Quantum Break
Developer Remedy Entertainment
Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format Xbox One, PC
Release 2016
Time has shattered in Quantum Break. As Jack Joyce, beneficiary of one of those laboratory explosions that bestow so many superheroes with their powers, you spend much of the game wandering around stuttered instants that have pressed pause on reality. So it’s apt that revisiting the game now feels like stepping back into a very specific moment, one that’s been preserved in amber.
Quantum Break was unveiled alongside Xbox One, at a press conference that’s mostly remembered as an hour-long stumble for Microsoft. The event put the emphasis on the console’s intertwining with television, and brought in Steven Spielberg to reveal a Halo live-action series. This was May 2013, right at the peak of Xbox Entertainment Studios, Microsoft’s attempt at venturing from Redmond into LA, and a month after the launch of Defiance, which was simultaneously a Syfy TV show and a Trion Worlds MMO.
The version of that arrived three years later was very different to what had been shown. In
