One Step Forward, Two Steps Back - Analysing The Quarry [SPOILERS]

Everything in this video is entirely my opinion, art is subjective, yada yada yada.

Today we're discussing The Quarry, as was widely requested in the comments of my prior video on Until Dawn. This video also contains some discussion around the wider Supermassive games library, and speculation around the upcoming Dead by Daylight tie-in game.

I have been a longtime fan of the telltale method of interactive movies, but The Quarry is not without flaws. I aim to understand what makes it worse than it's predacessor, Until Dawn, whilst also aiming to give credit where credit is due. Unlike the prior video in this series of mine, I am looking at gameplay alongside with story, although this is mostly an analysis of the game from a writing perspective.

Similar to the prior video, this is equal parts retrospective, character analysis, and a character ranking/a tier list.

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Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:40 Plot Recap
00:06:46 Until Dawn Comparison
00:19:00 Nick
00:26:45 Ryan
00:35:36 Emma
00:40:41 Laura (and Max)
00:47:14 Kaitlyn
00:51:25 Dylan
00:54:33 Abigail
01:01:05 Jacob
01:07:40 Conclusion

Music:
In The Hall of The Mountain King
Various Tracks by Myuu ()

External Media Taken From: House of The Dragon Season 2, Until Dawn, The Quarry, It's Always Sunny in Philedelphia, JackSepticEye, Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Silent Hill 2, Ariana Grande, and a brief reference to Harry Potter

General Tags:
Game Explained, 100 Days, Horror Gaming, Video Essay, LGBT Horror, Character Analysis, Villain Analysis, Until Dawn, The Quarry, Werewolf Mythology, Gaming, Retrospective, Video Essay, Longform Content, Long Video Essay, To Sleep To, Rant, Horror Review, Horror Video Essay

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[RatatTalks]

Edit: Next video is going to be on Man of Medan.

Hi

In a weird coincidence this game is on sale on steam until the 5th August


This isn't an advert or anything, I just saw it and thought I'd share

[leethomas]

It bothers me that’s this wasn’t set in the 80s, it fits those vibes completely. Werewolves, a locally famous family on the decline, the summer camp vibes, the lack of phones.

It never made sense to be set in modern times, cause most of those elements don’t exist nowadays; freak shows, and summer camps

[plaguedoctorjamespainshe]

Cant wait for supermassive to discover what the concept of running during gameplay is

[atarsto]

I think the final nail in the coffin for The Quarry was the ending.
Whereas Until Dawn has all the surviving characters be interviewed and even gives some of them special dialogue depending on the choices you make or if they're solo survivors. The Quarry just hits you with a quick cut over who lived, who got infected, who died aaaand then it's the same ending every single time with only the final bit changing depending on if you got enough clues or not.

Imagine saving all characters and then be told that they're all going to jail in the most underwhelming conclusion to the story ever. That's pretty frustrating. I really hope they don't botch the ending in their next game.

[GumiBearBoy]

One thing that I actually really liked about Max is he's the only werewolf in the game i think who sees the aftermath of what he's done
If you got Emma and Jacob killed on the island he finds there bodies and is rightfully horrified and even apologises to their bodies which I thought was really nice characterisation for him

[snifflebird]

convinced that half of the writing team thought they were writing a comedy cos silas running up the road at them as they’re saying “how r we gonna find him just driving up the road” is SO FUNNY

[TheDimensionDweller]

57:06 "This is interesting because it's him actively predating on her, which leads to him literally metamorphasizing into a predator. Abby cannot save him here no matter what she does. This might be because he was just always predatory, although it's more than likely because this game is bad." Yeah that got a laugh out of me.

[DGS]

The guy going "Does this look like the goddamn HARBINGER MOTEL TO YOU?!?!?" is the most memorable part 😂😂😂

[gooeymon]

I'm pretty sure Nick is not supposed to be a predator or an asshole, and that the writers want us to blame his later behaviour on the transformation and that not being him really, I think they just wanted to shock us by slowly transforming an innocent introverted boy into this creepy dude who says the girl he likes is easy, but this contradicts the way the other characters act during their own transformations, so IMO its probably just bad and inconsistent writing and thats not actually how we're supposed to see Nick's character

[luispalao]

One thing I didn’t like about The Quarry was the very little use of the setting in the story telling.

In Until Dawn, we’re given a lot of history and context as to why the events have happened on Blackwood Mountain. Why a mountain? It’s because the Washingtons have a vacation lodge, and the characters are having a party up there. Why are there native items everywhere? The Native Americans used to live on it. Why are there mines? Miners were excavating for resources back in the 50’s. Why is there a Sanatorium? Scientists were running experiments on humans turning Wendigo. Why are there multiple Wendigos? Those were the miners. How was it that Hannah was never found? She got stuck and lost in the mines.

Compare this to the Quarry. The quarry itself isn’t even seen until later on, and we spend most of the time in the woods or at camp. The Hackett’s family used to be moonshiners, which is cool but not at all relevant to the story. The werewolves are a result of a freak show coming into town so the threat came from outside. Where? Why hasn’t anyone heard of them bringing a werewolf boy until now? The Hackett’s mansion is there because they just live there. The camp is there for the family to make money off it, and they use it to fund the camp as well as their hunting. They also just happen to have a junkyard.

Until Dawn really goes into depth on the setting, and does a good job of meshing it into the story. The Quarry does the same thing, just not on the same level or degree that Until Dawn had.

[opktpgy]

Honestly i dont think supermassive will top until dawn

[narvalsaurio]

The supermassive shadow that was left by until dawn will never leave them

[Neutral_Tired]

You weren't kidding when you said this game is too dark, I could barely see anything in this video

[ripceridart]

i think supermassive's biggest mistake was bringing laura back. max being present as the werewolf on the island is one thing because he doesn't affect the actual plot other than briefly as an enemy, but the minute laura becomes a playable character past the prologue, most of the characters lose any importance in the story. it felt like ryan and kaitlyn were set up in the beginning to be the main protagonists the way that sam and mike are the 'main characters' of until dawn. but laura has a gun so she can fight, which negates kaitlyn's main thing we are shown she's particularly good at. laura also knows what's going on with the hacketts (mostly) which negates ryan's role as the detective as after that it doesn't feel like there is any drive for him (or anyone tbh) to be figuring out the mystery anymore.

ryan's character in particular gets nuked when laura comes back because he basically just becomes her sidekick and any arcs he had with other characters (mainly kaitlyn and dylan) get dropped. part of why the latter half of the game feels so rushed and unsatisfying to me.

i think maybe she could have been hidden away or imprisoned somewhere in the hackett house based on player choices in the prologue, and you could unlock her as a playable character if you spent some time searching around and rescued her?? but having her just appear randomly halfway through with an eyepatch and a shotgun felt like a bit of a deus ex machina lol.

[Dumeful]

I think part of the problem with The Quarry was the video game necessity of having to have scenarios where characters can die early, but then the rest of the story can still play out. It's one of the reasons why Abi feels like she has nothing to do for the entire back half of the game, because I think the devs expect players to let her die early. It's the reason why Laura comes in and becomes such a main character halfway through, so that the story can continue if you've killed off the other characters. I think if Supermassive wants to make a better game going forward, they need to have stronger story branches where a scene can play out multiple ways depending on which characters are alive, rather than just cutting scenes if the character is dead, and have longer term consequences, so that you can still have actions that have serious consequences, but don't completely remove a character from the story right away.

[Blackjack]

Oh right, I'd completely forgotten how pissed off I was when I found out that Nick would turn into a werwolf, no matter what you do. In a game where all your decisions have consequences, they just take that one out of your hands. Also I was pissed that in the finale a character can die if they hide in the freezer. Its not like the house blew up like in Until Dawn. Their friends know they're in there so why dont they come get him out after the danger is gone? That just felt like lazy writing to me...

[diegogutierrez]

Supermassive urgently needs a better team of writers. The current ones keep throwing in stupid events that impact the story in nonsensical ways. Like when the dude reaches for the cable and somehow gets his hand bitten off camera. Some choices feel like "you like cheesecake or chocolate cake? Chocolate? Wrong, your character is now dead because if you choose that, a werewolf mauls him to death, don't ask how it relates"

[Briarhoes]

Re: Nick being a counselor, I work at a summer camp and I would say the majority, or at least half, of our staff is international, from over a dozen different countries. Camps have contracts with many agencies around the world to pull teens/young adults for summer camp and it would be great experience on a resume for them while still being a fun job.

[vnusfytrapp]

the reason kaitlyn is called the final girl isn't because she gives off the energy, like ppl mistake, it's just because she can't die until either in the scrapyard w/o dylan or the final showdown in the lodge with her. those are the only two times she can die which is chapter 9 and 10 (10 being the last chapter)

[zoeyneal]

16:45 a huge reason for this was explained in the cast play through. The actors were alone for almost all of their time on set. Very few scenes with multiple people *actually* had them acting together. Justice talks about this the most. They would just sit in front of a monitor and read their lines which can explain some of the awkward dialogue delivery.