"The Quarry", A Horror Videogame

"The Quarry", a horror videogame

My opinion

This part doesn't contain spoilers.

The Quarry is a videogame created by Supermassive Games, the same people who created Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures Anthology series (Man of Medan, Little Hope and House of Ashes). The protagonists, just like in Until Dawn, are a group of teenagers (although they are around 18, I'd call them youngsters. You know they are that age because they say more than once that they're going to start university). During the summer, they are the monitors at Hackett's Quarry camp, run by Chris Hackett. The trouble starts when two monitors turn up early for the camp.

Personally, it's a game that I really liked, because it has a lot of mystery and I like to try to figure it out before a character tells you, and also, it has choices and that makes you responsible for what happens in the story. It's like choosing how each character develops and how they behave, whether you want them to misbehave with each other, or get along better. I liked it more than Until Dawn, for me the story is more interesting and the decisions are much more important (which means that you don't need to know how to play videogames to get a good ending, because many of the deaths are due to bad decisions or not having done enough research), apart from the fact that it's not such a gore game (I can't stand gore, although after a while watching horror videogames, I'm getting used to it 😅).

I've seen people who have played it complain that "they got a bad ending". You don't get a bad ending, it's triggered by your decisions (it's true that you can miss a Quick Time Event, that is, miss a key or button to dodge something and die, and for me that doesn't really matter, it's just a matter of reflexes and being aware. What's so funny if a character dies for not jumping properly? That happens in real life, but in games and movies the deaths are usually not so pathetic). But still, from what I've seen, it's much more about the decisions. As I was saying, the ending is chosen by you, and because there are so many important decisions, there are many possible endings (each character can have up to 10 different ways to die and there are 9 characters you can control). Obviously, if you get all the youngsters to survive, that's a good ending, but there are more characters besides them that you can also cause to die or not. More things I liked were how they connected all the dots in the story at the end.

There are also things I didn't like about the game, for example, some characters change their minds drastically without any explanation, or have an attitude that also changes suddenly, as if bits and pieces of the story had been cut and pasted. Another thing in relation to character development is that they don't tell each other things. They've seen something strange, dangerous or whatever, but they don't tell the others, or they're trying to help you, but they're not able to tell you, that gets on my nerves 😠. And I'd better not talk about many of the dialogues, which seem to have been forced… In this, the game developers could have made more effort so that the story would have a better sense, continuity and some situations wouldn't be heavy, uncomfortable or unnecessary. Although I must admit that the characters become more serious as the game progresses, and that's a plus (considering that at the beginning they behave as if they were 12 years old).

Well, after giving my opinion, I'm going to comment on some things about the story that I saw, and that are pretty close to what I would have chosen (I'm not summarising because it's a very long story and it's not at all the same playing it or watching it as reading a summary):

Spoilers from here:

There are 10 chapters and a prologue. Between each chapter the game is "paused" and the typical person appears who advises you what to do, as in other videogames by these creators. She's an old woman in this case, and she'll show you possible futures if you find her tarot cards.

One point I liked is that this old woman is to blame for everything, because if she didn't have Silas in her show as an attraction, Caleb and Kaylee wouldn't have tried to help him escape and neither of them would have ended up as lycanthropes. Also, the fact that she tries to convince you not to kill Silas, especially in the last moments of the game when you're aiming for him, is great.

I also really liked the fact that decisions that don't seem to matter can later help you save a character or avoid risking their life, for example, if when Laura is in the cell she misbehaves with the sheriff, then he kills her in the fight at the Hackett's house. Or, if you break the door of the wooden house where Abi and Kaitlyn had the luggage, they can hide when the werewolf attacks them on the radio. Or even, if you find a stuffed animal with Kaytlyn, then you can save her in the final fight in the wooden house if you don't want to kill Caleb turned into a werewolf.

One thing I didn't like is the behaviour of the Hackett family. They are supposed to be protecting the teenagers, but they don't warn them. I'm guessing it's because they've already been in trouble with other people and don't want to go to jail or anything like that (throughout the game you find out what the Hacketts are really like and how long they've been covering up their crimes - in fact, Travis, the sheriff, became a sheriff to cover up them). But once the youngsters know what's going on, it wouldn't hurt to tell them that they're saving them. I also liked the development of Travis' character, who only wanted to kill Silas to free his family. He comes across as menacing, sinister, even as a bad person at first, but if you choose correctly, you grow fond of him in the end, as he can trust you and show you his good side (he's one of my favourite characters along with Laura and Kaytlyn).

And an important detail is to take evidence, clues and that. They help you to discover the story, to explain some things or even to prove the innocence of the protagonists, and they are very interesting. On the credits screen, you'll hear the people doing the podcast that Ryan was listening to at the beginning. Depending on whether you saved all the young people or not, the front pages of the newspapers will say that they'll go to jail or that they were attacked by a bear, but at the end of the podcast, that headline may change depending on the evidence you found during the game (there are 10 pieces of evidence, one for each chapter). If you didn't find any or not enough, they won't investigate what happened (the Hacketts will still cover it up if they're not dead), but if you have enough, you can get the mystery solved.

Finally, you can't save all the characters that appear at the end (on the screen when you go name by name to see if they are alive or dead). The main objective would be to save the young people and remove the curse of Hackett's Quarry by killing Silas, but if you can save the members of Hackett's family, all the better. I saw an ending where all the young people lived and also Bobby (a brother of Chris Hackett), Travis (the other brother, the sheriff), Jebediah (the father), Max and Laura. The mother Constance, Chris, Kaylee, Caleb and Silas died. Doing a bit of research, to get the best ending you need Kaylee (in fact it's not your choice whether she dies or not), Chris and Silas to die. I didn't care if Constance died, because I didn't like her reaction when she found out her granddaughter was dead: she blamed Travis (on one hand it's his fault for not containing Laura in the cell), but is it really his fault? I mean, she has three electrified cells in the basement, one for each family member that is a werewolf, and that night, which is when they have to lock them up because the young ones are in the camp, they don't. They decide it's better that Chris is being tied to a wooden beam in the attic and Kaylee and Caleb I don't even know where they left them (because they turn up in the forest). Laura was smart by leaving Max on the island, but the Hackett family let theirs go away. It's something I don't understand. I also don't know if the first werewolf who attacked the teenagers (specifically Nick, right after playing Truth or Dare) was Silas or one of Chris's two sons. If it was Silas, it would justify the hunters being around, but they could have warned the youngsters that Nick was going to transform and they should lock him up, and thus help them and shelter them at their home. But well… here it seems that they don't think.

One last thing I didn't like is Ryan's attitude right after they meet Laura and she tells them what she's been through. He behaves as if he hasn't seen what has happened to Nick. It's normal that he doesn't want to kill Chris, because he has known him for a long time and his children are his friends, but after hearing that Chris' brother had Laura and Max locked up, and after having seen many suspicious clues, his opinion about the Hackett family should have changed a bit. It's because of this "flaw" that Ryan stopped being one of my favourite characters (not that he's a character I hate either, but I stopped liking him so much). I put flaw in quotes because it's not a flaw of the game as such, the character may have that personality and that way of seeing things, but I don't share it, it's something that doesn't make much sense to me and makes that scene strange.

Despite these things without apparent sense, I really liked the story, it was very interesting, and the fact that they put all the pieces together at the end makes you hooked to it and want to know what else happens. There are moments of tension when you don't know what will be best for the characters, and that's the essence of the game and what I like the most: that your choices save or kill the characters, and not a silly thing like not hitting a key when it's due (I have to add that sometimes it's better not to hit it, for example, when you're struggling with Constance, so you save her. However, in those cases you have to hit it more than once, so they also count as a choice).