Supermassive Games' ambitious new horror title The Quarry will offer a bountiful 186 unique endings to unlock.
The horror movie-like adventure game, which looks to be the spiritual successor to Supermassive's hit Until Dawn, will let you get down with some serious decision-making. You're going to have to do a whole lot of it, by the sound of things, if you want to see what happens in each and every conclusion.
Speaking to IGN, game director Will Byles explained what goes into creating a game where so much can happen so quickly, serving up some details about the script and how this mind-boggling amount of endings came to fruition.
"We write it like a movie screenplay," Byles explained. "Actors are used to a 100-page script. The script for this is over 1000 pages. [The actors] can get very alarmed."
Director of The Quarry and Until Dawn, Will Byles from Supermassive Games, tells us how exactly you go about writing a story with 186 unique endings and how the choices you make along the way impact everything. pic.twitter.com/mAIwJ81FrCApril 27, 2022
With that cadence, the team has to shoot about 50 pages a day to get through all of the game's content. The "mad amount" of footage often requires actors to restart scenes, then react to different variables to create new game routes.
For instance, a character might begin walking down a path alone, choose Path A, and meet their death. If Path B is selected, that character might not only live, but meet an additional companion, both scenarios which require new or altered dialogue and responses. It's all about branching paths.
"We worked out 186 different endings for those characters, not just alive or dead," said Byles. "The stories that they have on the way through are massively varied."
Just like in Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, there will be smaller decisions with less dire consequences, and those with significant, huge changes that will manifest in the game.
With 186 endings to suss out, that means you might be looking at plenty of trial and error runs to map out each path. That ultimately translates to better replayability, and plenty of reasons to go back and watch your favorite characters survive, or see the ones you don't like as much undoubtedly meet gruesome ends.
The Quarry is set to launch on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on June 10.
Can't wait to get lost in The Quarry? Here are the best horror games you can play right now.
