Origin .
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". After settling on the genre, the team pitched the project to Microsoft again and was accepted. The game was directed by
Sam Lake, the writer of
Alan Wake and Remedy's previous games,
Max Payne and
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. Greg Louden, who received an
Academy Award for Visual Effects for his work in
Gravity, served as a
narrative designer.
Ben Ketai was the TV show's director.
Story The game's story was written by a team of three full-time writers along with Lake, with a goal of making it "believable". As a result, the team drew numerous inspirations from
pop culture and included various references to films like
Inception and
Interstellar. The team was also inspired by
The Matrix,
The Terminator,
Back to the Future,
Primer,
Looper, and other films. The game's story was described as "complicated", and Louden had to create a chart for the team to keep track of the story progression. He also reinterpreted familiar film
clichés in an attempt to make dated ideas fresh again. To add dimensions, the team took inspirations from postmodern literature and included many self-references, such as a standalone TV show called ''Alan Wake's Return
. Quantum Break'' was designed to have mainstream appeal, with Lake describing it as "Remedy’s summer blockbuster movie". The game's "junction point" concept was created by Louden. There are approximately 40 variations in the game TV show, triggered by "quantum ripples", which unlock deleted scenes and give players additional insight on the story, and junction points. The player plays part of the game as Paul Serene and makes decisions as him at these points. Inspired by
Die Hard, the writers hoped that this approach would allow them to create a complex villain with depth. According to Louden, the story characters are not "black and white", and depending on the player's perspective, players will feel sympathy for the villain and feel torn when making the choices. Junction points were a tool used by Remedy to add replayability to the game, unlocking alternate content and changing the state of the world, and the gameplay segments remain identical regardless of players' choices. Lake described the TV show as a "natural progression" for the studio, having experimented with the format with the two
Max Payne games, which feature televisions, and
Alan Wake, which has the
Bright Falls live action show, Lake added that the TV part can serve as an entry point for people who do not play video games frequently, and draw them into video gaming. Lake initially thought Microsoft was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea, but had accepted the pitch mainly because of Microsoft's vision of having Xbox One as an entertainment device with rich TV features at that time. However, as the TV show was not part of Microsoft's project, the closure of
Xbox Entertainment Studios did not affect the progress of the TV show production. It was created by Lifeboat Productions, who worked closely with Remedy through
Skype conversation and screenplay review. Many scenes had to be shot twice due to the game's alternate content and branching nature. Three writers from Remedy also contributed to the TV show content. Ashmore, Monaghan and Gillen were announced as the game's protagonists and antagonists a year later, and Durrie starred in the game as Nick. The development team held several brainstorming sessions, which inspired the team and helped them to fix the design of the game's time machine. The team was also inspired, when creating their own fictional "Meyer-Joyce particle" and "Meyer-Joyce field", by the
Higgs boson and Higgs fields. The game was designed to be fast-paced, but the concept of time-travel did not accommodate the elements of this kind of gameplay. As a result, the team opted to include a broader theme: time itself. They set the game in a world where time collapses, leading to various dangerous situations. According to Lake, the theme of time connected all the elements featured in the game. The setting also allowed the team to add new gameplay mechanics, such as the time manipulation powers. The puzzles also serve to remind players of their arsenal of abilities. Some of the environmental puzzles, including the rewind feature, were inspired by titles like
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and
Life Is Strange, while the stutter sequences were inspired by
Salvador Dalí and
Inception's dream sequence.
Technology The game utilizes a new in-house engine called the Northlight Engine. To represent the idea of "broken time" and have a detailed destruction system, the team created lots of environments which put the player character in the midst of destruction, utilizing technologies ranging from geometric distortion waves to Thinking Particles. The team also used
Digital Molecular Matter, a technology developed by Pixelux that allows structures and objects to react in the game the same way they would in reality. According to Mikko Uromo, the technology allows them to "simulate complex scenarios on a scale that hasn't been possible before" and is crucial to the game's development. The team also worked significantly on the game's lighting system. It was designed to be dynamic, and the team refined it to include eyes and hair. They also created a new
global illumination system for indirect lighting. The team spent a lot of resources in carrying out detailed
motion capture, to enhance players' engagement with the story and make it easier for them to form emotional attachments to characters, and to keep the game and the TV show consistent with each other. They also hoped that use of this technology would add realism to the game and prevent players from getting distracted by the characters' unrealistic behaviors and appearances. Lake added that one of the challenges when recording motion capture is to convince the inexperienced actors, who thought that the system lacked complexity, not to overact. According to Lake, the game features a technology that creates realistic digital counterparts of the characters and records every little detail of their faces.
Audio According to Remedy, audio drives the visual effects. The development team put a lot of effort into differentiating normal time and time stutters. When time enters a stutter, many audio effects change, with guns firing at a lower pitch, while dialogue and music began stretching. The game's soundtrack was composed by Petri Alanko, the composer of
Alan Wake. Alanko made use of the modular audio software
Reaktor, but was not satisfied with the software's built-in instruments and decided to create his own set of custom sounds. The music in the game was described by Alanko as "meandering" and "sublime" to support the game's emotional moments, while intentionally avoiding aggressive tones. The soundtrack was inspired by the music of
Tangerine Dream,
Hecq,
Michael Stearns,
Aphex Twin and
Trent Reznor. He intended to add
orchestral soundtrack into the game, but Microsoft rejected the idea. The music changed to an
electronic style, and he used artificial instruments such as
Roland synthesizers.
iam8bit is set to release a
vinyl limited edition of the game's soundtrack in the third quarter of 2016. In 2015, Lifeboat Productions hired
John Kaefer for the soundtrack of the TV show. Kaefer and Alanko did not cooperate with each other closely as the level of interactivity between the two mediums are different. Due to the game's alternate content, he had to compose several music pieces for some scenes. As the TV show served to expand on the story and provide explanation, the music reflects the "ideas of intrigue, deception, tension, love, and loss". As Remedy encouraged
YouTubers to make videos about the game and players to share their experience with others, the team introduced an audio option which allows players to turn off licensed music. This allows YouTubers to upload their videos online without having to worry about
copyright infringement. The licensed music featured in the game was specially chosen by Lake, and is played at the end of each act and the credits scene. ==Release==