So I finished my first play through of ‘The Quarry’ today, I ended up fucking up right at the end, overthinking things and playing myself, so I ended up doing the final chapter twice. My idea was to have a ‘do it blind and accept whatever happens’ first time playthrough, which I stuck with right until that moment. However, there, I was just so close to the end, I just felt cheated.
Okay, so starting right at the beginning, after the first few hours… I really wasn’t feeling this, if I have to be honest. I guess this maybe sounds weird but I felt like I was almost too desperate to like it, and it held me back from properly just enjoying it for what it was. I loved Until Dawn, honestly I love this style of game in general and 80s homage Summer Camp horror? That is my fucking jam! This is a combo made in Heaven… isn’t it? Then… why am I not really enjoying this?
I guess firstly, there is some jank… No, A LOT of jank. Now I know that sorta comes as part of the package with these types of games and there is some clear mechanical refinement from previous titles here — honestly, I’d maybe even argue the game is too easy, the QTEs, button mashes and holds that make up the bulk of the gameplay are so forgiving, you practically would have to fail them on purpose if you wanted to see what would happen. However, this is still a lesser evil to any time you are actually in control of a character, which consistently feels awful.
The second problem is from a technical standpoint, the game ran like shit. I thought it was just my PC struggling given the insane level of fidelity this game has, but I have seen some other people on PCs way better than mine running into technical issues too.
Then there are issues which are more baked into the actual design of the game. The environments, for example, are large and beautiful. This would be a positive, but they don’t seem to add any extra points of interactivity to justify these larger environments and since characters always feel weird to control in these sorts of games, having more space to awkwardly bumble around isn’t that fun for me.
(Visuals, while we are here, are probably the greatest strength of this title. It is the kind of game that looks almost so good it becomes a detriment, as any flaw that could otherwise be brushed off, stands out here like a beacon in a game that almost looks so real it is scary.)
And maybe the biggest issue of all is just how smoke and mirrors this game really is in the end. In past titles, there was always an immediate and then a longer term ramification for a choice. You were shaping the psychological profiles of characters and their dynamics with other characters in the short term depending on the choices you made, and then down the road this will culminate in a zig or zag. That may be happening behind the scenes here, but this isn’t being relayed to the player. I guess in some senses this is a positive as it makes it less gamey, but I feel like it takes away some of the weight or excitement from a choice, as you don’t have that immediate feedback from it.
Things like the new Death Rewind System does show that some payoff does trigger off of choices made hours earlier, which is cool, but from immersing myself in spoiler territory since doing my first run, it seems like a lot of the game is like locked in no matter what choices you make. Just a bunch of fixed narrative beats, with some different trimmings to connect these beats together. You could argue all of these games are like this in the end, but they made some really outlandish claims with this one (like a thousand different branches and 130 endings or something?!) and given this is getting mostly rave reviews with no one really calling this out, I wondered if maybe some mad lad had truly done the whole “divergent story” game we have been promised since games first began.
But no, it seems like a lot of the stuff that I thought was just the result of my choices, is just how the game has to play out. You might get to events in slightly different ways, but it seems like unless you literally compare like a story where literally everyone dies or everyone lives, our stories are going to be almost identical no matter what choices we both made.
I think another thing that really hurts the replayability of The Quarry is there isn’t the elasticity you are probably expecting. What I mean by this, is if you don’t get characters to certain points in the story, it seems like you just don’t get that story beat whatsoever. One of the biggest things I was looking forwards to seeing is how scenes will play out if X isn’t alive to get to that sequence, however, the answer seems to be that the sequence just won’t happen at all.
I was listening to Greg Miller’s recount of his playthrough and because of who died in his playthrough, his game basically just ended at the conclusion of the second act, it was basically missing the whole third act entirely and it seems like it basically ruined his playthrough. If that is what they mean by diverging paths here, that you just lose content to give things a proper definitive ending then… that is bad, in my opinion.
Another thing that will really affect your desire to keep playing this are the characters. Again, I heard so much good stuff about the characters, the performances and all that jazz but eh… call me whelmed. I think the game suffers because the cast is too big, and the game doesn’t treat them equally. You have a bunch of characters who are clearly more main than others and then a bunch of others that sorta forever exist on the fringe of the story.
I guess if you want to create an illusion of choice, having someone who is very obviously the main character from the get go doesn’t work, but I also guess that trying to build nine versions of the game where any one counsellor can become the main character is probably also outside of the realms of what we can currently programme.
But I dunno, I just don’t think characters are handled all that well. Some characters that are major driving forces for the early parts of the story, just sorta disappear from the story entirely, even if they live. Like you’ll cut back to them just on their weird, meaningless, side quest every now and then as like a check in, but overall you can sorta just forget these characters exist. But then on the reverse, characters who you barely spent a second with suddenly become major players right at the end, but things like the final girl trope only land well when we’ve gone on the journey with them from beginning to end. Character combinations are weird as well, there were a bunch of relationships either established at the beginning, or begin to bud at early portions of the game, which seem to get forgotten about entirely or just don’t pay off at all. There are whole chapters which, upon reflection, feel almost like filler because I know those moments are not going anywhere meaningful and that only further sours my drive to play through this again.
Look, I know this reads really negatively and I maybe am not as down on this as this probably reads. I thought the game was fine but I guess I am just sorta let down it isn’t more than it is. I loved Until Dawn and it just sorta feels like we have forever been chasing that game’s ghost, pun not intended, ever since. The reviews seemed to promise this was some great leap from the Dark Pictures titles, but I would say in all the ways that matter, this is pretty much of equal quality to those titles. And I actually seemed to like those titles more than most, so that isn’t the criticism it can possibly read as, but I just think — like it seems to happen every time for me — the reviews took me to a ledge and pushed me over it. Rather than coming away just enjoying my time with the game I had, I am mad it isn’t the game I read about in reviews.
I do kinda wanna do another playthrough to mess around with the Death Rewind system and squeeze in as many choices as I can into one playthrough just to see if I can find any truly divergent paths. I also think the director’s chair movie mode is an interesting concept too, and that may squeeze a third playthrough out of me, but right now, I am really in no rush to go and playthrough this again.
— Locke.
