Quantum Break

Quantum Break is an action-adventure video game played from a third-person perspective. Players play as Jack Joyce, who has time manipulation powers in a world where time stutters, making everything freeze except Joyce. Players face a variety of enemies, including Monarch security guards; Strikers, who are equipped with specially designed suits which allow them to manipulate time; and Juggernauts, heavily armored enemies equipped with very strong firearms. Different enemies have different behaviors, and the game requires players to deploy different tactics and strategies in order to defeat them.

To defeat enemies, players can make use of various offensive and defensive abilities. Jack can find four types of firearms: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and carbine rifles. He also possesses several types of time manipulating powers. "Time Stop" freezes time around enemies with a time bubble.

Quantum Break is set at and around the fictional city of Riverport, Massachusetts, where, due to miscalculations by Paul Serene, a time travel experiment goes wrong. Doused in chronon radiation, the material that makes time travel possible, Jack Joyce and Paul Serene are granted time-based abilities; for example, both can freeze time and move at higher speeds, whilst a higher dose of chronons means Serene can see into the future to decide which choices to make in the present. Additionally, the collapse of the machine damages the structure of time, causing a "fracture" that sporadically freezes the passage of time for all without time-travel abilities or the correct equipment. Joyce and his ally, Beth Wilder, are subsequently pursued by Monarch Solutions, a corporation founded by Serene.

The rules of the story stress that time cannot be changed through traveller actions as per the Novikov self-consistency principle; Paul Serene gives an example of trying to save a dead vagrant he and Jack discovered in their youth, only to startle the vagrant and cause the fall that killed him when he goes back in time. Another enforced rule is that travelers can only move between machines located at different times using the same core: as such, it is impossible for the characters to travel back before the first power-up of the core, nor would they be able to travel between different time machines as the cores would be different. The game features narration from Jack himself.

Quantum Break was developed by Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios. In 2010, the company released Alan Wake, another title published by Microsoft. The game received high critical praise but was not a significant commercial success for either company. Remedy intended to develop a sequel to Alan Wake after the release of the first game, and hoped to include live action elements into the game. The concept was pitched to Microsoft, who showed no interest in publishing another Alan Wake game and wanted to diversify their games lineup.

However, Microsoft was impressed by the idea of having a live action show within a video game, wanted to publish a game featuring interactive narrative. They hoped to partner with Remedy for a new intellectual property, in which Remedy could expand the live action part of the game; Remedy agreed. The team believed that one of the best themes that can accommodate a story with choices was time travel, as the general idea of this kind of story is to change past events. The idea of having a game about quantum physics originated from a TV episode within Alan Wake called "Quantum Suicide".

Critical reception for Quantum Break was divided but generally positive, according to aggregator Metacritic, with the Xbox One version receiving better reviews than the Windows version. Critics generally praised the game's graphics, gameplay and story, but had mixed opinions regarding the game's TV show and the choices featured in the game.

The game's graphics received critical acclaim, with Sam Loveridge from Digital Spy proclaiming it as one of the "best-looking" video games available for the Xbox One. Critics also praised the game's detailed character models, which made the game's characters look more lively. Some critics were impressed by the game's various particle effects and destruction mechanics, especially during the stutter moments, which were described as "impressive" by Peter Brown from GameSpot, "gorgeous" by David Houghton from GamesRadar, and "eye-popping" by Tristan Ogilvie from IGN. While Matt Buchholtz from Electronic Gaming Monthly thought that the locations featured in the game fit the game's atmosphere, Peter Paras from Game Revolution criticized them for being too similar to each other.