Quantum Break: Best Sci-Fi Time Travel Tech Ever?

 

 

"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Delmore Schwartz

Quantum Break is a new video game on PC and XBox One. It is a sci-fi third-person shooter that also incorporates four live-action "episodes" of a TV show in between the five chapters. Some things you do in the game affect what you see in the episode, and what happens in the episodes also effect what you see in the game. While it is mostly successful in what it is trying to be, the most interesting thing about it is the time-travel ideas introduced.

One of my favorite tropes in science-fiction is time-travel. Actually, one of my favorite concepts in SCIENCE is time travel. Often science-fiction either doesn't take the science part seriously or the there are so many plot holes it's impossible to enjoy the story. Despite some general story, character, and game-play issues, the time travel part of the game is not only scientifically sound and logical but also based on recent discoveries and technologies such as black holes, the Higgs boson, and the Large Hadron Collider.

Quantum Break main cast

The main question the game asks (and mostly answers) is "Can we change the past?" This is also the big philosophical difference between the protagonist and antagonist in the game. (You actually play the role of each in various parts of the game's story.) The protagonist, Jack, believes he can change the future while the antagonist, Paul (played by Game of Thrones's Aidan Gillen), believes there is nothing that can be done to change the past (or future in his case having traveled into the past). The end of the game cleverly addresses this question in a way that, in a way, allows you to choose who you think was ultimately right.

Large Hadron Colider  Geneva, Switzerland

One of the best parts about the time travel science in the game is the idea of a "chronon particle." It is the time-force carrying particle of a fictional "Joyce-Wilder field" that permeates the universe. Similar to how the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles the Joyce-Wilder field controls how particles move through time. If time really is a "thing" that exists (and isn't an artifact of how we experience the universe) it makes sense there could be some sort of time field and a boson associated with that field. The fact that the writers obviously gave this so much thought to this portion of the plot is great fun and should be admired.

Time machine design - The core creates a small black hole then a time traveler walks around inside the circular corridor

The time travel in the game also relates to one of the few things in the known universe that can truly warp time - a black hole. The core of the time machine creates a small black hole that warps space. The visual effect when the time machine core is activated is very cool and it is great that they give black holes a mention as part of their time machine. In the real world I'm sure if the mass of the black hole was large enough to create the space distortion shown the gravity of it would certainly be enough to overcome the Earth's in the small area around the machine. Papers, pens, and other light objects near the machine should be falling towards the time machine's core, if not the characters themselves. Still the coolness factor overcomes any nitpick that the physics doesn't quite make sense.

Your time powers have this very cool broken glass/faceted crystal look.

The time powers you have in the game are also very cool. During one of the uses of the time machine there is an accident which bathes the hero and villain in chronon particles and gives them time-altering powers. The powers you have are awesome but unfortunately there isn't as many opportunities to use your powers as I would have liked. There are only a couple dozen small areas where you actually engage in combat, but the times you ARE able to use your full powers are some of the most visually impressive fights I have seen in any medium.

Cool things you can do:

• Make a bubble of stopped time around a bad guy and then shoot at his time-frozen person over and over and then when the time-bubble collapses all of the bullets you shot at him hit all at once resulting in a huge explosion. So sweet.
• Shoot a sort of time-field bolt into the middle of a group of guys and watch them fly across the room when it explodes.
• Dash with time-assisted super-speed towards a guy and hit him backwards. After you do this time freezes briefly and you can shoot him while he is frozen.
• Make a shield around you that stops all bullets. When the bad guys shoot at you it sends cracks through your shield until it breaks.  While inside it you are free to shoot guys in front of you without getting hurt.

Your time-shield power protects you from enemy bullets while you are free to shoot them

Some of the most impressive battles are when you chain together these powers. Some of my favorites combos were to freeze one guy then quickly shield yourself and blast away at him over and over until the time bubble and/or your shield collapse then dash away into another guy and shoot him as well.

Another cool part about the battles is that the bad guys also have some time powers and can do similar things like dash around the battle zones. When you kill these guys they loose their time-altering powers and become frozen in space like the rest of the environment. When this happens their time-contolling backpacks spark and send out beams of energy which also freeze and float in the air in front of you.

When you disable an enemy's time-power suit they become frozen

The "tv show" live-action segments of the game are well produced and ambitious, but ultimately fail to add much to the game. I admire the desire to make a "show" that directly ties into the game but in the end it was mostly pretty boring. The last (of four) episodes was actually pretty good but one out of four is not a great success rate. Hopefully next time someone does this (and I hope someone does try this again) they should think it through a bit more. I would have much preferred if there were some episodes you could just watch as soon as you buy the game and then others you unlock doing things in the game. It would have been cool to have more episodes showing the things and places from the game (but from a different perspective).

The show part would have been more enjoyable if I could just watch the show when I was in the mood for a TV show and not have to sit through it when I was itching to play more of the video game. (It may actually work that way okay, but there is nothing in the game to indicate that you don't really need to watch the show if you want to skip it. It is presented as just the next part of the story.)


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Don't read this until you have played the game or don't care about having at least part of the story ruined for you.

It is fairly unique for me to have played a game all the way through that is this new. Usually by the time I play a game the whole internet has already played it and written everything they can about it. There are not many write ups of the plot but I have also yet to finish my second go through of the game so I am also trying to avoid too many spoilers right now.

As in most time-travel stories the plot can be pretty complicated. A few questions I have, and things that stood out to me, from the story at the end:

• It's ultimately not clear who was "correct" about if time can be changed. At first blush it seems like you changed the future and were able to avert the "End of Time," but thinking about it afterwards it is not so straight forward for a few reasons:
• The original End of Time event happened in 2021. The villain assumed it was caused by the malfunction to the time machine that sent him to the End of Time but the scientists in the game tell him that something has accelerated it to make it happen sooner causing him to have to accelerate his plan.
• After fixing the stutters in time caused by the malfunction of the time machine the hero asks if the villain may have been right all along. 
• Mr Hatch, the CEO of the villain's company, turns out to be a time traveler from deep in the past who lived during the End of Time and may have some motive to make sure it comes to pass. 
• In other words, the disaster you avoided at the end of the game is probably a DIFFERENT disaster than the one that caused the "End of Time" that the villain witnessed. Very cool.
• We find out (only through a long bit of text on a tablet near the end of the game) that Martain Hatch is also a time traveler. He entered a "natural" time machine (a time "hatch" *eye-roll*) in a cave thousands of years ago and lived in the End of Time. He also may have become a time-zombie-type creature, called a "shifter" that all people exposed to chronon particles seem destined to turn into. I hope this story is explored a bit more. I like the idea of a "natural time machine" somewhere.
• The idea that you can't travel back in time any farther back than when the time machine was created is based on science (I wish I could find a reference for this). I heard a physicist mention it on an episode of The Universe but I can't find anything in a cursory online search.
• It's pretty cool that the villain is your friend from college who get sent back in time by an accident and was actually funding his own time machine via a huge corporation he created by using his knowledge of the future to get rich in the stock market. 
• The idea that you cannot change the future is central to the conflict of the game. This is the easiest way to get around paradoxes - such as going into the past and killing your own father - because there is no way to do that as you didn't do it in the first place. This is actually also a real scientific principal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle I have the same opinion that IF time travel was possible you wouldn't be able to change the past at all. Any time travel that has happened to the past has ALREADY happened. I think this mostly is because of the repulsiveness of the idea of multiple universes that is the other way out of paradoxes.
• Another really cool part is the "Back to the Future II" moment where you go back to the beginning of the game and witness events from another perspective. It is really fun to play the game a second time and see the things that you did when you came back to the past actually happened the first time you played the game as well. It reinforces the rule of time travel that you can't alter the past.
• I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fact that there is never any dumb lines about there being some sort of paradox that could result because of a choice you make. It is such a silly idea in so many time travel stories that humans could do something, like meeting themselves in the past, and somehow cause the universe to explode or something. It was cool that the villain goes back in time and says hi to himself the very first time you see time travel in the game.
• On the other hand it was also really stupid that the villain thought that some time machine made on Earth could "end time." The cool part is that, looking back, it is probably the case that the time machine malfunction in the game DIDN'T actually cause the End of Time. Still, it was dumb to hear characters convinced that it was true. That is just dumb to think that anything we could do would have consequences on a universal scale. The dumb idea that the LHC could have turned the Earth into a black hole is a less silly idea and it would have been fun if they referenced that "sky is falling" moment before the LHC turned on a few years ago in the game. The universe is vast and full of forces beyond our comprehension, let alone control. There is nothing we could do to destroy it.

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The bad guys colors remind me a lot of Infamous Second Son baddies (below).

Infamous Second Son - Do all evil private armies buy their yellow accented outfits from the same place?

So I've rambled a lot about this game but let me sum up my thoughts here:

• The time travel science fiction is great. One of the most scientifically realistic depictions of time travel I have ever heard of.
• The "time powers" you get are some of the most stylish powers I've ever seen in a game. I wish they weren't reliant on you having a gun. I am tired of using normal guns in games where you have super powers. I would have preferred if you have more energy projectile powers like Infamous Second Son. (To be fair, Second Son is my favorite game of all time so obviously I would prefer if other games were more like it).
• The combat was very cool but took up too little of the time I spent with the game. I spent about 1/4 of the game playing the "game" part and rest was walking around or watching cut-scenes.
• The story is VERY linear. I had forgotten how limiting linear storylines really are. I haven't played a game that has this little choice in a long time. It is very stifling how boxed in every environment is and the movement when not in a firefight is very slow.
• There is a surprising amount of platforming in this game and none of it is any fun. It is very pretty to look at, but the clunky jumping controls feel very dated and were very frustrating.
• The obnoxious amount of emails available everywhere are the worst story-telling elements in the game. Much of the plot is told through them and having to sit and read long emails brought the game to a screeching halt every time. It would have been much better to have the emails be read by the actors while you walk around the environments.
• The "End of Time" is set up early on as the big disaster that both the hero and villain are trying to avoid. During most of the game we are not giving any idea what the "end of time" actually means so it comes off as extremely cliched and lazy. When we finally find out what it really means (in the final chapter) it is actually a pretty cool concept but we are only TOLD what it is and never SHOWN. This is a huge disappointment. If we ever got to actually see the End of Time (and some of the dangers present) it could have elevated the whole story to another level.

Shawn Ashmore, Iceman from the X-Men movies, plays the protagonist, Jack Joyce

Despite having a lot of negatives this game it is a very unique experience. There are some great ideas in the time travel science and the time controlling powers are a blast. At times it is a slow, and even boring, but the second play-through has been much more fun skipping the long cut scenes and live-action parts and focusing on the dynamic and fun shootouts.

Anyone with an interest in time travel, sci-fi tv shows, or stylish third-person shooters should give this a chance; just wait until it goes on sale for $30 or less.

Overall Score:

B-

Positives:

• Cool plot
• Unique story telling
• Beautiful graphics
• Stylish game-play

Negatives:

• Very linear story
• Clunky platforming sections
• Too much story in long boring emails
• Uneven acting in live-action sections