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Quantum Break's Live-Action Episodes Are Streamed To Save Hard Drive And Disc Space
Remedy Entertainment's upcoming action title Quantum Break looks to combine elements of a live-action TV drama with the choice-based gameplay to deliver a unique experience. Remedy has confirmed to us that the live-action episodes that play following each act of the game will stream to your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC remotely when the game launches in April.
Because the live-action scenes adapt to your decisions, several variations of the same episode were filmed. "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," narrative designer Greg Louden says. "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."
According Louden, Remedy's approach was changed when the team saw how big the files were. "I can’t give you an exact size, but it is big, so we wanted to create this high quality game experience and use all the disc space to maximize the visual effects qualities of the animations and all that stuff. So for us, it was kind of like a natural choice," he says. "Also, our desire to really make it change… I think if we only had one show, it probably would have fit, but we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to do this active experience where you negotiate the story and change it, so this was the only real solution to our problem. When we figured out how big the data was, we had to backpedal and think of some good solutions and this made sense."
When asked if an option will exist for those wanting to download it, Louden says that it will only be offered on the Xbox One version, but the Windows 10 version does feature 4K resolution, making the video size all the more substantial. Quantum Break is set to launch on both Xbox One and Windows 10 April 5.
Our Take
While the idea of having to be connected to the Internet to avoid filling up your hard drive is less than ideal, Remedy's decision here makes sense. With 40 different variations on the show (all in 1080p on Xbox One or 4K on PC), the file size has to be substantial. Thankfully, the option to download them to your Xbox One is there if you are lucky enough to have however much space they require on your console.
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