There are two major features seen in Quantum Legacy that make it stand out from other games. The first is also the most obvious one: the game's browser compatibility. But what exactly is this "browser revolution" and why is it so important?

Traditionally, when you think of "browser game" you think of endless flood of Pong and Tetris clones that you might have been subjected to over the last few years. The sad truth however, is the technology behind your web browser has allowed desktop quality games to be created years ago (although it was never used by the big time game developers).

There are of course a few reasons why we haven't seen Doom 3 inside an IE window. For one, traditional games may take up anywhere from 200 to 1400 megabytes in size, which would take days to download on a regular 56k modem. The other reason can be perhaps traced to a lack of development experience in the browser environment or failure to see the potential of this particular market.

Of course, all things have to change sooner or later. And today, maybe the best possible time to start the so called "browser revolution".

A large number of households today already have a high-speed Internet connection, which plays a crucial part. For example, in its current state, Quantum Legacy would take up around 250 megabytes using the standard game development technology, however, with the latest compression techniques, the same quality (or at least one close to the original) can be delivered in under 15 megabyte download (this includes all the bells, whistles and full speech game play seen in QL today). To expand the idea further, even if a game may be larger than 15 megabytes (which is roughly a 4 minute download on a DSL connection) it may be broken down into smaller chunks, each representing the individual levels of the game. For the high-speed consumer, this would simply mean an extra 30-60 second wait time during the loading of each level (something that most users would not even notice).

But why is this so important? The answer may lay in broader distribution. Even today, companies such as Ubisoft (Prince of Persia) have created in-browser mini-game versions of the full-fledged titles in hopes to attracting more consumers to the final product. And as time goes on, this trend will likely to continue.

What Quantum Legacy does to push this innovative idea even further is not to provide a stripped down version that may resemble the actual product, but in fact give the player the ability to experience the actual game without the need for setups or excessive downloads.

When Four Thirty One Interactive approached some of the players who tried the public beta of the game, and asked them what they liked most about Quantum Legacy or what they found to be most intriguing or innovative, the majority of replies were: the fact that it runs inside the browser.

Nothing is more frustrating than download a 300 megabyte file, installing it, and finding it either does not run on your system, or requires another patch/update (or worse yet, a 20 page instruction manual) before the demo can be enjoyed. This act alone deters a lot of the players from trying today's demo's, which could in turn affect the sales of the final product.

On the other hand, by using the latest browser technology, Quantum Legacy will do these things automatically. There are never any installation, patching or updating procedures, the game will auto-update itself as needed. This is not comparable to the updating system in the desktop games found today (where a separate piece of software goes on the Internet to check for updates, and then asks the user if he wishes to download the patch). Instead, QL will update itself as it loads. In essence, there should be no difference in the loading procedure, and yet, a new version of the game will be presented to the user.

In addition, almost all software and hardware compatibility issues are also solved by the engine, allowing users to play the entire game on all major operating systems and browsers by literally clicking on one link on the website.

The innovation of the concept does not stop there. Since Quantum Legacy is not a "browser demo" but a full game compatible with the browser, the engine has a number of important features to take advantage of this. For one, all the game's information will be stored on the server, right down to your saved games. This means you can load QL anywhere (home, work, school, friend's house) and in essence, play the same game. For example, you can start a long single player campaign, save your progress, and continue playing where you left of at your work computer the next day.

From the marketing point of view, this also presents a great advantage. If a potential customer is enjoying the demo, he can be on his way to playing the full version in seconds. Simply provide the billing information online, add a specific key to your account, and continue playing the rest of the game. No wait, no hassles, and the same amount of information streaming (short loading between levels).

With all these new concepts, a traditional game model can still be created. If needed, Quantum Legacy can be compiled into a standalone version to be distributed in CD-Rom form. That version in turn will still be backward compatible with the browser game (ie: you may have a standalone version at home, but you can still save your progress and continue where you left off by loading the browser version at work).

While it is still hard to tell if this trend will catch on, allowing the consumers to look forward to the Half Life 3 demo running on a copy of Netscape, inside a Linux operating system, during their lunch break at work, players can still enjoy the rich graphics and sounds of today's professional products inside their browser while playing Quantum Legacy.