The Quarry is a motion capture showcase on PS5 and Xbox Series X

Update 14/07/2022: The Quarry’s missing god ray effect on PS5 has now been fixed in a new patch. This now brings PS5 up to par with Xbox Series X’s delivery of the effect, confirming it was a bug with the previous build.

Supermassive Games seems to have found a winning formula with its choose-your-own-adventure horror games – and The Quarry is the most compelling and visually striking effort yet. The game uses the popular Unreal engine and is out on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and last-gen machines, a proper cross-platform release despite reports that it was originally a Stadia exclusive. How does each platform perform – especially the underpowered Series S – and does the unique cinematic presentation work on a technical level? Let’s find out.

Before we get to the numbers, let’s set the scene with a few words on The Quarry’s cinematic presentation. With limited player agency – and even a movie mode that strips out inputs entirely – there’s a huge emphasis on the motion-captured cast performances. Presented in a filmic 2.35:1 aspect ratio, every character is put in tight, close-up shots where any technical shortcomings would be quite obvious.

Thankfully, the motion capture tech is excellent, with only a few ‘uncanny valley’ moments, and these are mostly noticed with one character (Emma). The material work also holds up to close scrutiny, with skin reacting convincingly to torchlight and sunlight, including subsurface scattering that simulates light passing through thinner parts of the body like ears or fingers. Characters’ eyes are also beautifully reproduced, with reflections and realistic movement. Altogether, it’s an impressive showcase of real-time character rendering, which together with filmic framing and depth of field, gives Supermassive the tools needed to tell a story.

As you might expect from a game with a cinematic focus, the action targets 4K – with dynamic resolution scaling to ensure a stable 30fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X. We saw PS5 drop to 3072×1728, while Series X dropped to 3328×1872 – so a small advantage for Series X in the most complex scenes. However, this is barely noticeable thanks to plenty of postprocessing, including TAA (temporal anti-aliasing), heavy camera motion blur, depth of field and other UE tricks. However, PS5 seemed to be missing a trick during our testing – specifically, it didn’t show the ‘god ray’ volumetrics that streak through the sky on Series X in some scenes. This was later fixed in a July 8th update, after our video coverage was completed, restoring parity to the two consoles.

On PC, hitting 4K 30fps is dependent on your hardware, but you also have the option to boost shadow quality higher than the console releases, with the ultra setting providing noticeably softer shadows. The RTX 3060 Ti and Ryzen 7 5700X combo I used in testing managed about 24fps with maxed settings at 4K. With an RTX 3070 or better, 4K 30fps at ultra settings ought to be possible, assuming the rest of your hardware is up to snuff.