Remember that bizarre tie-in TV series announced for Quantum Break back at last year’s E3? It’ll no longer be included on the game disc due to the nature of the project, says developer Remedy.
The original method of delivery for the TV episodes – which have different events and scenes depending on the choices made in-game – was to include them on the game disc for Quantum Break, but that’s no longer the case, unfortunately.
Instead, each episode will now be streamed if you’re on PC, but if you’re on Xbox One, you’ll be able to download them (presumably) individually. Great, that’s more limited hard drive space gone, then. In Remedy’s defence though, it looks like the series is being given just as much care and attention as the game it’s going to tie-in to, judging by comments made to GameInformer by designer Greg Louden.
We have 40 different variations of the show in total where basically your choices get to make it evolve and change whether it’s from a junction choice or we have these things called ‘Quantum Ripples’ which essentially unlocked sort of deleted scenes from the show.
Then combined with that, the show length can change based on your decisions because some episodes are longer as a result and some episodes are shorter. It basically evolves and that’s why we needed to stream it.
When we figured out how big the data was, we had to backpedal and think of some good solutions and this made sense.
These types of multimedia ventures are always a risky gamble. Developers can end up pouring tremendous amounts of resources into external media to tie-in with their product with the potential outcome being that it goes largely unused. Remedy seems to think otherwise though, and more power to them.
We’ll have to wait until Quantum Break releases on April 5 for PC and Xbox One for a final verdict, but for now, the prospect of a tailored narrative played out through live-action TV episodes is certainly promising.
