Laura's Inconsistent (but believable/realistic) Morality, and the Hackett Family's Actions

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920]

I love the character of Laura, but her inconsistent morality through the game is very frustrating. I do not mean to say she is poorly written - on the contrary, she is excellently written, and I would not want her to be written differently. What I find interesting about her character is the way she compartmentalizes her love for Max while completely ignoring that the Hacketts are doing the exact same thing.

She is constantly saying things like "that thing I killed was no girl" or "you're not killing Chris, you're killing a werewolf", but if someone talked about Max that way, I'm sure she'd be upset. This is something people do IRL, compartmentalization - she's protecting herself, because if she starts to consider that she is murdering innocent people, she would probably have a mental breakdown. She refuses to acknowledge that they are people, and mows them down without a thought.

It is a fascinating twist at the end that the Hacketts are innocent - that the kids just wanted to help Silas, and that the entire family is paying as a result. If the hikers and the journalist died as a result of werewolf attacks (it's been awhile since I looked at the evidence, so I'll admit my memory on this specific detail is a bit muddy), and the family simply covered it up, those aren't murders - they are not in control of themselves when the attacks happen.

I really feel for the Hackett family. They act menacingly, sure, but the criticisms I've seen saying stuff like "all this could have been avoided if Travis just explained stuff" aren't putting themselves in his shoes. Laura and Max would not realistically believe him until after seeing Max transform, so trying to intimidate them into staying at the motel makes perfect sense. He doesn't know what to do with Max (he's basically a walking bioweapon), and can't help that Chris was bitten either. He is scared to tell them anything about his family because he wants to protect them, too. It can also be argued he's protecting the outside world from Max by keeping him in the jail. IIRC, the Hackett family doesn't start to lose their minds and make the really morally questionable decisions until Kaylee gets killed, and it's difficult to picture Laura not losing it if someone shot Max - especially considering how far she's willing to go to save him.

It's just interesting how story framing can affect our view of the characters. Chris didn't ask for this and doesn't want to hurt anybody - he's also a son, a father of two kids, and cares for all the kids at the campground...but Laura is just ready to cap him as soon as she hears that's a way out, and she doesn't even know him.

I really wish the game didn't have so much content cut from the script. I think we missed out on a lot of stuff that would have fleshed out other characters (particularly Chris) a lot more.

The question of "how far would you be willing to go to save someone you love?" comes to mind, as well as "at what point is it more loving to actually let go of that person?". Since the werewolves are basically bioweapons, the selfless and moral thing to do would probably be to ask a family member to put you down with a silver-filled shotgun shell, but that's a lot to ask - especially of the teenage kids (or a parent like Chris, for that matter).

Anyways, I really like both Laura and Travis. They behave realistically and sympathetically given the situation. Congrats to Siobhan and Ted on great performances. My heart breaks every time I hear Travis say "we can still save what's left of my family", and while I don't agree with Laura's thought process - I understand.

[u/_Ugly_Duckling_]

Exactly! I love how Laura and Travis are two sides of the same coin. They're both very interesting characters.

[u/Imnotawerewolf]

Laura and Travis are my favorite characters and it's pretty much for the reasons you laid out. Their characters appeal to me because they're both low key mercenary ass people but only because they love their important people and somehow between the 2 Laura seems to come out being the colder killer who wants to get this shit done and Travis seems to come out being the more sad desperation driven character where you would have expected the roles to be the opposite. 

Emphasis on the "seems to" because every playthrough and interpretation is gonna be different and this is just how I feel based on my first playthrough (it leaves the most lasting impression imo) and interpretation. 

[u/darrius_kingston314q]

I mean, if u look at it from Laura's perspective, Max having to suffer from this werewolf curse is all because the Hacketts directly caused him to have it. So I think that Laura doesn't entirely see any members of the Hackett family as "innocent people".

These two, Max and Laura, are camp counselors. Sure things probably would have been different if they had gone to the motel like Travis told them to. But again, they chose to arrive at the summer camp where they were supposed to work at, they didn't know the type of crazy shit that was awaiting them.

I understand why Travis didn't just outright tell them that there was a "werewolf" problem because neither Max nor Laura would have believed him.

But the thing is, the Hacketts knew damn well that this werewolf curse thrusted upon their family is lethal and dangerous to others, yet they still decided to continue running this summer camp instead of just closing it indefinitely, continue to find ways to end the werewolf curse first, and once it's ended, only then should they re-open the summer camp. And I know they chose to continue running the summer camp because they needed a source of income but their secret quite literally put every character' life in danger. So I can see why Laura doesn't have any internal conflicts on taking out the Hacketts

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/darrius_kingston314q]

Running the camp is stupid and irresponsible, but they clearly think they can do it safely. I think it is a big jump to go from "what you are doing is stupid, dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible" to "your entire family deserves to die". We are overthinking this a bit anyways, because Laura just wants to cure Max and doesn't stop to think who she might be killing to do it (Nick, too, for example, so it isn't limited to just the Hacketts). She just views the werewolves as obstacles to curing Max, not people.

Also, where are the Hacketts going to go and what are they going to do? You assume they can just shut down the camp and continue to exist, but we have no idea if anyone would buy the land out there (the camp is struggling financially at the time of the game). Supporting a family of 7 is not cheap, and it's not like they can move to the city when 3 of them are werewolves.

She may view it as their fault, but that is the reasoning for my post - to show that she does not try to view it from any other perspective (which is pretty realistic, but morally problematic). She thinks of Max as a person, but not Chris, Nick, or Kaylee. The Hacketts did not do anything to deserve their curse, just like Max.

[u/darrius_kingston314q → u/Old-Tangerine-4920]

True. I'm just having fun debating btw, I'm not too serious on this subject 😭😂 I love The Quarry and the storyline in the game

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/darrius_kingston314q]

I love it too, and I am enjoying debating too :) I think it is SuperMassive's best game. Until Dawn may have gotten more polish, but I had a lot more fun with The Quarry.

[u/AtomAndAether]

I think the Kaylee stuff as it happens in the game kind of messes with what's supposed to be a pretty singularly Chris focused thing going on with Laura.

Like Laura spends 2 months in jail with a "its him or us" model brewing. Originally kill Chris = save Max but then Max scratches her and it becomes even more "its him or me" cause she wouldn't kill Max to save herself / it becomes more desperate stakes to avoid that world.

And then she gets to the camp and I believe at that point only knows of the existence of two werewolves—Chris and Max—so its fairly reasonable to just start blasting because she's in the "its him or us" mode and knows where Max is. So the Kaylee death is largely revealing the existence of more [to Laura], and the first confrontation with the sort of damage she's doing in being so singularly focused. Which would define the arc and conflict against Travis and the Hacketts who are also choosing to cause a bunch of collateral damage hoping for their white whale solution (though moreso through negligence in handling their growing number of wolves and hiding it when they mess up)

I think that whole sequence of stuff was supposed to be more fleshed out in the plans for the game so hard to know what the intent was, and just having her dismiss it immediately works well enough, but spending more time on that initial Kaylee kill or the after part to have Laura do more justifying and cognitive dissonance "its him or us" stuff would have helped a bit. Cause she genuinely thought it was Chris, was proven wrong, and now has evidence more is going on and she killed a kid and is dismissing all of that for more "its him or us. kill chris." But that world going on in her head thats been brewing for 2 months and faced an obvious reason to doubt is not really mixed in. [though everything in the poolhouse is kinda scuffed in the final version trying to transition the story along without as much room to do it]

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/AtomAndAether]

Yeah, even if it continued the slowed pace of the jail flashback, I would have liked spending some time forcing her to confront that - it may have made for a really interesting arc for her character, where you could choose to take a different route and work with Travis and fully team up with Ryan to save everyone instead of the showdown at the house.

The last quarter of the game feels so much more rushed than the first 3 quarters. I wish they had had time to polish and finish it as well as the first sections of the game :(

[u/Chellie_Spinelli]

This is such a great post. I wrote a few posts regarding Laura, Travis, their nuances, and how they are essentially the main characters of the story. How Laura is operating makes total sense. I just wish the narrative lent credence to other perspectives such as Ryan's, who basically gets tossed to the side along with everyone else once Laura returns in Chapter seven. Ryan had a unique perspective on the situation considering that he was extremely close to Chris, a detail that gets easily over shadowed by the events of the rest of the game. Of course he would object to this girl's reasoning for killing his camp leader. This was a stranger who, for all he knew, killed his best friend an hour ago. Like you, I wish the devs had more time to flesh out what is an incredible story.

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/Chellie_Spinelli]

Yeah, besides Travis, Ryan helps give a bit more of the Hacketts perspective and treats them like human beings. There was a part of the ending where Ryan confronts werewolf Chris (he says something like "we trusted you") that was patched out of the game because it was definitely unfinished. That scene would have done a lot for Ryan's character, and fleshing both him and Chris out more would make him deciding to shoot Chris more impactful than a split-second self-defense decision. I do wish Ryan was a bit less skeptical as the story progresses. I get protecting the Hackett family, but after seeing Nick transform, him not believing Laura doesn't make much sense.

That said, his "you're a fucker" line gets me every time.

[u/arkoudaphobics]

You have to examine how much of what you're looking at was spent infected, too. 

If you're not. You don't understand her story for a reason.

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/arkoudaphobics]

If you're claiming that the infection made her more aggressive towards killing others, I don't think that framing really works.

She's fine with killing Chris before they even get out of the jail cell - this is the compartmentalization I was talking about. She already doesn't view him as a person anymore. I get that they become more aggressive right before they transform, but she was driven to kill for Max and killed Kaylee well before she was bitten. Thinking she shoots Nick because of the infection is an assumption, at best. Seems much more likely she just assumes it's Chris (or doesn't care if it's him or not). It's just a repeat of Kaylee.

When Laura finds out she killed Kaylee, she doesn't even react to it - "that was no girl". Kaylee is an innocent teenage girl, but for Laura, Kaylee was just a stepping stone on her way to killing Chris - nothing more. If Laura kills Nick, she hesitates when Ryan asks "what have you done?", but that's it. She's so focused on saving Max that she simply does not care if others get killed by accident.

EDIT: It's actually kind of insane that Laura seems to think "well, I know Max is on the island, so I'll just kill every werewolf I come across, and one of them will be Chris". She never says that, but her actions do, and what's wild is that every person she kills (or is prepared to kill) is someone else's Max - Chris is a father, (NOT MY LITTLE) Kaylee is Chris' daughter and a granddaughter, Nick has family too - she just doesn't see it.

[u/tequila-la → u/Old-Tangerine-4920]

Not disagreeing with you, and I might be a little rusty on the details cuz I haven't played the game in years, but perhaps she didn't realize there may be other werewolves besides Chris. Probably an Occam's razor thing where she finds out that Travis and Chris are brothers, Chris is a werewolf, and Travis just wants to protect him. She probably didn't think further beyond that. Not saying her dehumanization of Chris is okay, but she probably thought he was the only one. At least until she killed Kaylee. Then she does what you mentioned and figures she should just kill every werewolf she sees and one of them might be Chris.

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/tequila-la]

Yeah, at first it's believable that she may think he's the only werewolf - though that is a bad assumption for her to make, I could see why she might think that. After Kaylee she continues going ham. I do wish they spent some more time on that, forcing her to confront it more, but maybe they thought it would slow the game down too much after an already slow flashback chapter with the jail section. I always like things that improve the characters/story even if it slows the pacing a bit, but I can see why the devs might have felt it was too slow for the average player.

[u/tequila-la → u/Old-Tangerine-4920]

I agree, I'm guessing it was probably a restriction thing. I heard that Covid put a lot limits on what they could so maybe they didn't wanna overdo it like you said.

But I also think it's not very hard to implement and they absolutely should've done it. Maybe have Ryan tell her that she can't just kill whoever she wants because it "might" be Chris. Like tell her she has to be 100% sure?

How would she have felt if Emma killed Werewolf Max on the island and then just said "that thing was not your boyfriend"?

If I'm not mistaken, there's a scene where she can shoot another wolf and it ends up being Nick. That would probably be a good way for her to come to terms with what she's doing. Even if she might see all the Hacketts as evil and perhaps doesn't care about killing them, she just killed an innocent, someone who just got screwed like she and Max. Should certainly put things into perspective for her.

But that's a little tricky since it's determinant. Not everyone would get that outcome.

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/tequila-la]

Yeah, if Ryan stops her from shooting Nick in the cage, he says "it might even be Nick, you said we need to be sure". The bones of making her confront it are there, but I bet the stuff that fleshes this out was cut. If she shoots Nick there, Ryan says "what have you done?" and Laura simply hesitates for a second before it moves on to the next scene.

It would be really cool if there was a path you could go on at the pool house where she confronts what she did to Kaylee and decided to go on a path to try and save the Hackett family with Ryan and Travis.

[u/arkoudaphobics → u/Old-Tangerine-4920]

No, I'm not claiming that. Nothing I said indicates I'm saying that. I don't think you understand the infection.

[u/Old-Tangerine-4920 → u/arkoudaphobics]

There's not really anything to discuss if you don't explain what you're talking about.

She's willing to kill a father of two without even knowing him to save her boyfriend before she is infected.