Nobody remembers Control team's 2016 sci-fi game that could’ve changed everything

Remedy's unsung time travel game was too innovative for its own good Remedy Entertainment has had one hell of a decade. 2019’s Control was popular enough to spawn an expanded universe. The 2023 action-horror game Alan Wake 2 picked up eight Game of the Year nominations, including one for the top prize. But the studio’s most innovative game of the past ten years was an underappreciated gem from the Obama years: Quantum Break. Quantum Break, released ten years ago this month for Windows PC and Xbox One, was a boundary-breaking (heh) experiment in multimedia gaming. Part video game, part TV show, it mixed third-person shooting with an episodic narrative about time travel and evil corporations. The gimmick was, after every act break in the game, you’d briefly assume control of the game’s villain, and make a critical choice about the story. Your decision would then play out in the subsequent live-action episode. It was a gambit, especially for the era; visual fidelity was sharp in 2016 but not exactly photorealistic, leading to some jarring transitions between gameplay and live-action. But the gimmick largely worked thanks to Quantum Break’s stacked cast. Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, The Rooki