Quantum Break is a highly-experimental, groundbreaking attempt to fuse the worlds of video games and television. It’s not the first time that some sort of synthesis was attempted; just three years ago Syfy and Trion Worlds tried a similar thing with TV show/video game project Defiance. However, Microsoft and Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break really goes all-in on the connection between the two by packaging them together and placing the episodes at particular points in the game’s narrative.

The result is far more effective than I expected going in. While the episodes occasionally feature awkwardly-written dialogue and have trouble introducing the show’s central characters mid-narrative, later episodes are very engaging, and the production values and aesthetic are roughly what you would expect to see in a Fox TV show. The two mediums are used to inform each other in some really cool ways. While somebody could play the game without watching the episodes and still follow the events and character motivations, playing it with the episodes lends a lot of extra insight and depth to the proceedings. Certain moments are far more significant because of the background information gleaned from the TV show.

The show itself is not nearly as independent, and seems designed to supplement the game rather than exist on its own. This is pretty self-evident, given that the game gives the option to skip the episodes when you get to them, but the player/viewer has to play each segment of the game to unlock the next episode. Still, there are times when the game lends itself to the show as well. The collectible emails/notes/etc. that have become an omnipresent trope in gaming are more interesting here because they’re typically written by characters who we’re following on the TV show. There are moments when, in the game, you discover a piece of information that adds further depth and motivation to the characters you’re following in live-action, and the fact that the writers had specific characters in mind when writing these largely-expository notes imbues them with far more voice than you typically see in games.

Another reason why the game/show interplay is so effective is the use of recognizable actors and extremely impressive performance-capture technology. The most significant characters are played by Shawn Ashmore (Iceman in the X-Men movies), Aiden Gillen (Littlefinger in Game of Thrones, Tommy Carcetti in The Wire), Dominic Monaghan (Merry in Lord of the Rings and Charlie in Lost), and Lance Reddick (Broyles in Fringe, Daniels in The Wire, and Abaddon in Lost). Their performances in-game are believable and human enough that, when they pop up in the TV show, it all just feels like a continuation of the same story. Quantum Break features the most impressive in-game performances I’ve seen since Quantic Dreams’ underrated Beyond: Two Souls, and the technical achievements are crucial to accomplishing what the developers and writers intended to do.

But enough about Quantum Break as a cross-media experiment: how is it as a game? Personally, I really enjoyed it. There’s nothing revolutionary here, and you shouldn’t go in expecting anything more than a narrative-heavy third-person shooter/action game. But the game plays very well, and its systems are designed to encourage an active and varied play-style. Some reviewers have complained about the game’s cover system, which is automated and doesn’t allow you to blind-fire your gun, but this is highly intentional. You’re outfitted early on with an impressive array of time-warping powers, meaning you can slow enemies down, shield yourself from bullets, cause huge explosions, and dash out of the line of fire and into a “bullet-time” slow-motion state. Remedy’s masterstroke is to put each ability on its own independent refresh timer, meaning that if a player can understand and make use of all of his or her abilities effectively, he/she will rarely have to wait long to get out of a jam. This is why there is no blind-fire mechanic; Remedy Entertainment wants you to be able to hide and collect yourself, but they don’t want you to rely on cover at the expense of your abilities.

It’s essentially a narrative-fueled extension of the mechanics Remedy pioneered in the first two Max Payne titles, but it makes for a very enjoyable 10 hours or so. Even better, the story that drives the gameplay and the cross-media experimentation is surprisingly engaging. Quantum Break is about time travel, but unlike the vast majority of stories in that genre, it manages to set rules for itself that make logical sense.

Even better, the game is actually consistent in it’s “closed loop” perspective on time-travel (think Lost), juggling a timeline involving several jumps back and forth between the past and the future. That every one of these jumps is consistent with what we’ve already seen is impressive enough, but far more admirable is the way that Remedy doesn’t do it at the expense of dramatic stakes. The center of Quantum Break’s conflict is the idea of fate. If the future cannot be changed, is it worth fighting for an outcome which may actually be impossible, or is it better to prepare for the inevitable? At a very early point in the narrative I realized that Aiden Gillen’s Paul Serene, the purported “villain” of the game, was the character I believed was in the right, but it didn’t stop me from empathizing with Jack (Shawn Ashmore) and Beth’s (Courtney Hope) mission.

Every once in a while Quantum Break does falter. It can be a bit glitchy, some of the platforming is rough, and certain concepts, like the “juncture points” which allow the player to make narrative decisions with major repercussions, conflict with the narrative’s central conceit. But the game (and show) does so many interesting things, and does them so well, that it completely overshadows these negatives. If you’ve got an Xbox One, you owe it to yourself to give the whole thing a shot: the game, the show, and the cross-media experience.