#constance hackett

"...To present [the complexities of a character]...you have to be careful; you have to run a fine line because if you're gonna play [a character] all one way or another, you'll spoil it...that's what makes any good character, in my opinion...interesting. If they're just one way, it's boring. 'Muhahaha' is boring."

--Ted Raimi on playing Travis Hackett. Source: Dan Allen Gaming on YouTube

There's something about a morally gray antagonist done right that makes him compelling. Travis Hackett is an example of such a character. He shined in The Quarry, even as a non playable character. That speaks volumes about the actor portraying him, Ted Raimi. I still can't believe that the man who played this guy:

was the same person who also portrayed this guy:

Let's give it up for the acting range of Ted Raimi! Now to focus on Travis Hackett. I'm going to focus mainly on the canonical events of the game. There is just too much information to cover in what will already be a lengthy post, so I will be missing some details.

Creepy Cop

We are introduced to Travis in the prologue of the game as he encounters Laura and Max while the player is controlling Laura. He learns from them that the reason why the couple is "all the way out [in the woods] this late at night" is because they were heading to Hackett's Quarry one night earlier than when they were due. He then orders them to go to the nearest motel in the area. He commands Laura to step out of the car, so he can mark the location of the Harbinger Motel on her map (and in an alternate timeline where you fail Laura QTEs, Travis will insist on wiping dirt off of her face). He then sends them on their way and seemingly follows them, presumably to make sure they make it to the motel. Another option is that he didn't follow them but intended to go back to Hackett's Quarry to check on the status of his brother Chris, who is a werewolf at this time. The couple deliberately goes against the cop's wishes and heads to camp anyway, where Max encounters a monster in the storm shelter that attacks him. Laura tries to pull him to safety and almost succeeds until the beast pulls him back down at the very last second. It's at this moment that Officer Hackett steps in, drugs Laura from behind, and fires three gunshots into the storm shelter, albeit reluctantly. At this point, the writers could have gone in either one of two directions with him. The first and most obvious route would be the "Bwuahaha" option where he utters some sinister line as Laura falls unconscious. Instead, we see his composure crack, and then he proceeds with this reaction:

It's one of the most memorable moments in the game. This shows us that the cop is not the psychopath that the writers were trying to convince us he was. At the same time, the man is far away from being any kind of saint.

Guarded, Tired, & Heavy

Bar from a few hints sprinkled throughout the game, we don't see or hear anything about Officer Hackett again until chapter seven as Laura makes her return to the story as one of the playable characters. In an extended flashback, the audience learns that Laura and Max have been in jail for the past two months under the supervision of the cop, who we learn throughout the chapter is actually Chris Hackett's brother. While most fans argue that Chapter seven is a huge damper in ever wanting to replay the game again, during the first play through, this segment of the game is a giant lore fest as we get to learn more about who this cop is, and it's in this chapter that we learn his name: Travis. You can also find this information before the seventh chapter by looking through all of the content in the game menu where the "paths chosen" theme is represented in the form of VHS tapes.

Unfortunately, Travis has a lot on his shoulders. Half of the members of his family are afflicted with the werewolf curse, and it seems that they take full advantage of Travis' power as the Sheriff to cover up their horrendous deeds, which includes breaking the law, something that would not only cost Travis his job, but all of the participating family members prison time. He describes his predicament to Laura using the following metaphor:

"...if your whole family, every last one of 'em decided to jump down the bottom of a well and they're all just...hangin' on the end of a rope, how can one person be expected to pull them all back out? You can't. Once you pull on that rope, you're just gonna fall right down the bottom of the well with the rest of 'em."

That was all he needed to say at that moment for the audience to open up to him. While he doesn't give away details of his situation, we can see that Travis is a tormented soul, using the bottle to cope with the stress of everything. It is up to the player and the choices we make as Laura to make Travis realize that opening up to the counselors was either noble or futile. Fortunately the game makes it easy for Travis to side with Laura under the condition that you don't shoot him as you're trying to break out of jail as Laura.

Then comes the cherry on top. After the Laura and Max flashback in chapter eight, we are introduced to Constance Hackett, who is the matriarch of the Hackett clan. There's a scene that unfolds featuring her and Travis, her eldest son, where Travis breaks the news to his mother that Kaylee Hackett, Chris' daughter, had been killed. Mrs. Hackett doesn't take it well. Quite the contrary: she blames Travis for everything. This results in the following conversation where the cop seemingly admits to his mother that he had been holding Max and Laura in jail behind his family's back. After Constance suggests that Travis should have "taken care of the problem while [he] had the chance," we get the full picture of why Travis is the way he is, why he acted the way he did in the previous chapters, and why he seemed to be a sea of contradictions. He wanted to help his family, but he didn't want to harm anyone else in the process. He didn't want to harm anyone else, yet caused Laura to lose her eye by the hands of werewolf Max because he left her exposed to him. He wanted to enlist Laura's help, yet withheld crucial information from her that could have gotten her on his side. He wanted Laura to be on his side, yet was hostile towards her and Max during their time spent in the slammer. It was all because he was torn between being loyal to his family and doing the right thing. Once the players see Travis walking this fine line, trying to balance himself on a tight rope over a raging inferno, we can't help but feel for him.

Constance still isn't done with him. In her outburst of grief, she speaks poorly about Travis' profession and implies that he didn't earn his position as Sheriff but only reached that status because his predecessor perished in the Harum Scarum fire.

In the Hackett house, the player alternates between playing Laura and Ryan, who combined get to make some major choices regarding their own fates as well as the fates of each Hackett family member. If the player plays her cards right, Travis, Laura, and Ryan will survive the rumble in chapter nine, and the cop will ask the two counselors to help him kill Silas and lift the curse that haunted his family for six years. Succeeding at this mission will give the players the "best" ending.

"Use Your Words, Dude!"

--Ryan after being stabbed and thrown around by Bobby Hackett

Now that the recap is over, let's start with common talking points surrounding Travis' character. The most obvious one being the flaw that started it all: why couldn't Travis properly communicate with Laura and Max in the beginning? Gaming logic dictates that there wouldn't be a plot for the game otherwise. The writers' intentions were to make the cop come across as creepy as possible in the prologue, and part of that package included having Travis using cryptic language. "You're not gonna make it to Hackett's Quarry...not tonight." That's it. That was his explanation for them not to go Hackett's Quarry, aka, there wasn't one. XD This is the reason why some fans of the game dislike Travis. They can't look past this flaw. His lack of communication, combined with Laura and Max breaking and entering the camp storm shelter, is what sets the events of the Quarry in motion, so it's completely valid for fans to have a bone to pick with him. This lack of communication also continues well into chapter seven where he opens up to the kids just enough for Laura and Max to understand why he has them locked away. He still doesn't reveal who bit Max, though when we learn that it's his brother he's protecting, we understand why he kept it a secret, especially considering that Laura takes the first opportunity to break out with the intention of killing Chris. It's every man for himself in The Quarry. I do believe if Travis had been more transparent with Laura and Max while they were in jail and not have been so hard on them, he might have been able to persuade the couple to help them. There was still a good chance that Laura and Max would still plot behind his back to escape, but I do think Travis could have made a greater effort to form an alliance with the pair.

This flaw has been shown to run in the family with not only Travis but with all of the Hackett men. We see that Bobby and Jedidiah are watching over the seven counselors who are stranded at camp during the full moon. Bobby catches up to a couple of them, and instead of having a discussion with them, he either grabs them (Abi), abducts them (Nick), or tosses them around (Kaityln). You know the expression referring to someone as all talk and no action? The Hacketts are the exact inverse of this. They're hard pressed to keep everyone safe, which is a good thing, yet do not present themselves as allies to the counselors, thus causing the kids to lash out at them out of fear. This could also be one reason why all of the counselors, except Ryan, didn't push back on Laura's reasoning to kill Chris despite working with him all summer.

An Alternate, Dark Ending

The Hackett rumble can end in one of several different ways. In one of those alternate timelines, after Ryan shoots and kills Chris, if Laura shoots Travis in jail beforehand, whether accidental or intentional, Travis will kill Laura. Since Ryan broke Chris' werewolf lineage by killing him, Laura will no longer have her supernatural abilities to protect herself from Travis, and he will stab Laura to death with a large shard of glass from the mirror he was knocked into by werewolf Laura. This all happens as you play as Ryan, and in that moment, you are forced to choose to either kill Travis or be killed by Travis (additionally if you fail to stab Bobby as Ryan, Bobby will kill Ryan after Ryan shoots Travis). This is a secret ending with a sinister twist as the cop's shadow side consumes him after being shot by Laura.

As dark as this ending is, this universe almost never gets discovered on a first play through. In fact, it's more probable that the player fails to shoot Chris as Ryan, resulting in Chris murdering Ryan, and Laura and Travis to die at each other's hands. This ending is more the result of chaos run amok rather than pure, sinister, murderous intent as is the case if Travis decides to kill Laura and Ryan. This leads us to the second most asked question about Travis. Why does he kill Laura only after being shot by her?

Both Laura and Ryan have the chance to wipe out Travis' whole family, and he will still work with the counselors so as long as Laura doesn't shoot him earlier that day. Why is Travis taking a bullet the only decision that affects his decision to kill her going forward? Ryan and Laura both trespass on the Hackett Property, so the Hacketts were legally within their rights to kill them both, especially considering that Laura is armed with a shotgun with the intention of killing one of the members. Laura has the ability to shoot Constance and strangle Jedidiah to death. Ryan can weaken Bobby by "returning" the knife that Bobby stuck in him, which will inhibit Bobby from fighting off Chris, thus causing him to be mauled to death. Of course, Ryan can kill Chris as well. That's four family members the kids can kill in one night, not including Kaylee. Even still, as long as Laura doesn't shoot Travis, he will form an alliance with her and Ryan to kill Silas. The question here, therefore, isn't why the cop kills Laura after she shoots him, but rather why doesn't he kill Laura after she kills his parents?

Freedom

It all goes back to that conversation between Travis and Constance in the kitchen. We get a lot of insight on how Travis is treated by his family. While I don't believe that Constance was always as cruel to Travis as she was in her moment of grief, she absolutely uses manipulation to get Travis to protect the family at all costs. If Constance is killed, Jedediah tells Travis to no longer provide protection for any outsiders. If you don't kill Constance, both she and Jedediah pressure Travis to pull the trigger on Laura, and he will hesitate every time (even if Laura shoots him in the jail cell). Back in chapter seven, Chris pressures Travis to do something with Max and Laura in jail. Everywhere Travis turns, his family is pushing him to clean up their mess:

"Maybe if you had done your job, they wouldn't have been at the camp that night. You ever think of that?"

"No more protecting anyone, Travis."

"Shoot her. Take her face off."

"A good boy protects his family. You ain't no good boy!"

Then his family is killed, and now he is free. He doesn't have to put up with the pressure of trying to obey his family any longer. You see, I think the outcome that makes the most canonical sense is when Ryan stabs Bobby. Bobby, as I stated before, can't fend off Chris, so Chris kills Bobby and then goes on to kill Constance and Jedediah. In this way, Travis can't fully blame Laura and Ryan for killing Chris as killing him means Travis' life is spared from werewolf Laura. The result of his family's death was brought on to themselves. The secret they tried to keep from the rest of society spiraled out of their control, and it consumed them in the end. Even if Laura killed Constance and Jedediah, Travis would still be free from their control. Even after Laura killed Kaylee, a niece who Travis described as "one of the kindest, gentlest souls to ever walk this earth", Travis will still set that all aside to work with the kids to end the curse for good. Then again, it was Kaylee and her brother Caleb that brought the curse to the Hackett family, even if they didn't realize it at the time, so Travis no longer has to worry about the welfare of his niece now that she is gone. You could tell that he loved Kaylee, but she was a huge part of the weight he carried on his shoulders for many years. I love how it was Travis who gave character attributes to Kaylee, a girl who we never got to know, and that the things he valued most about her were her kindness and her gentleness. Considering the lack of warmth he received from his family, it makes sense that Travis would have a soft spot for a kindhearted persona.

Nobody Can be Trusted

What's going on inside of Travis' mind as he kills Laura? Remember the only thing that can trigger this ending is if Laura shoots Travis earlier that day in the jail cell. Why does he react to Laura's betrayal in a more visceral manner than he does when she kills his family? It's because he wanted to trust Laura and Max. He needed help with tracking down Silas, and he knew that Laura was his only hope. I think Travis saw a bit of himself inside of Laura whenever she told him that she wouldn't leave Max even when she had the chance to escape. The door was locked, but even so, Laura wasn't going to abandon her boyfriend. The game tells us "The Sheriff admires your dedication" if Laura explains herself to Travis. Like Travis, Laura was committed to freeing someone she loved from the curse, causing her to sacrifice her life and her dreams. This is what prompted him to open up to the young couple. It was almost as if Travis knew Laura would get her eye scratched out by werewolf Max and was testing her to see if she would run away. When she doesn't, he decides that she is worth trusting. He provides for her the formula she needs to cure Max without giving away his brother. Again, he's not revealing his entire hand, but the fact that the Sheriff was comfortable enough to let the couple in on what he's dealing with is a huge deal for his character because, similar to Laura, he is stubborn as hell.

Too bad for Travis that Laura hears his conversation with Chris. The moment she learned that it was Chris who bit Max, all chances of them working together evaporated in Laura's mind. A go-getter personality like Laura's couldn't wait another day in jail, especially since she knew what needed to be done to cure Max. As Laura, you have the opportunity to break his trust not once, but twice. The first is an inevitable part of the story: Laura pretends to be hurt to attract Travis to her cell. As soon as he approaches her, Laura breaks his trust by either surprising him with a needle to the neck, or by stealing his gun and aiming it at him. The safest route the player can take is to simply use the syringe, but should you choose to take Travis' gun, you can plead for his keys, lock him in, and apologize to him. That leads us to the second and final straw of Travis and Laura's relationship: once you shoot him, it doesn't matter if it's accidental or deliberate: Laura's fate is sealed. Not only does Laura shatter any rapport she had with the cop, but she leaves him to die. She locks him in the cell as he's bleeding out, and to add salt to the wound, she makes a cruel remark towards him:

"Let's give him some alone time. Let him think about why he's in here."

Shooting a man who was vulnerable to you, Laura, an outsider, after years of keeping it all in, makes it personal. Any sliver of compassion Travis may have had for the outside world died in him the moment he was shot. It just makes Constance's insults sting that much worse because in the timeline where Travis is shot, she was right, or so Travis (probably) thought: he should have protected his family, and he shouldn't have spared Laura and Max. Even if you don't shoot Travis and work with him to find Silas, if Laura refuses to shoot the white wolf, Travis will try and lunge for the gun. After he misses and falls on the ground, he says to Laura, "I should have killed you when I had the chance." If you let Silas kill Travis, and, consequentially, everyone else there, those would have been last words. This is what years and years of being conditioned not to trust the outside world looks like. As Laura, you can prove Travis and his family wrong or right depending on your choices.

My Favorite Character

I've been grappling with the following question. If Travis and Laura are similar to each other and are both connected to the plot, why is it that I favor the former and not the latter? I think the main reason is that the game isn't trying to convince us that Travis is a good guy. After all, he is an antagonist, so he is by definition written to be against the protagonist. Travis is a hot mess, and everyone knows it. Laura, on the other hand, is written as the hero, and while she's nowhere near as bad as Travis, she can be reckless in her haste to get things done. Hell, she almost becomes just like the Hacketts. Laura has also proven herself to be pretty capable when push comes to shove, and she is too young to have lived a life rife with bad decisions and regret, unlike Travis, who has made mistakes that have and will cost him his livelihood when the night ends. You simply cannot help but to feel for the guy. Additionally, when it comes to the branching scenarios in The Quarry, he can either be a friend or a foe given the circumstances. It's so much fun to imagine him in a world where things are drastically different either for better or for worse, and that's what makes him interesting. I know I speak for Travis fans when I say I prefer to envision him in a world where he can get his happy ending. He might not have earned it, but in my opinion, he deserves it.

Bobby is largely unknown in the entire game. However, in Chapter 10, his dog tags can be found, revealing he served. Nothing can be seen by the player; however, when I looked in the game files, I found that you can read the tags. Now I must admit I know very little about military anything, and when looking this up, it's what I could compare it to. If anyone knows more, please feel free to share your thoughts!

From the tag, we learn that Bobby's blood type is A Positive. His middle name starts with an N.

I looked up both sets of numbers in case it meant anything, such as the actual service he served in. However, the last set of numbers actually is a real postal code! The postal code is for Imbari, Japan. Now, I have no clue if this was by total accident, or maybe the implication is that's where Bobby was stationed. Of course, there is no actual US military base there in real life, but it would be interesting if Bobby were deployed in Japan for some time. Now, could I be reading too far into a totally random set of numbers on a fictional character's dog tags? Yes. But it is all for good fun, and well I love doing this.

three little piggys to make a piggy pie

Like Wringing Blood From a Stone an Until Dawn/The Quarry crossover by TheIcyQueen

Picking at that thread had quickly gotten out of hand. Once he saw Travis’s digs for what they were, namely a warmer, varnish-covered simulacrum of his own, the rest of it had come into focus, thickening the taste of blood in his mouth. There seemed to be no end to it, only a spiraling pit that went deeper and deeper the longer he looked. The mines hollowing out the mountain; the quarry sleeping soundly beneath his feet. The Miracle Men haunting the snow; Harum Scarum’s bones still smoldering out in the woods. The curse of doing anything to stay alive; the curse of wanting nothing more than to kill. The Washington girls slipping out of his hands; the counselors sneaking down into the storm cellar. The miserable old one-eyed wretch keeping watch over the cannibals in their cells; the miserable old grease-slicked lech slipping food to the wolf pups in their cages. The family trying to fix it; the family being the cause. Not the same, never the same—with the Hacketts, things were always different, weren’t they?—yet much, much too close for comfort. Echoes. Portents, his granddad would say, harbingers of what was yet to come.