OXMUK
Remedy's Quantum Break is perhaps the weirdest of Xbox One's exclusives, an eccentric blend of live action TV and time travel, but the fundamentals should be familiar to fans of the developer's previous work. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz in an E3 interview, CEO Matias Myllyrinne has shed a bit more light.
According to Myllyrinne, the game "builds on two core elements of what makes Remedy what it is". "We've taken a lot of the learnings about interactive storytelling from Alan Wake and we hope to raise the bar further," he said. "We've taken a lot of the learnings about cinematic combat and shooting mechanics from Max Payne to push those further. We're building on those for what will hopefully be the ultimate Remedy experience."
Said experience is split between an episodic TV show and an episodic game, which share environments and characters. "The game and TV show ship together as one cohesive package," Myllyrinne told the site, adding "the episodes of the TV show are interwoven with the episodes of the game. The storylines take place in the same location. Hypothetically you can watch one or play the other but you'll get so much more out of it if you combine them together."
There's a preview in the current issue of OXM, from which I pluck the following insights: ostensible cutscenes in Quantum Break are actually fully interactive sequences, which you can freeze in order to explore and play with the minutiae. As a one-upping of Max Payne's celebrated Bullet Time ability, it's rather comprehensive.
Powering everything is the North Light engine, which is designed to deliver utmost fidelity in order to avoid embarrassing discrepancies between the live action stuff and in-game characters. "One of the first things we do is we take the actors to the dentists and take facial moulds," Myllyrinne continued. "Because it turns out teeth are different and if you place a generic set of teeth into faces that are visually accurate it morphs them into somebody else."
The title makes a lot of sense as an Xbox One exclusive - it should serve as a figurehead for Microsoft's campaign to merge TV and game consumption under one brand. Remedy recognises that there's an element of calculation to the manufacturer's enthusiasm, but is more than happy with the pay-offs.
"This is clearly a strategic move for them as well as us," Myllyrinne observed. "This is something - we have crazy ideas - but we need to fall back and let the full force of a company like Microsoft see it through. There's no way on God's green Earth that we would take on a venture like this on our own. We might have the appetite but there's no way we could."
http://www.oxm.co.uk/57600/xbox-one-exclusive-quantum-break-offers-max-payne-style-shooting-alan-wake-style-storytelling/
