The spiritual sequel to Supermassive’s 2015 hitUntil Dawn,The Quarryfuses gaming with film to create a horror experience all its own. With strong writing, stellar graphics, and a standout cast of big-name actors, the game has a lot going for it.
RELATED:The Best Free-To-Play Horror Games On Steam
Though many aspects ofThe Quarryare brilliant, there are still some areas in which the game cries out for improvement. Whether these are quality-of-life issues, issues with story and performances, or problems with mechanics, a handful of things detract from an otherwise awesome horror experience. Here are some of thebiggest fixesThe Quarryneedsto reach its full potential.
8Less Ironic Detachment
One of the highlights ofThe Quarryis watching its exceptional cast play out the decisions the player makes on their behalf. The voice acting and motion capture are top-tier, and there are many moments when it’seasy to forget that one is playing a game and not watching a movie.
Unfortunately, the game’s writing doesn’t always do justice to the caliber of its cast’s performances.The major issue is the ironic detachment displayed by many of the key figures.Having a cavalier attitude or cracking jokes isn’t an issue in the early hours, but when blood begins to spill in the second act, it’s disconcerting to see some characters just shrug it off.
7A Stronger Second Act
One of the ways in whichThe Quarryattempts to outdoUntil Dawnis by giving the player a larger cast. This choice has its advantages, as it gives the player numerous personalities to wrangle with and backstories to dive into. Most of the game’s characters are a pleasure to interact with and control, so having so many is nice.
RELATED:The Quarry: How Long To Beat & How Many Chapters
However, there is an unfortunate side effect of having such a larger cast:the player’s time and attention are split in many directions.This issue is particularly notable in the middle of the game, where the juggling of characters and scenes begins to break the tension that would otherwise be building in the narrative.
6QoL Changes
Hybrid games that draw from multiple genres or even different mediums of entertainment altogether tend to struggle to find a balance between what features to adopt from each and to meld their disparate parts into a unified whole.The Quarryis the meeting point between film and gaming, and while many of its mechanics click comfortably together, some need some more love and attention to really work.
A fast-forward button, improved scene-selector, run button, and better labeling for points of no return would go a long waytowards smoothing out the experience and making the gap between cinematic moments and gaming ones smalleras the player tries to reach the perfect ending.
5Better QTEs
Games likeShenmueandGod of Warpopularized Quick-Time Events (QTEs), asking the player to deliver fast button inputs during cinematics in order to avoid an accident, injure a boss, or accomplish some other sensitive task. Like every mechanic, there are better and worse examples of QTEs throughout gaming history.
RELATED:The Quarry Has A Star-Studded Cast
Overall,The Quarryuses QTEs well, whether a character is ducking under a branch while fleeing through the forest or doing something even more dramatic.Unfortunately, these QTEs don’t have enough variation or urgency.They matter, but the player can typically pass them with little effort, and even for a game that wants to highlight accessibility, that’s a missed opportunity to create real tension.
4Skippable Cutscenes And Dialog
In an action game, skipping a cutscene or dialog sequence typically isn’t that big a deal. In a story-driven game likeThe Quarry,these scenes are the meat of the experience and deserve complete attention and engagement from the player as they absorb the narrative andtry to dodge bad decisions.
Because the game lacks a convenient skip feature, however,the player is forced to rewatch sequences during subsequent playthroughs.That wouldn’t be such a big deal if there weren’t so many and if they weren’t so long, but as it stands, the lack of a skip button is a significant issue.
3More Meaningful Decisions
As the gaming equivalent of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book,The Quarry’smajor selling point is the player’s ability to shape the narrative. This shaping comes in the form of choices large and small, allowing the player to steer events from one scene to the next, gradually building to a final, climactic payoff.
RELATED:The Quarry’s Death Rewind Feature Explained
It’s therefore frustrating thatmany of these decisions simply don’t matter as much as they could.Yes, the game has a number of crucial moments in which the player’s choices have major consequences (including the death of key characters), but many other decisions simply don’t feel as impactful as they could be.
2More Interactivity
How much ofthe player’s time should be spent controlling charactersand how much should be spent watching cutscenes is a thorny question in a game likeThe Quarry,and to an extent, it’s a subjective one. On the whole,The Quarryleans a little too hard towards the latter, making its audience a passive viewer rather than an active participant for much of the action.
More frequent control of characters and greater interactivity could produce a stronger narrative and gameplay experience as a whole,though exactly how that balance would be achieved without deviating too much from the game’s unique vision is an open question.
1Stronger Pacing
In between its cinematics,The Quarryputs the narrative in the player’s hands by allowing them to control characters directly. The primary problem with this mechanic is that the story’s pacing is repeatedly interrupted by the sometimes jarring transitions.
While the cutscenes may be full of drama and risk, the moments in which the player is actually in control often involve little more than searching the environment for glowing clues, at no risk of anything bad actually happening.Knowing the character is safe in these moments tends to dissipate the drama,which is a shame given how well the game otherwise cultivates it.
The Quarrywas released on June 27, 2025, on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC.
MORE:Horror Movies To Watch If You Loved Playing The Quarry
