You Shot Me? I'm Telling Mom.
As I seem to be on a Supermassive horror game kick at the moment, I've watched theRadBrad's Let's Play of The Quarry, the spiritual successor to Until Dawn!
The trouble with Supermassive games is that Until Dawn offered me Mike Munroe, the perfect character, and Mike/Sam, the perfect pairing, and no characters or interactions in subsequent games have quite been able to measure up. Mike's an obnoxious but basically good-hearted guy who makes horrible mistakes and struggles with guilt over them; he fights desperately to save his friends; he befriends a wolf; he has chemistry with pretty much anyone he interacts with; he gets his hand caught in a bear trap and cuts his own fingers off; what more do you need in a character?
While I did have more investment in Mike and Mike/Sam than in any aspect of The Quarry, though, I do like the Quarry kids! I took a quick liking to Abi (she's quiet, she's compassionate, she seems reasonably level-headed, she has cute little bat wings on her backpack), and over the course of the game almost all of them won me over. I didn't passionately love any of the characters, but I was invested in their survival.
Some of the characters were disadvantaged by a lack of screentime, but even the ones I wasn't necessarily a big fan of had moments I enjoyed: Jacob lost and helpless and crying, a bewildered Max wandering around in Laura's clothes and trying to piece things together.
My favourite characters, in no particular order, were probably Abi, Kaitlyn and Dylan. I liked Laura and I thought her dynamic with Travis was really interesting, but she kept killing Hacketts in the playthrough I watched, and I had complicated feelings about that!
I think the only counsellor I didn't develop any affection for was Nick, who suffered very badly from the lack-of-screentime problem, meaning we unfortunately didn't really get any impression of his personality before he started being an arsehole to Abi as a... symptom of lycanthropy?
I love the little old-timey informational cartoon tutorials. Ludicrously cute way to convey gameplay information in your horror game.
In both lighting and music, some of the early scenes at the camp, while it's still daylight, feel a lot like a Life Is Strange game.
Ryan seems like a character who's just sort of quiet and socially awkward, but everyone else interprets that as 'sexy and brooding and mysterious', and it feels like a curse he has to bear.
Everyone: Holy shit, Ryan, you're so hot.
Ryan: Please just let me listen to my podcasts in peace.
They've really gone all-in on the 'teen romance simulator with monsters' potential of these games, and it's sort of delightful.
Travis the Creepy Cop waking Laura by stroking her face was extremely weird and I was regrettably into it. I realise he's noticed that she's lost her eye and he's reacting to that, but he absolutely did not have to react by going into her cell and stroking her face while she's sleeping. This isn't a complaint; it's an observation.
(I enjoyed this little Travis/Laura comic by deadlilmoon on Tumblr.)
I looked up some videos of alternative outcomes, and, if you shoot Travis when escaping from prison, you get a little text pop-up at the side of the screen that just says 'Travis will kill you'. Which is terrifying! Those pop-ups usually give small details like 'The cop wasn't expecting that' or 'Nick doesn't believe you' or 'Dylan seems a little disappointed', so 'Travis will kill you' is an extremely alarming departure. Very cool use of the interface to scare the hell out of the player. (And he will, in fact, kill Laura later.)
I love the 'play piano?' option showing up when you're exploring a house full of people who want to kill you. I'm always mildly outraged when a videogame includes a piano but won't let you play it, and I love that Supermassive has taken my personal 'I should always be allowed to mess around on the piano' rule to ridiculous extremes.
I hugely enjoy the sheer awkwardness of Laura having to bite Ryan while they're both human and fully aware. They had some good interactions!
The Let's Player managed to keep all the counsellors alive, but he killed all the Hacketts. At the very end he missed a QTE and accidentally shot Travis, and I was startled by how upset I was! Apparently I was more invested in the creepy cop than I'd realised. I think warming to Travis was the biggest surprise of this game for me.
I listed Abi, Kaitlyn and Dylan as my favourite characters earlier in the entry, but possibly my actual favourite character was Travis? I was just thinking about the counsellors when listing favourite characters, but, if we think about everyone in the game, my top three might actually be Travis, Kaitlyn and Dylan.
I enjoyed The Quarry a fair bit! Supermassive continues to be a great videogame developer if you like stories about a bunch of people going through bizarre and traumatic experiences together, even if I find their games too stressful to play them myself.
I'm not experiencing the drive to write fanfiction right now, but I'll think about it; the ending was a little abrupt and it definitely felt like there was room to follow up on the characters.
The trouble with Supermassive games is that Until Dawn offered me Mike Munroe, the perfect character, and Mike/Sam, the perfect pairing, and no characters or interactions in subsequent games have quite been able to measure up. Mike's an obnoxious but basically good-hearted guy who makes horrible mistakes and struggles with guilt over them; he fights desperately to save his friends; he befriends a wolf; he has chemistry with pretty much anyone he interacts with; he gets his hand caught in a bear trap and cuts his own fingers off; what more do you need in a character?
While I did have more investment in Mike and Mike/Sam than in any aspect of The Quarry, though, I do like the Quarry kids! I took a quick liking to Abi (she's quiet, she's compassionate, she seems reasonably level-headed, she has cute little bat wings on her backpack), and over the course of the game almost all of them won me over. I didn't passionately love any of the characters, but I was invested in their survival.
Some of the characters were disadvantaged by a lack of screentime, but even the ones I wasn't necessarily a big fan of had moments I enjoyed: Jacob lost and helpless and crying, a bewildered Max wandering around in Laura's clothes and trying to piece things together.
My favourite characters, in no particular order, were probably Abi, Kaitlyn and Dylan. I liked Laura and I thought her dynamic with Travis was really interesting, but she kept killing Hacketts in the playthrough I watched, and I had complicated feelings about that!
I think the only counsellor I didn't develop any affection for was Nick, who suffered very badly from the lack-of-screentime problem, meaning we unfortunately didn't really get any impression of his personality before he started being an arsehole to Abi as a... symptom of lycanthropy?
I love the little old-timey informational cartoon tutorials. Ludicrously cute way to convey gameplay information in your horror game.
In both lighting and music, some of the early scenes at the camp, while it's still daylight, feel a lot like a Life Is Strange game.
Ryan seems like a character who's just sort of quiet and socially awkward, but everyone else interprets that as 'sexy and brooding and mysterious', and it feels like a curse he has to bear.
Everyone: Holy shit, Ryan, you're so hot.
Ryan: Please just let me listen to my podcasts in peace.
They've really gone all-in on the 'teen romance simulator with monsters' potential of these games, and it's sort of delightful.
Travis the Creepy Cop waking Laura by stroking her face was extremely weird and I was regrettably into it. I realise he's noticed that she's lost her eye and he's reacting to that, but he absolutely did not have to react by going into her cell and stroking her face while she's sleeping. This isn't a complaint; it's an observation.
(I enjoyed this little Travis/Laura comic by deadlilmoon on Tumblr.)
I looked up some videos of alternative outcomes, and, if you shoot Travis when escaping from prison, you get a little text pop-up at the side of the screen that just says 'Travis will kill you'. Which is terrifying! Those pop-ups usually give small details like 'The cop wasn't expecting that' or 'Nick doesn't believe you' or 'Dylan seems a little disappointed', so 'Travis will kill you' is an extremely alarming departure. Very cool use of the interface to scare the hell out of the player. (And he will, in fact, kill Laura later.)
I love the 'play piano?' option showing up when you're exploring a house full of people who want to kill you. I'm always mildly outraged when a videogame includes a piano but won't let you play it, and I love that Supermassive has taken my personal 'I should always be allowed to mess around on the piano' rule to ridiculous extremes.
I hugely enjoy the sheer awkwardness of Laura having to bite Ryan while they're both human and fully aware. They had some good interactions!
The Let's Player managed to keep all the counsellors alive, but he killed all the Hacketts. At the very end he missed a QTE and accidentally shot Travis, and I was startled by how upset I was! Apparently I was more invested in the creepy cop than I'd realised. I think warming to Travis was the biggest surprise of this game for me.
I listed Abi, Kaitlyn and Dylan as my favourite characters earlier in the entry, but possibly my actual favourite character was Travis? I was just thinking about the counsellors when listing favourite characters, but, if we think about everyone in the game, my top three might actually be Travis, Kaitlyn and Dylan.
I enjoyed The Quarry a fair bit! Supermassive continues to be a great videogame developer if you like stories about a bunch of people going through bizarre and traumatic experiences together, even if I find their games too stressful to play them myself.
I'm not experiencing the drive to write fanfiction right now, but I'll think about it; the ending was a little abrupt and it definitely felt like there was room to follow up on the characters.