Quantum Break Impressions Preview Act 1 and Act 2

While I was able to post coverage last week for Quantum Break I thought it would be better to save my impressions until I was able to release both weeks of early content thoughts at once. Saves myself writing two separate articles and focuses the writing a bit. At this point we've actually prepared our site review which is exciting and you can expect that April 1, 2016 which is going to be awesome (we cannot divulge any sort of score at this point). For now these are my impressions for the following areas within the amazing Quantum Break on Xbox One; Act 1-2 (at a certain point); Act 1-3, Act 1: Junction, Episode 1 of Live Action Show: Monarch, Act 2-1 and Act 2-2. This is all that I'll be discussing below and I've also included both of our early video coverage below in place of pictures for this impressions. First off I want to say that I'm a big fan of past Remedy titles with Alan Wake being one of the best games I've probably ever played and I was lucky to try out Alan Wake: American Nightmares as well through backwards compatibility this past week. The studio has clearly taken the concepts introduced in those titles and purely expanding on them creating a fresh story with a general focus on time manipulation. The story follows Jack (Shawn Ashmore) as the main character and where we being with our impressions is just escaping a laboratory which is what kicked off our quest. The two are attempting to escape from the Monarch corporation guards that have flooded the ability with Jack first learning of his new abilities. With this we witness the first time stopping event where you're free to move through the world basically by yourself without a care which is magical. Words don't quite capture how elegant this world is as it has so many neat things floating around in the air that you're able to just move through.

Within this first area we also get some core abilities such as creating a minor time stop which can suck in bullets for a bit of time before unleashing the buildup. Or another fun one called time dash where you zip to your targeted direction with a time halt after to quickly take an enemy out. There are many more abilities, but I can't go over those at the moment since they appear later on and by the end your skill set is amazing. Even with these basic abilities it's a ton of fun manipulating time by zipping to the side or just halting some enemies to reload. The skills must certainly sound interesting and not only that but they fit into the beautiful world so naturally. Remedy has truly created a beautiful world with graphical depth that few titles have with every little thing in the game having detail. You can read every little detail off of signs or even catch full real video at times in certain spots which is great. They've also done something wonderful for games attempting to evolve interactivity by introducing video elements into their game. This is one of the first times I've seen the two melded together so perfectly and it's refreshing. You get to play through the episode gameplay wise and then after a junction point you get to relax for a bit to watch a video. The junction element is important as these completely alter your experience in both the video elements and the gameplay itself. The first choice I made was to take a PR stance instead of killing protestors to hide the mess. The following real video then had this girl taking Monarch's side as these choices are made by your nemesis. At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal, but the events later definitely hinged on that moment, but I can't discuss that at this point. The video also follows your choice and the footage is great. Usually I just enjoy playing games for gameplay, but having a video come in for a fair bit of time was actually refreshing. I found these video elements build the story in a way games just can't by building side characters that are essential later on and focusing more on what surrounds Jack. I've written a fair bit at this point in the form of a tease, I hope you'll check out our review when it releases and for now check out the great gameplay of what this article was going over. If you have any other questions about these two acts leave a comment and I'll try my best to answer!

Impressions Made on Quantum Break during Early Access