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"(Jack)This is what you need to know."
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"Time broke, a growing fracture leading to
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the end of time."
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"And of course,
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time travels."
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"(Jack) Going too fast for you?"
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"(Clarice) Jack!"
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Quantum Break is the latest third-person
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shooter from Remedy, the same studio that
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brought us Max Payne way back in 2001,
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and boy, does that lineage show.
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Like that game, this one revolves around a
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flashy gimmick that serves to differentiate
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its gameplay a bit from that of other, more
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straightforward third-person shooters.
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And like Max Payne, as well as Remedy’s
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2010 game Alan Wake, it stars a dude
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who cannot stop narrating his story for us.
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"Paul has always been hungry for success."
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"Time, is going to end."
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"That was the first time my powers started to manifest."
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Sadly, Quantum Break’s story is just a mess.
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Because of reasons, time is fractured,
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stuttering with increasing frequency and
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possibly approaching a point at which
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it just breaks down completely.
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Different men have different ideas
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about how to deal with this problem,
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and they fight with each other while
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uttering standard lines of dialogue like
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“It doesn’t have to end like this.”
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There are very few clear rules established
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in Quantum Break about how time works.
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It just behaves in whatever way it needs
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to behave to throw the characters into
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another complication or to give the
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main character new powers.
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Things just happen because they’re
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convenient for the story, so there’s
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nothing clearly at stake.
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You might argue that the quality of
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the story in a game like this isn’t all
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that important, but the thing is that
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Quantum Break really wants you to
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care about its story.
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You see, Quantum Break is one part game,
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one part live action TV show,
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and a good chunk of your time is spent
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watching the four live-action episodes
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that play out over the course of the game.
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And they’re just such generically bad TV,
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filled with cliché dialogue and cookie
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cutter characters, right down to the comic
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relief tech geek hacker type that seems
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to be a necessity these days in every
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mediocre crime drama.
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"(Brenner) That's pretty awesome."
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"(Charlie) laughs it's... cell phone rings shit."
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There are a few fine actors here, including
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Lance Reddick, who proves he can bring
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gravitas to even the goofiest material.
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"(Martin) Do I look threatened to you?"
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But the most that decent acting can do
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here is serve as a smokescreen to distract
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us from just how bad the story actually is.
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Quantum Break is, at its core, a tale of
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three men. You play as Jack Joyce, a man
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who comes away from a time travel mishap
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with the ability to manipulate time in specific ways.
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It’s sort of like last year’s adventure game
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Life Is Strange, only instead of using its
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concept to explore relationships and
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serious, real-life issues like bullying and
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suicide, Quantum Break just uses it as a
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source for spectacle.
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Jack’s brother Will is an eccentric genius,
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and the villain, Paul Serene, is a powerful
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CEO of a massive corporation named Monarch.
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Both Will and Paul’s characters are just
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recycled archetypes without any new flavoring.
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Quantum Break doesn’t even try to break
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from traditional male-dominated convention here.
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The TV show portion of the game also
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spends a lot of time on a supporting character
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named Liam Burke. Burke gets into weird
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escalator kick fights!
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Burke unleashes manly screams while
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strangling someone to death in a hospital
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as a bunch of people just stand around and watch!
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Burke has a pregnant wife who he would
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do anything—ANYTHING—to protect.
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Games and other mainstream media often
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reinforce the false notion of women as fragile
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and men as protectors whose role and
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responsibility requires them to do anything
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to either protect or avenge their families
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—Max Payne was definitely in this mold, too—
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but Burke is a particularly bland and
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formulaic take on this character type,
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and that’s really saying something.
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In Quantum Break, men are the prime actors
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and doers. Men are the ones with vision and
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ambition, who set things in motion and who
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then do whatever they can to make things
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go their way. The only female character
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who gets any real development is Beth Wilder,
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who helps Jack for reasons that aren’t
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immediately clear. In one of the game’s
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only moments that even come close to generating
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actual interest in its characters, we do
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eventually get to know Beth’s history and
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her motivations. Her main purpose here,
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though, is to serve as a love interest for
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Jack, and she’s ultimately more important
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for the emotional impact she has on him,
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than she is as an individual in her own right.
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"(Beth) My ride, my music. Deal with it."
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It’s also worth noting that like most of
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the enemies, Beth works security for the
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Monarch corporation. She must be the only
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woman on a team otherwise made up of
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hundreds of men, because there are no
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female combatants in this game.
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As for the combat, there’s a certain novelty
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for a little while to the spectacle of
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Quantum Break’s action.
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Seeing environments shatter in slow motion
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and seeing people get stuck in time looks pretty cool.
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But that’s all it does. Quantum Break’s
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structure feels overly familiar and predictable,
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from the heavy enemies it introduces with
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the weak points on their backs to the
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checkpoints near the end in which it throws
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so many enemies at you that you just
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want it all to be over.
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It’s unfortunate that Quantum Break’s
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ambition to tell video game stories in a
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new way is wasted on a story that
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doesn’t do anything new.
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The game doesn’t seem to care if it makes
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any sense or if its story actually tries to say anything.
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All it cares about is being “awesome” in
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the most insubstantial way possible,
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in the sense that it’s “awesome” to watch
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a locomotive crash again and again and again.
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There’s nothing underneath. Maybe, in 2001
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when Max Payne came out, a flashy gimmick
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was enough to make the mere act of
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filling hundreds of dudes with bullets
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more than a hollow exercise. But not now.
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We’re not actually stuck in time. But playing
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Quantum Break, it sure feels like we are.
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"(Will) If time is an egg, then that egg"
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"is fucking broken. The time egg is fucked."
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"(Jack) What? Why is there an egg in this?"