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I thought it was just the plot of a vieo game, but it was all real: Door, the Master of Many Worlds, was murdering versions of the Agent, played by me. [...] It's all true. It's no hoax. No video game. It's really happening. I was lost in the multiverse. I had to become the role to survive. Be the Agent. - ― Shawn
Time Breaker is the third and final episode of the Night Springs expansion of Alan Wake 2. A failed attempt by Alan Wake to escape the Dark Place, the follows a man, Shawn Ashmore, also known as "The Actor", who becomes lost in the multiverse as he is also chased by a man named Door, "The Master of Many Worlds", who is killing alternate versions of him.
Plot[]
- We often look back and wonder, what if? What if the path not taken had in fact been our charted course? Would we be happier? Or are we, with our set of choices behind us, the lucky ones? And what if, nothing would be different? What if for some of us, our destiny, across an endless number of versions of ourselves, has been defined and locked beyond any causality of circumstance, beyond the forces in any one reality, but across all realities. For one man, the magnetic pull of destiny is so great it breaks time and space. We join this lone operative, many versions of him in fact, as he chases his nemesis, a dangerous being known as the Master of Many Worlds, across the multiverse, across the many versions of a city that is always the same, yet always different, in... Night Springs. Tonight's reality-bending episode: Time Breaker.
- ― Opening Narration
Poison Pill Entertainment.
The episode opens with a man known as the Agent bowing to stop his adversary and return to the love of his life as he dramatically stands in front of a violent blue vortex holding a strange gadget. This, however, turns out to be only a scene of a video game created by the Night Springs based company, Poison Pill Entertainment. The actor playing the protagonist, Shawn Ashmore, asks if his performance was adequate, to which the game director, Sam Lake, excitedly asks him to talk, stating that they can still push further and immerse themselves into the story. The two men express their excitement about finally being able to work together on the "Time Breaker" video game before going over the story details.
Shawn meets the red-headed woman.
Sam explains that the protagonist is a multiversal agent searching for his lost love while his nemesis, Door, the “Master of Many Worlds”, murders parallel versions of him. The Agent makes use of a PRS - Polyhedron Reality Shifter -, which is powered by SENs - Shifter Energy Nodes -, to activate Lumivista TVs in order to travel between realities. In addition to that he also makes use of a TBS - Time Breaker Solidifier -, in conjunction with his gun, to defend himself, these devices being REC - Ripple Effect Corporation - technology. Sam also explains his vision of the multiverse, claiming that in another reality, the game's story is actually occurring. In preparation for the next scene, in which his character is taken to a parallel reality by his nemesis, Shawn is told to go to his Green Room to read the draft of the screenplay. On his way there, he sees a light coming from the room, followed by two men talking and strange noises. To his surprise, he finds a dead body that resembles him. In addition, the script pages lying on floor describe exactly what is currently happening. However, Shawn believes this to be simply a joke on Sam’s part. As he picks up the body's equipment, a red-headed woman appears. The woman tells him that they were too late again, but as Shawn expresses his confusion, she realizes that her partner, Branch, is the one dead on the floor. As the lights begin to flicker, the woman attempts to warn Shawn of the danger, but he is transported to another reality by Door.
Shawn on his counterpart's trailer.
Shawn suddenly finds himself in the middle of a forest at night, with his appearance having changed. Confused, he tells himself that this is part of an elaborate hoax and decides to play along. A sign on a nearby fence states that he is on the Night Spring City Park, outside of a “parallel reality bleed zone”. Remembering what Sam had told him, he begins searching for an energy node to charge the PRS and a Luminista television. As he makes his way through the forest, he begins hearing the frantic thoughts of an alternate version of himself, who claims that Door is coming and that he needs to hide the SEN. This causes Shawn to suspect that the situation is real. In a nearby trailer, which he deduces belongs to his other self, he finds the Lumivista TV. Still hearing the thoughts of his paranoid counterpart, he discovers that he hid the energy node at the forest creek. By following the creek, he finds an octahedron-shaped node in a small cave and uses it to charge his PRS. As he makes his way back to the trailer, he hears his counterpart at Door's mercy, pleading for his life, before hearing gunshots coming from nearby. Finding the dead body of his counterpart, he realizes that the plot of the video game is real and that Door is killing versions of the Agent. He is then attacked by a Time Breaker, which he manages to kill using his TBS and his gun. Shawn concludes that in order to survive he needs to assume the role of the Agent. However, he is unwilling to face Door, although he feels that their encounter is inevitable. Once at the trailer, he uses the PRS on the TV to travel to another reality.
The red-headed woman and Shawn on the REC headquarters.
Now finding himself in Night Springs City's Oceanview Hotel, in a completely monochrome reality where Door is in control, Shawn realizes that, because he was thinking of his nemesis, he ended up traveling closer to him. Using the hours depicted in the clocks to guide him, he traverses the unsynchronized lobbies of the hotel and soon finds a television. Unable to hear the thoughts of his counterpart from this world, he concludes that he was already killed by Door. After facing more Time Breakers and finding an icosahedron-shaped node, he charges the PRS and returns to the television.
By focusing on the red-headed woman, believing she can help him, he travels to a comic book stylized reality and finds himself in the headquarters of the Ripple Effect Corporation, where he is greeted by her. She explains to him that the concepts of real and fictional both coexist in the multiverse, with "echoes [flowing] like currents in a cosmic ocean”, a concept she refers to as the "Sea of Night". She further adds that the alternate versions of themselves are linked by the energies that ripple through realities. When Shawn asks her about Door, she explains that he was once a normal human who found an opening to a parallel reality that gave him access to all realities, but killed all other versions of him, and he is now killing parallel versions of the Agent and bringing them back as Time Breakers because he sees them as a threat. While the REC previously though that the deceased Branch was his main objective, she now suspect that he is actually after Shawn. Due to him having mastered the ability to travel through realities with great accuracy in such a short time span, the REC agent entrusts him with the task of finding the place where Door gained his powers, which may be the key to stop him.
Shawn finds an Energy Node on the "edge of the multiverse".
Before departing, Shawn wonders if there was something between her and his counterpart, but she tells him that what he feels is only an echo of some other version of them, though she does ask him if she will come back for her. By focusing on Door, Shawn is taken to an arcade-stylized dimension, where he fights hordes of his Time Breakers. Door shows himself, impressed by Shawn, and gives him the chance to join him, but the latter refuses, to which Door reveals that he was lying and escapes.
After finding the hexahedron-shaped node and the television, Shawn is transported to a reality on the "edge of the multiverse", a barren and entropic wasteland littered with empty dodecahedron-shaped energy nodes. While searching for Door or the means to continue forward, he is telepathically taunted by his nemesis and attacked by more Time Breakers. After he finds a functioning node, Door reveals that he was never there and sends more Time Breakers. After destroying them, Shawn uses the PRS to continue forward, believing he is close to finding Door.
The conceptual reality.
Shawn now finds himself on an empty, text adventure-like reality. As stated on the text, an unknown amount of time has passed before he becomes aware of his surroundings - or rather, the lack thereof. Struggling to keep himself from drifting apart in the “sea of consciousness”, he begins sensing the words, discovering that he is in a conceptual reality in the farthest reaches of the multiverse, where only ideas exist. Feeling thirst due to the words describing him standing in a barren, “conceptual desert”, Shawn causes a beverage to appear, making him realize that thoughts can become real in this world. With the details of his mission slowly fading away, he, in a similar way to how he travels between realities, attempts to focus on something in order to escape. From this point, the story diverges into three main paths, each one with its own variations:
By focusing on the red-headed woman, Shawn meets a version of her named Lisa, a professional ballet dancer who knows nothing about the multiverse. After the two start a relationship, Shawn, still hunted by his experiences in the multiverse, either entrusts the REC equipment to a janitor and subsequently forgets about his adventure or consciously hides his past and gets rid of the equipment by throwing it into the water. He returns to his acting career and lives a normal life with Lisa, who trains arduously for a big dance production. However, due to complications with her ankle, her show is canceled and the two decide to take a break from the city, renting a cabin on an island in a caldera lake in the Pacific Northwest. Not long afterwards, Lisa begins having nightmares about the multiverse, seeing the infinite versions of her and her boyfriend being murdered.
After Shawn tells her the truth about his past, she becomes obsessed with the multiverse amd tries to learn as much as she can about it. One night, Shawn wakes ups and sees that Lisa is gone, finding only a note. He discovers that she has recovered the PRS (either by obtaining it from the janitor or finding it on the lake) and uses it to travel through the multiverse in search of her destiny. Inside the note, he finds her spiral pendant.
After Shawn lies to her about the existence of the multiverse (or is unable to remember), her nightmares continue to hunt her and, despite her boyfriend's efforts to console her, it causes her to fall into depression. One night, Shawn wakes ups and sees that Lisa is gone, finding only a note. He discovers that the nightmares had led her to take her own life by jumping into the lake. Inside the note, he finds her spiral pendant.
The Master of Many Worlds.
By focusing on the Master of Many Worlds, Shawn finds himself unable to locate his presence. He begins meditating in an effort to learn the secrets of the multiverse and understand his enemy. However, due to his mind not being “pure” enough to grasp said knowledge, this also fails. After either stubbornly continuing to meditate or wandering aimlessly into the endless desert in search of answers, pushing himself to the limit in both cases, Shawn collapses. A man appears before him, whom he realizes is a future version of himself. The future Shawn offers his past self a seed before vanishing.
By either taking the seed and planting it or rejecting it, it will quickly grow into an enormous tree - described as “The Tree of Life” or “The World Tree”. A “memory” drifts down from it. By following it, Shawn finds a comic book that narrates the legend of a god who sacrificed himself by hanging himself from a branch of the World Tree in order to gain “secret knowledge”. Shawn hangs himself from the tree and his mind travels on a “spiritual journey” along the tree branches, which reach through and support all realities as the multiverse is born. After hanging there for nine nights, the branch breaks and he falls to the ground.
By taking the seed and consuming it, Shawn feels it sprout inside him before it quickly grows into an enormous tree - described as “The Tree of Life” or “The World Tree” - cocooning him inside. Now part of the tree, he feels the tree branches reaching through and supporting all realities as the multiverse is born. An unknown amount of time later, as the tree grows old and begins to die, two “magic fruits” sprout from its highest branch, with Shawn being reborn from one of them.
The Master of Many Worlds.
By focusing on the Master of Many Worlds, Shawn finds himself unable to locate his presence. Deciding to prepare for an imminent war, he searches both for allies, recruiting alternate versions of himself, and a base, finding a gigantic, petrified tree trunk, which he later turns into a brutalistic style skyscraper to serve as the headquarters of the REC. He also recruits a version of the red-headed woman named Jesbet and appoints her the director. She carries a powerful, shifting weapon that can take many shapes, which Shawn may ask her to give it to him.
After the REC decides to focus on researching new technologies internally, Jesbet discovers that the Master of Many worlds is preparing to launch an all-out attack. Nevertheless, the REC researchers manage to craft the TBS. When the time for the attack finally arrives, an army of Time Breakers appear outside the headquarters. Not long after the attack begins, most of the REC agents are either dead or dying, with Shawn and Jesbet being among the few people that still remain. She leads him through the building before telling him to escape, deciding to stay behind and buy him time. Regardless of whether he complies or not, Jesbet dies.
Deciding to scour the multiverse in search of new technologies, the REC finds a polyhedron-shaped alien being that possesses a god-like power capable of defeating the Master of Many Worlds, however, the very eyesight of it drives people insane. After the alien is transported to the REC headquarters, Jesbet discovers that the Master is preparing to launch an all-out attack.
Following Jesbet's suggestion, the REC turns the alien into a bomb of devastating force to be used as a last resort. When the time for the attack finally arrives, an army of Time Breakers appear outside the headquarters. Not long after the attack begins, most of the REC agents are either dead or dying, with Shawn and Jesbet being among the few people that still remain. If Shawn took her changing weapon, Jesbet dies after being overwhelmed by the enemy. In all scenarios but one, seeing that all is lost, Shawns orders the alien to be detonated, obliterating everything but him.
Deciding to research the alien himself, Shawn is exposed to its resonance and turned into a being of god-like power at the cost of its life. However, his physical appearance also changes, much to the horror of Jesbet. When the time for the attack finally arrives, an army of Time Breakers appear outside the headquarters. With his new powers, Shawn is able to combat the enemy forces with extreme ease. However, during the course of the battle, Jesbet, distracted by his terrifying new appearance, lets her guard down and is killed. Consumed by rage, Shawn uncontrollably unleashes his powers, obliterating everything around him in the process. After barely managing to return to his senses, he returns to his human form, having exhausted all of the alien’s power.
The Master of Many Worlds.
- We have witnessed a case of mistaken identity. But in the vastness of the multiverse, with an endless number of versions of ourselves, what is identity anyway? Can there be more than one Master of Many Worlds? Or did our hero take a wrong turn somewhere along the way? Was this particular journey precisely what was needed to make him the one he was meant to become? One thing is certain: I am your host, the one and only Warlin Door, and this is... Night Springs.
- ― Closing Narration.
Cast[]
- Shawn Ashmore as Shawn Ashmore/The Actor, Agent Branch, an unnamed variant, and the Time Breakers
- Courtney Hope as The Agent
- Sam Lake as Sam Lake/The Director
- David Harewood as Warlin Door
- Martti Suosalo as Ahti
Walkthrough[]
Main Article: Time Breaker/Walkthrough
Notes[]
Connections and similarities with the Remedy Connected Universe[]
- The episode’s plot contains several parallelism and references to Remedy Entertainment’s game Quantum Break, both in a in-universe and out-of-universe sense:
- The “Tetrahedron reality” has many similarities to the real-world:
- Both Quantum Break and the Time Breaker (and by extension the episode) are sci-fi video games with a time travel element.
- The name of the company making the Time Breaker video game, Poison Pill Entertainment, is a reference - and an inverse - to Remedy Entertainment, which created Quantum Break.
- Shaw Ashmore plays the main character in the Time Breaker video game similarly to how the actual Shawn Ashmore played the main character in Quantum Break.
- The video game was directed by Sam Lake; while the actual Sam Lake did not direct Quantum Break, he served as the creative director and executive producer.
- The “Sphere reality” has many elements in common with the RCU and the world of Quantum Break:
- Agent Branch is similar in appearance to Tim Breaker. His name could be a reference to Quantum Break’s main character, Jack Joyce, as both names make reference to the concepts of making choices and divergent paths, both present in Quantum Break and Time Breaker.
- The red-headed woman is similar in appearance to Jesse Faden. Her being an agent of the Ripple Effect Corporation is not only reminiscent of how Jesse works in the Federal Bureau of Control (albeit as its director) but also to the Quantum Break character, Beth Wilder, who works for the Monarch Solutions organization.
- Ripple Effect Corporation has many similarities to both the FBC and Monarch Solutions, being an organization that monitors and responds to time-related events. Their headquarters also resemble both the Oldest House (specially on the outside) and the Monarch HQ.
- Mr. Door’s interest in Shawn and his parallel versions is reminiscent of the interest Martin Hatch displayed in Jack Joyce at the end of Quantum Break. In addition, his backstory - a man who gained time-related powers while exploring a cave - is also very similar to that of Hatch. (It should be noted that Lance Reddick, who played Hatch, was intended to play Mr. Door prior to his passing in March 2023).
- The phrase said by both Shawn and the red-headed woman, “I’ll come back for you”, is the same phrase said by Jack Joyce to Beth Wilder near the end of Quantum Break.
- The Shifter Energy Nodes are shaped like platonic solids, similarly to how the Chronon Field Regulator was shaped like a dodecahedron. Additionally, the term "Shifter" was also used in the game.
- The last section of the episode, while a text adventure game, is reminiscent of Quantum Break’s multiple paths storyline. Similarly to that game, all choices eventually lead to the same conclusion.
- In the “key” path, Shawn meets a version of the red-headed woman whose name, Jesbet, is a combination of Jesse Faden and Beth Wilder’s first names. In the “spiral” path, he also meets another version of her name “Lisa”; both “Lisa” and “Beth” are short for “Elizabeth”.
- The “Tetrahedron reality” has many similarities to the real-world:
- This episode has many allusion with Tim Breaker's life:
- As with Shawn and his variants, Warlin Door has an interest in Tim Breaker.
- In the woods near Cauldron Lake, a notepad can be found i which the author (implied to be Tim) states that he can see the afterimage of an Octahedron by repeatedly blinking. The Night Springs City Park, in which the octahedron SEN can be found, is similar to the aforementioned area.
- Tim’s “crazy wall” has several references to elements of this episode, namely, platonic solids, the red-headed woman and other versions of himself.
- On the Tango Lobby of the Oceanview Motel, a poster can be found of a film directed by Thomas Zane titled Kuolonralli, which is Finnish for "Death Rally", the name of another Remedy Entertainment game. Said movie stars Zane as "The Rhymer", which is a reference to the character True Tom Rhymer. In addition, the movie's tagline "Bensaa suonissaan" (Gasoline in his veins) is a reference to True Tom's quote "I got petrol in my veins."
- In the “spiral” path, Shawn can put his REC equipment on a box and go to a basement, where he will entrust it to a janitor; this is similar to how Ahti kept Alan Wake’s angel lamp in the Talk Show studio basement.
- In the “spiral” path, Shawn and Lisa go on vacation to the Pacific West and stay in a cabin on an island on a caldera lake as Alan Wake and his wife, Alice, did at the beginning of the homonymous game. It should also be noted that "Lisa" is an approximate inversion of "Alice".
- In the “key” path, Shawn meets a version of the red-headed woman, Jesbet, who, similarly to Jesse Faden, wields a shifting weapon Object of Power and is named the director of the organization. In the same path, the REC finds a polyhedron shaped alien-lifeform, similar to Polaris, which imbues Shawn with power.
- The term “Master of Many Worlds” was first used by Alan Wake at the end of the Final Draft.
- In terms of appearance and behavior, the Time Breakers are similar to fade-outs.
Gallery[]
Concept Art[]
Screenshots[]
