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Quantum Break |OT| We'll Be Right Back After This Commercial Break

S

Strootman

Member
StoOgE said:
Just finished it.

First of all, the shooting was very good. It isn't the best, and the auto cover system got me killed a few times. That said, I felt like a bad ass and really thought I looked cool in a way that Max Payne got very right.

The last boss fight was too much with bad checkpointing, but not as bad as I feared given some comments.

I loved especially that for the most part there were shooty bits, story bits and explory bits and they did a good job of differentiating between them. So I could explore without fear of shooty happening. Made certain areas feel life safe areas I could just read long bits about.

I loved the branching paths, and I loved that I got to influence some plot lines the way I wanted to see them go at the end. I loved the TV episodes. They were well acted, and while they probably could have been done in-engine, I liked the technical work of branching TV episodes, and if I have to sit the controller down to watch, I appreciate it feeling like a TV episode and breaking up the pacing.

Also: PERFECT LENGTH. At no point did I think I was getting too much shooty bits in a row and I never felt the game drag. It left me wanting more, but in the way you want something to. For the love of god, can we kill filler and keep games about this length?

Now, Spoiler stuffs:

I loved the story. It's a time travel story that initially seems insanely complicated with twists and turns, but by the end of it makes a ton of sense and seems very very straightforward. Everything mysterious is explained pretty well, every little tidbit has meaning behind it, and I loved that I cared about the side characters thanks to the TV show by the end.

I didn't fight Burke (I had Paul go insane at the end), but I generally appreciated what was happening and wound up choosing not to have Burke turn on me hoping he would have a heroic death which he sort of did.

Now, things that are not 100% clear to me.

1) Hatch is an ancient time traveler who found a naturally occuring time machine in a cave somewhere. Became a shifter and was working to bring about the end of time because it would be good for shifters for nebulous reasons.

2) Dr. Kim was chronon bombed by Hatch at some point in order to keep Paul Serene going nuts and degenerating in health, and ensure that there was not a "cure" for turning into a shifter.

3) Paul is probably still alive as a shifter in some way.

4) Jack Joyce is a shifter and still has hope that he can change the timeline in some way, but there is no proof that this is possible.

5) The world very may well have ended anyway. Paul may have seen the end of time in all actuality, but it was at a different point in time than he thought. This could explain why Paul was surprised that the stutters were picking up in pace sooner than expected. They weren't ready for the end of time yet. Dr. Amaral convinced him to trigger the lifeboat earlier than anyone had initially thought that it would happen, potentially because this was not the "end of time" stutter, but an earlier stutter.

6) Hatch knows Jack Joyce needs medical attention. He also knows that Serene is out of the way now and he runs Monarch. The Countermeasure is destroyed. So, if he can create a second rupture there is nothing stopping the end of time from occurring? Also explains why he killed a shitload of Monarch people on his way out, but never tried to hurt Jack. He has insight into the multiverse and time in a way we don't, and he knew that Jack would deploy the countermeasure and kill Paul, giving him what he ultimately wanted, i.e. bringing on the end of time where there are more shifters. This also allows the "can't change what happened" to persist. Paul had already traveled back in time from the end of time, so that loop needed to be closed in an effective way in order to actually bring about the permanent end of time without a life boat out there of people working to eventually correct the end of time and bring things back to normal.

Some of these seem to be that king of "open to interpretation on purpose" ending stuff, but thats kind of my take on how it wrapped up with a giant "room for a sequel" caveat that was definitely happening at the end there.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything

and I think the end of time will happen in 2021, as beth wilder hinted in her diary
 
Ascenion

Ascenion

Member
Just finished. Hot damn what a ride. Loved every minute. Such a blast to play, loved the story, loved everything. Going back through immediately to see the other choices. Need another run to sort my thoughts as well before I discuss what I think is going on.
 
L

LordBaztion

Member
Does the te retail version includes codes for Akan Wake and American Nightmare?
The digital one includes code for Akan Wake? I have just received American Nightmare.
 
T

Twin Tails

Member
LordBaztion said:
Does the te retail version includes codes for Akan Wake and American Nightmare?
The digital one includes code for Akan Wake? I have just received American Nightmare.
Click to expand...

Retail only comes with Alan Wake. No AN unless you preordered.
Digital preorder one comes with both, Alan Wake and DLC will arrive soony.
gMBgRCi.png
 
H

Hixx

Member
This final encounter is seriously souring me on the game. No checkpoints and have to skip (and this load screen...) a cutscene also.

Come the fuck on.
 
E

exemp30

Member
Hixx said:
This final encounter is seriously souring me on the game. No checkpoints and have to skip (and this load screen...) a cutscene also.

Come the fuck on.
Click to expand...
Same here I stopped after the second try and I dunno if I have the effort to try again.
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Hixx said:
This final encounter is seriously souring me on the game. No checkpoints and have to skip (and this load screen...) a cutscene also.

Come the fuck on.
Click to expand...

End fight spoiler:

You only have to shoot Serene twice.

Just time dodge when the ground turns red. The guy I struggled with was the bullet sponge guy. It's not as long a fight as you think it is. You have to outrun like 3 or 4 of those big blasts in the second baddy wave. But those are easy to dodge.
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Strootman said:
I agree with everything

and I think the end of time will happen in 2021, as beth wilder hinted in her diary
Click to expand...

good catch. I thought time ended at 2021, but did math wrong in my head... so yeah, makes sense. The real end of time is 5 years after the games end in 2021.

Just in time for a sequel to come out and explain how Jack Joyce stops it!
 
J

jesu

Member
WadeitOut said:
Very sad that some people actually dislike when a studio tries new things and wishes it was a standard story driven TPS.
Click to expand...

I love the fact they did something different here.
I might not want it in every game, but I'm loving it in this one!
 
H

Hixx

Member
StoOgE said:
End fight spoiler:

You only have to shoot Serene twice.

Just time dodge when the ground turns red. The guy I struggled with was the bullet sponge guy. It's not as long a fight as you think it is
Click to expand...

The problem I'm having with it is the
there's so many fucking visual effects that meld together it's impossible at times to find out whether you're in range of it. So many different things cause the screen to desaturate etc

It's just poorly thought out.
 
S

Strootman

Member
end fight is easier than it looks

you just have to be careful with these red balls that appear, just keep always moving and run away from them and you will be safe
 
M

MBison

Member
Is there a good story synopsis somewhere like act by act? Just want to try and catch all details. I'm through act 1 and already a little confused on some details.
 
F

Family Fry

Member
I've played upto the start of act 5 now and I this will probably be my GOTY, it will be very hard to knock from the top of my list. Everything about it has been incredibly impressive and it has ticked all the boxes for me.

Also just have to say the OST is absolutely amazing, Petri Alanko is a god tier composer/artist with another incredible score.

I know there isn't a season pass but I want Remedy to know that if ANY story DLC ever gets released, I'll be there day one.
 
Z

Zvonimir Boban

Banned
Family Fry said:
I've played upto the start of act 5 now and I this will probably be my GOTY, it will be very hard to knock from the top of my list. Everything about it has been incredibly impressive and it has ticked all the boxes for me.

Also just have to say the OST is absolutely amazing, Petri Alanko is a god tier composer/artist with another incredible score.

I know there isn't a season pass but I want Remedy to know that if ANY story DLC ever gets released, I'll be there day one.
Click to expand...

I'm only halfway through Act 3 but yeah, I'd be up for any DLC. I don't even need any combat, give me puzzle platforming with Paul Serene and I'm in as long as it expands the story.
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
Okay, seriously, WOW. Can I just say that the very opening scene in Act 4 Part 3 where
Jack is walking through the Time Machine
is pretty much the single most badass, most technically impressive (not from a computing power standpoint), "set piece" I have ever seen in a video game. The way the audio and visuals combine together is just fucking astounding. The shit dreams are made of.

I literally just played this scene right before typing this, and I was so damn impressed I had to come and post about it.

That was just bonkers. It was a very short experience, but one of the most impactful in the video game medium I have ever personally experienced. It is perhaps the best example I have seen yet as to how powerful and creative the medium can be as it could only be done in video games.
 
R

Resident_UA

Member
DirtyLarry said:
Okay, seriously, WOW. Can I just say that the very opening scene in Act 4 Part 3 where
Jack is walking through the Time Machine
is pretty much the single most badass, most technically impressive (not from a computing power standpoint), "set piece" I have ever seen in a video game. The way the audio and visuals combine together is just fucking astounding. The shit dreams are made of.

I literally just played this scene right before typing this, and I was so damn impressed I had to come and post about it.

That was just bonkers. It was a very short experience, but one of the most impactful in the video game medium I have ever personally experienced. It is perhaps the best example I have seen yet as to how powerful and creative the medium can be as it could only be done in video games.
Click to expand...

I just beat the game and played that part just few hours ago and it didn't stand out to me at all... Just another "push your stick forward" moment... Weird...

Twin Tails said:
The last boss was really terrible. Don't know what they were thinking.
Click to expand...

The worst part about it was that it checkpointed me not only before the cutscene, but far away from the point where I could trigger that cutscene. WTF?
 
ToyMachine228

ToyMachine228

Member
I'm in chapter 2 of act 2 and I think I regret buying the game already. It just isn't gripping me so far. I loved Max Payne and liked Alan Wake but my initial impressions of QB aren't great.
 
R

Resident_UA

Member
ToyMachine228 said:
I'm in chapter 2 of act 2 and I think I regret buying the game already. It just isn't gripping me so far. I loved Max Payne and liked Alan Wake but my initial impressions of QB aren't great.
Click to expand...

It's not going to get much better... But if you at least somewhat enjoying it I would stick with it. I doesn't have particularly terrible parts either (aside from the final boss fight).
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
Resident_UA said:
I just beat the game and played that part just few hours ago and it didn't stand out to me at all... Just another "push your stick forward" moment... Weird...
Click to expand...
All you do is walk in the scene I am talking about, but if all you did was push your stick forward and not go back and forth then you completely missed out on why it was so well put together. The orchestration of sight and sound was easily among the best I have ever seen and like I said, it was something that could only be achieved with the medium. If you just walked forward and hardly ever stopped, then I suppose it could have seemed like a cut scene. It was a completely interactive corridor.
 
arhra

arhra

Member
Christ, watching the GB quicklook that just went up was painful. But illuminating, I guess. It certainly explains why Jeff didn't like the game; he was trying to play it as a cover shooter.

At one point he was lamenting the lack of blind-fire, in what must be one of the most impressive displays of missing the point in recorded history.
 
T

TheShah

Member
Got to play a bit. Remedy games have a certain rhythm just works for me. Really liking how the combat just flows really well and with practice you can take out multiple guys efficiently.

Story has just the right amount schlock so far, hopefully it keeps up.
 
Z

Zedox

Member
StoOgE said:
Just finished it.

First of all, the shooting was very good. It isn't the best, and the auto cover system got me killed a few times. That said, I felt like a bad ass and really thought I looked cool in a way that Max Payne got very right.

The last boss fight was too much with bad checkpointing, but not as bad as I feared given some comments.

I loved especially that for the most part there were shooty bits, story bits and explory bits and they did a good job of differentiating between them. So I could explore without fear of shooty happening. Made certain areas feel life safe areas I could just read long bits about.

I loved the branching paths, and I loved that I got to influence some plot lines the way I wanted to see them go at the end. I loved the TV episodes. They were well acted, and while they probably could have been done in-engine, I liked the technical work of branching TV episodes, and if I have to sit the controller down to watch, I appreciate it feeling like a TV episode and breaking up the pacing.

Also: PERFECT LENGTH. At no point did I think I was getting too much shooty bits in a row and I never felt the game drag. It left me wanting more, but in the way you want something to. For the love of god, can we kill filler and keep games about this length?

Now, Spoiler stuffs:

I loved the story. It's a time travel story that initially seems insanely complicated with twists and turns, but by the end of it makes a ton of sense and seems very very straightforward. Everything mysterious is explained pretty well, every little tidbit has meaning behind it, and I loved that I cared about the side characters thanks to the TV show by the end.

I didn't fight Burke (I had Paul go insane at the end), but I generally appreciated what was happening and wound up choosing not to have Burke turn on me hoping he would have a heroic death which he sort of did.

Now, things that are not 100% clear to me.

1) Hatch is an ancient time traveler who found a naturally occuring time machine in a cave somewhere. Became a shifter and was working to bring about the end of time because it would be good for shifters for nebulous reasons.

2) Dr. Kim was chronon bombed by Hatch at some point in order to keep Paul Serene going nuts and degenerating in health, and ensure that there was not a "cure" for turning into a shifter.

3) Paul is probably still alive as a shifter in some way.

4) Jack Joyce is a shifter and still has hope that he can change the timeline in some way, but there is no proof that this is possible.

5) The world very may well have ended anyway. Paul may have seen the end of time in all actuality, but it was at a different point in time than he thought. This could explain why Paul was surprised that the stutters were picking up in pace sooner than expected. They weren't ready for the end of time yet. Dr. Amaral convinced him to trigger the lifeboat earlier than anyone had initially thought that it would happen, potentially because this was not the "end of time" stutter, but an earlier stutter.

6) Hatch knows Jack Joyce needs medical attention. He also knows that Serene is out of the way now and he runs Monarch. The Countermeasure is destroyed. So, if he can create a second rupture there is nothing stopping the end of time from occurring? Also explains why he killed a shitload of Monarch people on his way out, but never tried to hurt Jack. He has insight into the multiverse and time in a way we don't, and he knew that Jack would deploy the countermeasure and kill Paul, giving him what he ultimately wanted, i.e. bringing on the end of time where there are more shifters. This also allows the "can't change what happened" to persist. Paul had already traveled back in time from the end of time, so that loop needed to be closed in an effective way in order to actually bring about the permanent end of time without a life boat out there of people working to eventually correct the end of time and bring things back to normal.

Some of these seem to be that king of "open to interpretation on purpose" ending stuff, but thats kind of my take on how it wrapped up with a giant "room for a sequel" caveat that was definitely happening at the end there.
Click to expand...

Strootman said:
I agree with everything

and I think the end of time will happen in 2021, as beth wilder hinted in her diary
Click to expand...

Yes to everything that is said. As of right now, Quantum Break is my game of the year. Funny that I wasn't impressed with the game when I first saw it nor all the way up to the beginning of the year. I'm so glad I hopped on the hype train. What a glorious game. So many questions. I gotta go back and 100% it. Then I gotta finish Alan Wake (yea, I know, don't shoot me with those flashlights). So awesome about those Alan Wake references though. I need more Remedy games in my life. They are on my "automatic buy" list.
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
I have avoided any spoilers but I do see apparently people are not crazy about the final act.
I just finished Act 4, including watching the episode after it, so I am about to start Act 5.

I think back to when they first announced the game and it became my most anticipated One title. I saw Remedy and the first visuals and that was all I needed. Well I can easily say it is my favorite XBox One Exclusive. Even if Act 5 is horrendous, I have enjoyed everything else so much thus far it is no doubt my favorite exclusive.

For once my own personal hype was real.
 
E

etta

my hard graphic balls
Omg, finished Act 1.
Story is gripping, visuals are zomg. Image is a bit blurrier than I thought, will need to adjust to it. I started on hard, and I suck with the time powers right now so I'm always bleeding. Can you change difficulty without restarting an act?
 
A

AgentOtaku

Member
arhra said:
Christ, watching the GB quicklook that just went up was painful. But illuminating, I guess. It certainly explains why Jeff didn't like the game; he was trying to play it as a cover shooter.

At one point he was lamenting the lack of blind-fire, in what must be one of the most impressive displays of missing the point in recorded history.
Click to expand...

Uuuuggghhh
 
E

etta

my hard graphic balls
arhra said:
Christ, watching the GB quicklook that just went up was painful. But illuminating, I guess. It certainly explains why Jeff didn't like the game; he was trying to play it as a cover shooter.

At one point he was lamenting the lack of blind-fire, in what must be one of the most impressive displays of missing the point in recorded history.
Click to expand...
Man, did no-one at GB tell Jeff that it's not his type of game? Did no-one see him play while reviewing? How is it decided who reviews what games?
A crying shame.
 
P

petethepanda

Member
To be fair, it wouldn't make much sense to assign game reviews based on how likely the reviewer is to enjoy the game, and if he's not playing it in the optimal way, most of the blame will be on the game itself for not properly telegraphing how it's "meant" to be played.

Starting up Act 2 in a bit, excited to finally jump back in after a busy few days. Increasingly pissed that the W10 preorder codes haven't yet gone out, though.
 
G

Grisby

Member
Twin Tails said:
Yeah, went back to that level. That shit is amazing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, these visuals are kind of nuts in some spots. There's some blurryness sure, but the effects are great.
etta said:
Omg, finished Act 1.
Story is gripping, visuals are zomg. Image is a bit blurrier than I thought, will need to adjust to it. I started on hard, and I suck with the time powers right now so I'm always bleeding. Can you change difficulty without restarting an act?
Click to expand...
Give it some time (ha!). You'll get better. Once you get your dodge (and upgrade it) and heal you'll start doing better.
 
L

LOUD915

Member
Experienced the flashing lights / strobe glitch. Terrible. How could that pass QC?

I originally thought it was a game feature. It makes the game unplayable. I'm not kidding. I had to restart the game after closing it down.

Any light source makes the game bug out and flash blinding light in your eye. I thought it was intentional until I noticed it in cutscenes. Imagine doing a fire flight right after getting hit with a flashbang.

I played almost all of Act 1 with it. Like I said, i didn't realize it was a glitch. I must be a savant at the game. I essentially played the first act with barely being able to see and I didn't die once.
 
G

Gwyn

Member
petethepanda said:
To be fair, it wouldn't make much sense to assign game reviews based on how likely the reviewer is to enjoy the game, and if he's not playing it in the optimal way, most of the blame will be on the game itself for not properly telegraphing how it's "meant" to be played.

Starting up Act 2 in a bit, excited to finally jump back in after a busy few days. Increasingly pissed that the W10 preorder codes haven't yet gone out, though.
Click to expand...

Well the game gives you all these cool abilities so it doesn't really make sense for someone to play it as a cover shooter.
 
T

timlot

Banned
Just made is to end of Act 4. Had to take a break because I'm already not good at the fire fights so I'm going do that one some other time.

Most impressive thing for me is the overwhelming amount a special effects. Eye candy everywhere.

I do have a few complaints, but the one that sticks out to me is that I wish the emails and wall of text they want you to read had voice overs. Yes reading is fundamental, but it became tedious after the first few pages of emails they want you to read.
 
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