The Quarry, a new horror game from developer Supermassive Games (the makers of Until Dawn), is coming with something that no other game before it has ever done.
the quarry trailer
According to PlayStationLifestyle, the game will feature a total of 186 unique endings. This insane claim was from game director Will Byles, who also mentioned that the game's story was so long, its script has surpassed more than 1,000 pages - a script which Byles says was written like a movie screenplay.
A video detailing how Supermassive managed to craft all 186 unique endings was shared by IGN on its official YouTube channel, and it does provide a simple explanation for the game's storytelling choices:
Here's what Byles said about The Quarry's massive script - which weirdly doesn't translate into overall game length, as the story is only 10 hours long:
"Writing a branching narrative is a really interesting exercise. We write a full, 100-page screenplay as if it were a movie. We develop our character styles, and once we've got that, we can start looking at how we break that out into a full 10-hour experience. Actors are used to, on a feature film, a 100-page script. So when we send the actors the scripts they get very alarmed because they're huge. The script for this is over 1,000 pages. We have to shoot about 50 pages a day, which is unheard of. It's just a mad amount of footage. But obviously a lot of what they're learning is the same thing again and again and again, but a different branch."
To condense what was said, The Quarry's story isn't too long on its own. Rather, its 186 endings are a result of the game's intricately branching narrative, which gives players a number of choices that would be unheard of in, say, typical role-playing games.
The Quarry is set to release on June 10th on last-gen consoles (PS4, Xbox One), current-gen consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X/S), and PC.
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What Is The Quarry? A Brief Preview
The Quarry, as previously mentioned, is Supermassive Games' spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Until Dawn.
In IGN's hands-on preview, they mentioned how this game is already shaping up to be a worthy successor to Until Dawn and a clear love letter to all the iconic horror tropes of pop culture. You get the camp setting reminiscent of Friday the 13th, a group of teens vs. a stalking monster a-la Cabin in the Woods, and the levels of suspense that made Scream a household name.
In The Quarry, you play as a group of teens whose goals are to survive whatever horror is plaguing the summer camp they're staying in. The story itself is nothing spectacular (and perhaps even overdone), but the real deal is the game's branching narrative which is like Until Dawn's, but on steroids (that game only had six unique endings):
Aside from making critical choices in the heat of the action that will decide who lives or dies, The Quarry also has a made that will let you just watch it instead of play it. According to Game Informer, this Movie Mode will task players to pre-determine the behavior of all nine protagonists at the beginning. Then, you watch these behaviors dictate whether they survive the night or not.
Let's hope there's a trophy for completing all 186 endings if you tried.
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Story posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce