hard to really define why, but the best thing about playing Quantum Break is that it brought back the same feeling of playing Max Payne way back when. The running around and shooting parts of the game are very similar, which is to say that they have that unique Remedy feel. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to play their new game Control, and even have a crack at their horror game Alana Wake. I hope it's a mechanical thread that persists through all of Remedy's titles.
Not least because they kind of went a little bonkers with the story-telling in Quantum Break, and not in a good way. To be fair though, this game's narrative featured a lot of interesting and new methods that haven't been used in video games in quite the same way. So I have to commend Remedy for taking a chance and trying something new, but I can't deny that I hated just about every moment of storytelling in Quantum Break, without exception.
The only redeemable sections for the plot, were the few sequences where NPCs gave some exposition in-engine, during gameplay sequences. There's a lengthy part at the beginning where you're being introduced to everything and figuring out what's going on, where you're told a whole lot of story, but are free to walk around and explore as you listen. This is a good way to keep things interesting when you're delivering lore dumps, this is how the whole game should have done it.
Instead, someone had the genius idea to roughly splice a video game with a television show. What's more, they decided to break up gameplay with full half-hour or so episodes that stream online, instead of play from your hard drive. We've seen full motion video before, and it's really cool when used correctly, but there are two things I hate in my video games: not being able to play for long periods of time, and streaming things over the internet that continuously buffer or stutter because not everyone has a dedicated Google Fibre internet connection.
At key moments in the game, we're taken out of the gameplay completely and shown lengthy cut-scenes that are live-action episodes of the story unfolding. In theory this could be quite cool, after all the in-game characters are modelled on the actors that play them in the episode footage, so it's not so jarring when it changes from CG graphics to IRL photography. There are even small changes to each episode based on the choices you make during the game, but even those are signposted and obvious, so it's no surprise when a character says a thing that relates to the choice you just made.
It's a nice idea to intertwine some gritty drama within a video game, but it really doesn't work. Right now I can't tell you anything about the actual plot, because I was too distracted by all the random side characters involved. Additionally, I don't like bagging someone's performance that they were paid to do, but the good performances in Quantum Break are limited to one or two key characters.
To be fair to the actors, I'd also say that they were not given enough direction or decent material to work with, as most of their 'acting' appears rushed and unprepared. It doesn't help that the script is pretty woeful and lacklustre at best, so there really isn't a whole lot for anyone to work with and develop a memorable bit of media. Suffice to say that these live action cut scenes took themselves way too seriously and made the game look like a bit of a farce in comparison.
Then, to rub salt into the wound, each episode is streamed live as you watch, but let's face it - Quantum Break doesn't have the streaming capabilities of YouTube and Netflix. In fact, it would have been preferable if the videos were hosted on YouTube, as I would have been able to select a quality level that worked for me.
Instead, the cut scenes in Quantum Break end up being a stuttering sequence of frustration and persistence. Especially because I didn't want to skip lore that was apparently essential to the game, so I suffered through each and every episode. It doesn't take a genius to realise that sitting through buffering footage for over half an hour is far from being a fun way to enjoy a video game.
Which is ultimately why the live-action video cut-scenes frustrated me so much. It really sucks to be jamming through a game where you're getting all tactical and making difficult time-bending moves to defeat enemies, then hit a concrete wall and have to sit and watch something passively for an extended period of time. I hate it when it's super long in-game cut-scenes, and I hate it even more when it's the poorly served buffering mess that made up Quantum Break's live-action episodes.
Hence, I have to say that overall I was a little disappointed with Quantum Break, as the downsides became more of a laughable curiosity than a forgivable risk. It's always great to see games trying something new, and I particularly enjoy seeing how video games can integrate other methods of story-telling, but not at the expense of all fun and enjoyment.
To that end, this is a bit of an odd game for me, as I thoroughly enjoyed the parts where I actually got to play the game. That quintessential Remedy signature style is present in Quantum Break, even if it doesn't completely permeate through every aspect. Even the story itself was interesting enough and fun to uncover and play through, but it would have been great to see it delivered in a better way.
I suppose there always needs to be a balance between innovating for the sake of it, and ensuring that your new gimmick isn't annoying and ultimately boring. I hope that Remedy have learned some hard lessons from Quantum Break about how not to tell a story and deliver cut-scenes, but I will have to wait and see if that's the case.
For now though, this remains a bit of a double edged sword of a game, where half of it is a lot of fun, and the other half is annoying and incredibly dull. However, I have to be fair and say that I probably would have enjoyed the cut-scenes a lot more if they were downloaded to my hard drive instead of poorly streamed online. At least I would have liked to have the choice, as my hard drive space far outshines my internet connection, and it's a shame to think that this game has been tarnished by the fact that not everyone in the world has awesome internet.
Thus, I'm not sure I'd say that anyone has to rush out and play Quantum Break and experience it for themselves. I might say that if you know what I mean by the long preamble about Remedy's particular style and game feel, then maybe this would be worth a look if it's on sale. Just stay far away if you're not fortunate enough to have high-speed internet, or if you lack the patience of a zen monk.