“I saw many horrors. I mean, a lot of horror," said The Quarry's creative director, Will Byles. "Probably too many, and I've done it since I was a kid. My sister used to make me watch scary movies with her." .”
The Quarry is the latest big-budget horror game from Supermassive Games, the team behind the Until Dawn anthology and The Dark Pictures, two games that have found massive audiences, but The Quarry is the developer's best work yet. dia.
The game not only looks brilliant, capturing the fantastic performances of its Hollywood cast, but it makes your choices in the story seem to have real impact, the decisions you make at the beginning of the game carry over to the end of the game. Clearly a lot of effort has gone into making The Quarry the best game it can be.
Speaking with Byles, it's clear that The Quarry was born out of the team's deep love for all things horror. The Quarry may not be the scariest horror game, but it is one of the most ambitious and creative I've played in years.
A passion for horror
“So basically it's a playable teen horror game,” Byles says, giving me The Quarry's elevator pitch. "It's traditional teen horror, actually pretty archetypal or cliché teen horror. Anyone can live, anyone can die, as you play them throughout the game. If you die, you stay dead. You don't upgrade.
The double meaning of the title also indicates what you are getting into. "The quarry itself is a place called Hackett's Quarry," he says, "and it's a really suggestive place to create terror. Quarry also means 'the hunted' or what is hunted is the prey, so once the game starts you realize that they are the prey too.
a darker picture
Supermassive Games may be best known for Until Dawn, but they're also behind The Dark Pictures anthology: unique stories exploring different horror subgenres.
Oddly enough, these dives into different paths of horror affected the development of The Quarry in more technical ways than you might think. “We've been doing The Dark Pictures for several years since Until Dawn,” says Byles, “And with Until Dawn, we had to write in Excel sheets because there was no software to do that.
"On The Dark Pictures, we've developed a very good narrative design system. We always write a script in Final Draft first, but then split it into a playable storyboard mode with software we've developed over the years. We've won a lot of ."
The power of friendship
Almost since the first slasher movies, teenagers have been cast in the role of the hunt. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas and Halloween show young people being hunted down and killed by a cold, adult figure. There's something about this more childlike, not-yet-adult scene that makes teenagers a great lens to explore larger themes, in the case of The Quarry, Supermassive wanted a story that dives into putting friendships to the test.
The Quarry “is very scary,” says Byles, “but there's also a degree of frivolity to it. More than anything, it's about relationships. It's about how these things work under pressure.
Byles is excited to examine how we role-play with our friends and what's behind it all. "There's a thing where people start with this kind of facade of what they're portraying and they work their way outward," says Byles.
"It's the character they give it, but if you start hitting it, with fear, danger, injury and potentially death, all of those start to fall and then a real person comes out. So I really wanted to see what's real in people so much as possible.
This stripping of personality has happened before in stories, but it presents a particular challenge in a game. "When it comes to an interactive story, we have to give you a choice of how you behave in those situations and what you would say in response to those situations." . things," Byles says, which means you get to choose, to a degree, who a character is under his personality. "So, really, that's what it's all about. It's about honest relationships.
starry cutter
It is in the display of these slippery facades that the cast of The Quarry shines. As Byles hints, each of The Quarry's main characters seems superficial at first, as if he's putting up a front.
Jacob, for example, starts out as the archetypal sportsman. Confident, optimistic and a bit rude. As the threats increase, Jacob is shown to be quite emotionally intelligent and clearly cares for the friends he surrounds himself with.
"I'm always amazed at how adorable they are," says Byles, speaking of working with the likes of David Arquette, Brenda Song, Lance Henriksen and Justice Smith. "You hear stories about actors who are prima donnas but were super adorable."
In a sign that games like the Until Dawn anthology and The Dark Pictures are finding huge audiences, several actors have come to Supermassive, not the other way around. "A lot of them were actually asking to be in the games and they're obsessed," Byles reveals. “Miles Robbins, who plays Dylan, is absolutely obsessed with Until Dawn. Siobhan Williams, who plays Laura, says that everyone in that kind of age group really understands, because they've seen stuff like that and touch stuff like that, and they're a part of it.
“Zach Tinker plays Jacob. He is a bit of a "shower" character. Sports. He was so energetic, super energetic, and he wanted to do all of his stunts for him. And so we leave it!
"There was a time when he was chased by a monster and he ran and skidded and fell to the ground. Anyway, he went a little quiet and it turned out that he literally broke his thumb. But bless him, he kept going.
The teen counselors are just one part of The Quarry's cast, of course. Several older veteran actors also lent their looks and voices to the game: “So there's Lance Henriksen, there's Lin Shaye, there's Ted Raimi… David Arquette. There was a degree of bewilderment as they walked onto the set looking for the location of the camera. It's like, 'what are those little dots on you?' They had to have these helmets and the 3D camera capturing things from the face. This all took a bit of getting used to I think. But in the end, they got it. »
rocky road
As is the case with many AAA games released in recent years, the development of The Quarry has certainly not been without its challenges. “I think the hardest thing was really covid. It was really hard to come out of the closet in America,” says Byles. “We had to work a lot with the American embassy to get out because no one from Europe was allowed to enter the United States.
"The Screen Actors Guild of America is very strict with , and it was all before the vaccine. So everyone was tested every day. I had to wear three masks on set. I had to wear a cloth mask, an N95 mask, and a visor every time I got close to an actor. Then I couldn't breathe."
Despite the difficulties encountered, The Quarry has proven to be a more than worthwhile experience for horror lovers. While it's certainly a spiritual successor to Until Dawn, the team at Supermassive Games were able to go beyond their previous work to deliver a truly ambitious horror experience that I personally won't soon forget.