The Quarry (2022)
"When the sun goes down on the last night of summer camp, nine teenage counselors are plunged into an unpredictable night of horror."
- IMDB
The Quarry had a very creepy start as it established the setting in the middle of nowhere where the supernatural happens. I will say, there was more than enough foreshadowing to let us know it was werewolves. Which was exciting at first, but in the end, it wasn't my favorite rendition of a werewolf storyline. I didn't think the werewolves looked like werewolves. Honestly, they looked more like a mix between until dawn's wendigos and Harry Potter's werewolves. The werewolf lore in this game went with the "break the curse by killing the first" law of werewolf nature. This concept got way more exciting towards the final act of the game. If Laura survives long enough, we see the fortune teller integrated into the story, the whole harem scarem plot is revealed and the ghost encounters make sense despite them being slightly out of place anyway.
This game blows my mind with how many endings you can get. I tried hard researching but it's so overwhelming. You can kill all characters; you can save all characters. Every character can get infected or only a couple. At the end of the game, the curse can be lifted or remain. My ideal ending is the Hacketts' live and Laura dies, because Laura runs around acting like a vengeful hero thinking she knows everything when she doesn't and destroys this entire family that was deeply affected by a series of unfortunate circumstances. At the same time, the "kill all the Hackets" scenario may be more of a mercy massacre for this exact reason, so maybe the white wolf scenario is best - in which the Hacketts' die, Laura and Travis team up, Travis dies in the car crash, and Laura dies after killing Silas, leaving the rest of the councilors to live. I like that ending. But I'll leave it up to you. Check out IGN's insane guide and check out the millions of variations the Quarry has to offer.
Just as a side rant, I hate people, specifically Youtubers, that play the game and get mad when they choose a decision and dislike the results and then complain. Their mindset is always "oh I didn't know the choice would lead to this." I don't know if they're just defending their decisions or genuinely complaining about the game - but not knowing the outcome is the point. In real life, we make decisions every day. Can you truly say you know the full outcome of your daily decisions? No. We're not Doctor Strange. Just like these divergent path games, we make decisions that appeal to us at the time, and we plant the seeds of our consequences, good and bad.
As the spiritual successor to Until Dawn, how does it compare? Well, gameplay wise, it's quite similar. Because there are more characters, there are more deaths with several ways to kill these characters, infected characters can also lead to different outcomes and different scenarios, and there are so many endings - I don't even know how many. Until Dawn ends the same, it's all about who survives the night and what happens to Josh. There are ways to kill characters that I still don't know about, and that's saying something as I've been a huge fan of Until Dawn since it came out.
While the Quarry wins with its versatile story possibilities, I don't feel like its characters are as strong. I like some of the Quarry characters, but with Until Dawn, I have a reason to like all of them. Even Emily. I like her so much because of how much I hate her lol. I'm so attached to the Until Dawn squad whereas I don't feel too bad watching some Quarry characters die. Both games really drive home the cringey 80s horror movie about slaughtered teens cliché. This is most apparent when it comes to their cringey dialogue. For me, the Quarry dialogue is just cringey, but Until Dawn is so cringey that it's actually funny.
Overall, the Quarry is a testament to the times with its evolved game play and diverse possibilities of endings. Until Dawn as an overall experience has a charm that the Quarry just wasn't able to capture for me. I definitely recommend both games as they're both fantastic, but Until Dawn will always have a special place in my heart.
My Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆
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