Is Quantum Break in the Alan Wake Universe?

Over the years, astute gamers have clocked several overlaps between the Alan Wake games and another Remedy Entertainment title, 2016’s Quantum Break. Does this mean Quantum Break is set in the same universe as Alan Wake?

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Quantum Break’s Connection Alan Wake’s Universe, Explained

Unofficially, Quantum Break and the Alan Wake franchise are both part of the same shared canon: the Remedy Connected Universe (or RCU). This continuity ties together some (but not all) of Remedy Entertainment’s games, including:

• Alan Wake (2010) (including its DLC expansions, The Signal and The Writer)
• Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (2012)
• Control (2010) (including its DLC expansions, Foundation and AWE)
• Alan Wake II (2023) (including its DLC expansions Night Springs and The Lake House)

Live-action Alan Wake web series Bright Falls is also part of the RCU. What about Remedy’s other big franchise, Max Payne? That’s a no. According to Remedy’s creative director Sam Lake, neither 2001’s Max Payne nor its 2003 sequel, Max Payne: The Fall of Max Payne, are set within the RCU (Remedy didn’t develop 2012’s Max Payne 3). Why? Because unlike Alan Wake and Control, Remedy doesn’t hold the publishing rights to the Max Payne games, Rockstar does.

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That’s also why Quantum Break isn’t a fully-fledged Remedy Connected Universe installment: because Microsoft controls the IP, not Remedy. So, despite the explicit links between Quantum Break and Alan Wake, Remedy won’t further integrate the former into RCU lore for the foreseeable future. Lake explained the situation in an August 2023 Entertainment Weekly interview.

“Max Payne and Quantum Break are not part of the Remedy Connected Universe,” he said. “They are not part of Remedy’s plans. That being said, in a purely speculative, Easter egg kind of way, I do love the idea of enabling our audience to come up with theories. I don’t want to shoot them down on that level. We are making questions possible and giving ideas to people that they can then form their own theories. I think that’s very much part of the fun.”

Quantum Break’s Remedy Connected Universe Connections

So, what are some of the major crossovers between Quantum Break, Alan Wake, and the rest of the Remedy Connected Universe? Perhaps the biggest is the implication that Alan Wake II‘s Sheriff Tim Breaker and Warlin Door and Control‘s Jesse Faden are alternate universe incarnations of Quantum Break characters Jack Joyce, Martin Hatch, and Beth Wilder, respectively. Unfortunately, Remedy isn’t likely to provide further clarity here, given its official position on Quantum Break‘s RCU status.

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Some of Quantum Break‘s other notable RCU connections include:

• Two copies (one signed) of Alan Wake’s novel, The Sudden Stop, appear as Easter eggs in Quantum Break.
• A live-action teaser trailer for fictional production Alan Wake Returns plays on one of Quantum Break‘s in-game TVs. The trailer features FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey – years before their official RCU debut in Alan Wake II.
• Quantum Break protagonist Jack Joyce comes across a chalkboard referencing Alan Wake‘s plot and themes in a lecture room. He also encounters graffiti referencing the acronym for Control‘s Altered World Events, AWE.
• Control‘s in-universe TV show, Night Springs, also airs on Quantum Break‘s in-game TVs.
• One of Quantum Break‘s narrative objects is a poster for My Bleeding Clock, a fictional band later namedropped in Control‘s second DLC expansion, AWE.

Quantum Break is currently available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Windows.