I think we’d better stick to the plan, sir.
I mean, Mr.
Hacker knows we’re coming and will give us advance notice.
No, ma’am, you’re going to the Harbinger Motel, you understand? The Quarry is the spiritual successor to the 2015 teen horror film Until Dawn After great success and a positive critical response, developer SUPERMASQUALGAME returns to the genre, offering players new settings new characters and new horror threats.
We sat down with a few members of the team to discuss their role in bringing a scenario to life.
The scene we saw took place in the prologue of The Quarry, our first introduction to the terrifying new character played by horror icon Ted Raymond. The prologue starts with what we can think of as a real classic and idea, which is Brad and Janet are driving through the woods at night and Max we’re lost and we’re just in a geographic shift, so lost Laura and Max are the two will they’ve just been in a car accident and something terrible has happened and they’re kind of shaken up and then a cop pops up and a cop comes to their aid A pretty scary cop Now you guys want to tell me what the hell you’re doing? It’s so late and it’s up to you how you handle the scene and the choices you make that the police will react differently to you now that we know the scene, let’s see how the scene is made up and what better way to start than with a script? I remember reading Will’s original script and we had two camp counselors who were on their way to camp and it was kind of a set up of a couple getting into a car accident in the middle of nowhere and I guess it’s just playing this game, I guess you could call it a familiar situation in a different direction and let’s play these characters Are any of you guys hurt? No she hit her head barely hit it I mean I can I can’t even feel it my butt not my head I’m fine we’re fine we’re just a little shocked so Graham and I will agree on the final draft of the script we break it up into parts and get sent out, send it back we review it and then it will be sent away basically to the pull they can see the tools that we use including the paper game design and the dialogue next to it, so you can see not only the dialogue that you’re using, but also the branching of it and the choices that you’re making, which are all text on the page. But because of the motion capture technology, there was a distinct lack of visual stimulation for the performers, and they relied heavily on the director to help them imagine the scenes I think we were lucky to have Will at the helm, because that was also his bread and butter, and he’s a very visual thinker, and I think that was instilled in all of our team, especially in the writing process, where we thought of each scene as not being a stage two between two characters. We think about the surroundings, for example, and how we want it to look and feel. Quarry’s influence on horror films is obvious, but it’s not just the script of a horror story, with such a visual thinker at the helm, it’s also a clear goal to achieve a cinematic type of presentation, to create a cinematic type of game, you need a cinematic style of filming approach, photography and lighting and I think it’s remarkable that we did something with very specific techniques that are not commonly used in games that are not normally used in games and not used in movies but we had to tweak it so that it would work in real time and run time basically like any other motion capture device that we’ve had before you put a white tracking point on something and then the camera picks it up in the studio the camera, and then effectively knowing that it’s a 3-D object, it just maps to a 3-D object, and then they mount the camera on a little TV in front of me and I can shoot it just like any real camera except there’s no lens in front of it, there’s really no difference I’m right there, which means the player is there and I’m reacting to the scene and reacting to the emotions of the character For example, in this police scene, when Travis comes in, he comes into the frame and the players probably know they’re there and they’re yelling oh, there he is, and then me and Max and Laura react, a little bumpy, a little
