Dec 7, 2021

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Hello Survivors,

We just launched our latest update to Survival Mode, called PERILOUS CONSTRAINT. This update includes:

New to Survival! Blackrock Region added to Survival Mode. It connects to Pleasant Valley via a Transition zone, and to Timberwolf Mountain via a cave system.
New to Survival! The Noisemaker from Episode Four is now available for crafting and use in Survival Mode. Note that the Blueprint unlocks after you find your first Noisemaker, currently only discoverable in Blackrock Region.
New to The Long Dark! The Ballistic Vest. It’s the first piece of protective gear in the game and offers strong defense against physical harms from wildlife attacks.
Various quality-of-life improvements, including making Crampons repairable, and a new piece of soundtrack music, along with many bug fixes.

You can check out more information about the update here:

Mod Support in 2022

We’re setting up a small internal team dedicated solely to supporting Modding and User Generated Content at Hinterland. Our initial focus will be on supporting The Long Dark, but we plan for this to be a long-standing investment in time and resources, and the things we learn and the modding community we build with you, will hopefully become a strong foundation of more things to come in future Hinterland games.

As first steps, we’re setting up a Modding & UGC section of the official Hinterland forums. We’ll have dedicated focus from our Community team on this area, so please focus your mod discussions here so we can best support you. We’ve also set up a new email alias, “mods@hinterlandgames.com”, which you can use to contact us with any requests or information you’d like to share.

In the Spring, we’ll be sharing more info about our Creator Hub, which will have documentation, some tools, and other resources for modders, and other types of fan creations for The Long Dark. Until then, we’ll be active in the new Modding & UGC section of the official forums, and we’ll also be proactively reaching out to many of you who have been busy modding the game over the past years. We want to know more about what you need in terms of tool support, documentation, and also to provide you a clear path to communicating with us as we grow this area of The Long Dark’s community.

Survival Mode Updates in 2022 & Beyond

We’ve been working on a plan for how to tackle ongoing support for Survival Mode between now and Episode Five’s launch, and beyond. I’ll share more details about our plans in the new year, as there are a lot of technical aspects we’re still figuring out. But as a high-level direction, based on the guidance we’ve received from many of you in our player community through our community poll earlier this year -- and after providing nearly over 7 years of free updates to Survival Mode -- our plan is to move to a more sustainable paid update path.

One of the first stages we’re working towards is splitting Story Mode and Survival Mode into two separate games and executables. This won’t affect your ownership in any way -- everyone who currently owns The Long Dark will automatically have both games. In fact, depending on how we handle this, the split may be mostly on the back-end and invisible to you as a player. This split is mostly about how we structure content and data in the game on the development side.

Until now, Story content has been a layer on top of the core Survival Mode foundation, which has allowed us (over the years) to share the world and mechanics between the two modes, then using tuning variables and a complex system of scene layering to keep the two different experiences separate but relatively cohesive. This was a fantastic decision for us earlier in the project when the game world was smaller and we had less episode content, but as the years have passed it’s become harder and harder for us to maintain this structure, and we feel it’s become overly limiting to our ability to continue to grow The Long Dark for the future.

One illustrative example of this is that every time we change an element of UI, or a foundational art asset or system that is shared between the modes, we have to then test all the episodes, all the survival mode regions and content, and all the Challenge modes against this change. As a result, over time we’ve had to spend an increasing amount of effort on testing and validating our existing content and systems every time we want to release something new, and this has prevented us from updating the game as frequently as we would like. It’s also limited the kinds of things we can update, and we feel that many of the architecture choices from back in 2014 and onward have now become detrimental to the game’s growth and evolution in 2021 and beyond.

What splitting the game into Story and Survival will mean for us is that we’ll be better able to compartmentalize content, features, cinematics, etc. so that every time we make a change in Survival, we don’t have to retest the entirety of the rest of the game, and vice versa. In theory, this should make it easier for us to update the game in the future, both shortening the testing cycle and ensuring it can be more focused on a narrower band of changes. Our belief is that this will help us better maintain the game and ensure a high-quality experience for our players. We’ll share more details about this split in the new year, and as I said our hope is that for most current players this split will be very “behind the scenes”.

Beyond this, our plan for 2022 and beyond is to introduce some form of a paid update path for Survival Mode. We’re still working out the details of this -- and there are many! -- but our primary goal in developing this strategy is to focus on: 1) fairness to our current players, 2) creating multiple entry-points so that players can opt-in depending on what they want and what they can afford, and 3) long-term sustainability for the development team.

Part of our update plans also include how to handle next-gen visual enhancements. Thus far the only way to play The Long Dark on Xbox Series X|S, or PlayStation 5, has been through backwards compatibility. We want to create some next-gen native visual enhancements that really capitalize on the greater processing power and memory in the new consoles, and also on high-end PC, but again because of how our game is structured -- and because of how the platforms prefer developers to handle this content -- it’s been tough to reconcile the dev work required to make these changes with the impact they would have to our bottom line. We think we have a good plan for this and we’ll share more news about our approach and the list of enhancements we’re tackling at the same time we roll out more details about the paid update path for Survival Mode.

And just to be crystal clear -- none of these changes will have any impact on the delivery of Episode Five. This will still be free for all existing customers. If you own The Long Dark, you will not have to pay extra for Episode Five.

And speaking of Episodes, in case you missed it, we released Episode Four: Fury, Then Silence, in October. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, we encourage you to play it over the holidays!

Studio Closure

As usual for this time of year, the Hinterland team will be enjoying well-deserved rest with loved ones this holiday season, and the studio will be shut down from December 20th to January 3rd. If you run into any issues with the game during that period, and wish to contact us, please use our Support Portal. Please keep in mind that due to being on holiday, our responses might be delayed.

We’re excited to share more news with you in the new year, but until then, get some rest, stay safe these holidays, enjoy time with your loved ones, and we’ll see you in 2022 to begin a whole new phase of The Long Dark.

All the best, and thanks for your support this year.

- Raphael

*****

The latest update to Survival Mode is called PERILOUS CONSTRAINT— v1.98 (87574).

This update includes:

New to Survival: Blackrock Region is now available in Survival Mode. It connects to Pleasant Valley via a Transition zone, and to Timberwolf Mountain via a cave system.
New to Survival: The Noisemaker from Episode Four is now available for crafting and use in Survival Mode. Please note that the Blueprint unlocks after you find your first Noisemaker, which is currently only discoverable in Blackrock Region.
New to The Long Dark: The new Ballistic Vest is the first piece of protective gear in the game, offering strong defense against physical harms from wildlife attacks.
Various quality-of-life improvements, including making Crampons repairable, a new piece of soundtrack music, and many bug fixes.

There are also a couple of known issues affected players should be aware of:

Please note that on Switch, the Main menu art will not be updated with the release, though the game should still update. Players can verify the correct version via the top left-hand side of the main menu screen v1.98 (86821).
When attempting to repair the Crampons, you need either the Simple Tools or High Quality Tools item. If you do not have these items, you will receive an error message stating the Sewing Kit is required.

Don’t forget to visit our Support Portal for useful articles, or if you need to log an issue. To stay up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (Game | Studio).

ART, ENVIRO, and UI

[Enviro] Fixed numerous areas the player could escape/leave the regular game environment.
[UI] Fixed an issue in Survival Mode that caused six incorrect Possible Old Bear Locations to appear in the list of Mystery Lake Surveyed Locations.
[UI] Fixed an issue when using a Controller that caused the Start Fire menu to skip when starting a fire in a Fire Barrel.
[UI] Fixed an issue that prevented items from appearing in Inspection Mode when the HUD was disabled in Options.
[UI] Fixed a performance issue that caused the WINTERMUTE menu to become unresponsive when the Player had many save files.

GAMEPLAY

[General] Updated Feats, so they now always save up completion.

CHALLENGE MODES

[Darkwalker] Fixed an issue that could prevent the game from saving correctly.

WINTERMUTE

** Please note that this section contains spoilers for WINTERMUTE. **

[Ep4] Fixed a bug that could cause the game to save in an unloadable state.
[Ep3] Fixed a bug that caused the UI to disappear after exiting various sequences, such as a phone call or a dialogue sequence.
[Dialogue] Fixed an issue that caused the text to appear distorted during a dialogue sequence.

### END OF RELEASE NOTES ###

Oct 27, 2021

The Long Dark Hotfixed to v1.97 [85101]

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Hello Community,

We’ve just hotfixed The Long Dark to version 1.97 [85101]. This hotfix addresses issues that emerged with the launch of Episode Four, addresses certain gameplay bugs, and offers general game improvements. Please find the full list below. (NOTE: list may contain spoilers.) It may take some time for changes to take effect as platforms update. Thank you for your patience.

There are two issues in particular affected players should be aware of:

For any PlayStation players impacted by missing Episode Four Trophies at launch; we have a way to potentially regain your progress. Please visit this page on our support portal for more info.
[SPOILERS] Episode Four Steam Tunnel puzzle; some players reported that they were unable to open the Control Room door after the ice thawed while solving the Steam Pipe puzzle. If you encountered issues with this puzzle, this document might be helpful.

[Optimization] Fixed a rare issue that would prevent the Player’s footprints from appearing correctly in certain circumstances.
[Optimization] Fixed numerous performance hitches, which should result in a smoother play experience.
[Steam] Updated the Workshop String Table to include all Episode Four strings.

ANIMATION

[Animation] Numerous tweaks and polish to various mission related animations.
[Animation] Fixed an issue where certain climbing animations were broken when the FOV was set to maximum.
[Animation] Fixed an issue where the animation twitched during the Kill/Release choice after catching a Rabbit.
[Animation] Fixed an issue where Mackenzie’s arms shook incorrectly when climbing various areas.

ART, ENVIRO, and UI

[Accessibility] Updated Mature Language Filter to include some lines that were missed.
[Art] Optimized render distance on various objects found in Episode Four so they will become visible at the appropriate distance from the Player. This will reduce instances of distant objects popping in to the world.
[Art] Optimized the Steam Tunnels object and lighting draw distance to improve the overall visual quality and performance.
[Art] Tuned lighting in various interiors and fixed mismatched lighting on objects.
[Environment] Fixed an issue that caused the walls inside the Radio Hut to remain visible regardless of what room inside the Radio Hut you were in.
[Environment] Optimized the Mines to ensure the Gas is not drawn when not needed, resulting in performance improvements.
[Environment] Added some extra collision to the pipes in the Steam Tunnel to prevent the camera from clipping into the pipes.
[Environment] Fixed a gap found in the doors of the Power Plant.
[Environment] Fixed large black shadows found on the beds in the Blackrock Prison Infirmary.
[Environment] Moved the “Danger Electric Cables Over-Head” warning sign in the Steam Tunnel to make it more visible.
[Environment] Fixed numerous floating or clipping objects throughout the Blackrock Region.
[Environment] Fixed an issue where the water splash sound effect was missing when walking through water found in the Abandoned Mine.
[UI] Fixed an issue in the Journal’s exit button on the Collections -> Surveyed Locations screen so Players no longer need to change to a different screen to exit.
[UI] Fixed an issue preventing the Region displayed on the Map from updating correctly when using a cave to transition to a new Region.
[UI] Fixed an issue where the Mission Status tab would not reflect the state of the current active mission.
[UI] Tuned the icons on the Map screen so Mission Markers are sorted above other Map Markers.
[UI] Fixed an issue where the weather could change from the intended calibration preset while adjusting the Brightness in the Main Menu.
[UI] Fixed an issue where Open Cans can appear as closed when viewed in the Cooking Menu.
[UI] Fixed unaligned buttons on the “Continue to ...?” screen that appears after completing an Episode.
[UI] Updated the Hardcase item description.
[UI] Updated the icon for Key 8 found in Episode One to a higher quality version.

GAMEPLAY

[AI] Fixed an issue where Wolves continued to eat carcasses after the carcass is gone.
[Audio] Added audio ducking to the Marine Flare, so its audio is no longer louder than in-game dialogue.
[Gameplay] Fixed an issue where water longer disappeared when clicking the “Move All to Container” button, then immediately transferring the water back to the container.
[Gameplay] Fixed an issue where the Maple Syrup would remain attached to the Player, instead of being removed from the world after being picked up.
[Gameplay] Sprain Risk is no longer disabled when taking a phone call.

CHALLENGE MODES

[Darkwalker] Tuned the wait time between placing a Banish Glyph and the Darkwalker appearing. Players should not have to wait extended periods of time, now.
[Hunted 1/2 and Whiteout] Added Socks to starting inventory.
[Whiteout] Tuned the mission complete percentage to be more accurate.

WINTERMUTE

** Please note that this section contains spoilers for WINTERMUTE. **

[Cinematics] Fixed several lighting issues across a range of Episode Four cinematics.
[Cinematics] Fixed an issue during Chapter 1: Blackrock Blues that could cause the audio in cinematics to no longer align with the animations, if the Player skipped a cinematic.
[Cinematics] Fixed an issue that would often cause in-game dialogue to be skipped if it was intended to play immediately after a cinematic during Episode Three.
[Environment] Fixed an issue with the Wolf found near the farm during Episode One so it now feeds on corpses, as intended.
[Environment] Fixed numerous locations where the Player could either become stuck or escape the map or intended progression route during Episode Four.
[Episode One] Fixed an issue where Mackenzie would appear without a bandaged hand while picking up the Hardcase.
[Episode One] Fixed clipping that could occur when climbing out of the Crash Site.
[Episode One] Fixed an issue that caused the audio for the fires at the Crash Site to continue to play after they had burned out.
[Episode One] Fixed an issue that would cause the skybox to briefly appear when exiting back to the Main Menu from inside the Grey Mother’s House.
[Episode Two] Fixed overlapping audio that can occur while speaking to Jeremiah.
[Episode Two] Fixed an issue where the Active Objective UI element would not appear as intended when bringing up the Radial Menu, after getting the Bear Spear during The Best Defense.
[Episode Two] Tuned the Aurora that occurs during the Return to Dam mission so it will now be fully active, instead of just starting.
[Episode Three] Fixed an issue that would prevent the Player from being able to progress if they saved the game right before answering the Phone at the burnt-out cabin, then reloaded the save during the Phone Call.
[Episode Three] Fixed an issue so that removing the fuse now correctly disables both the electrical visual and sound effects during Aftermath.
[Episode Three] Tuned the mission complete percentage to be more accurate during Forest Talker.
[Episode Three] HUD will no longer remain disabled after speaking to Molly.
[Episode Four] Fixed an issue where the final gauge could appear at full pressure when the valves were still incorrectly set during Steam Valve Puzzle #1.
[Episode Four] Fixed an issue that caused the interaction point on the Valve to shift if the Player entered the tunnels, then returned to the Valves during The Detonators.
[Episode Four] Fixed an issue where weapons and gear were not confiscated properly after completing The Detonators.
[Episode Four] Added safeguards to help prevent the Player from dropping the Bolt Cutters into unreachable locations in The Detonators.
[Episode Four] Fixed an issue that caused the Status bar to flicker prior to returning to gameplay after the cinematic sequence in Donner.
[Episode Four] Dialogue will no longer continue to play on the Death screen if the Player is caught during Donner.
[Episode Four] Increased the range at which the entrances can be seen during Convict Caches.

PLAYSTATION 4

[General] Fixed an issue where the game crashed for some players on launch.
[General] Fixed a potential crash that could occur when throwing an item.

WINDOWS 7

[General] Fixed an issue where players using Windows 7 would become stuck on an unskippable black screen when playing an in-game video, such as the opening credits.

MAC

[Rendering] Fixed an issue that would cause rocks to not render on OpenGL systems.

SWITCH

[Rendering] Decreased the compression on numerous textures to increase the overall visual quality.

Oct 21, 2021

October 2021 Developer Diary

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Hello everyone!

October’s been a big month for Hinterland and The Long Dark. In case you missed it, we launched Episode Four: Fury, Then Silence. So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re grateful for that.

Current Issues

With Episode Four, like most of our big releases, we tend to find issues post-launch. I wanted to address a bit about how this can happen. Right now we are tracking 3-4 issues that are impacting a small number of players but in highly visible ways. They include:

Windows 7; there is an issue with video compatibility on Windows 7 which prevents certain videos (like the opening credits) from playing correctly. We have provided a work-around here, but we understand that it’s not very satisfying. This issue disproportionately impacts players in parts of the world where Windows 7 is still commonly used.
Mac rendering issue; some Mac users have encountered a rendering issue that can result in weird visual glitches, and a separate issue can result in missing geometry. We’ve suggested a workaround for the first issue.
PlayStation Trophies; these were missing at launch but have since been added.
In addition to these, there are other miscellaneous issues that we have been tracking and working on.

I know it seems tough to understand how a studio can release game content that has bugs in it. For some background, we have a full-time in-house Test team who regularly comb through the game and find bugs for the team to fix. We also have a Support team who receives all the bug reports you share at our Support Portal (thank you to everyone who takes the time to do this -- it is extremely helpful!), as well as a Community team who takes note of the issues you flag in the forums and on our social accounts.

All this information gets put into an internal database that we use to evaluate outstanding issues. We then review each issue and consider how often a bug seems to appear, how seriously the bug affects players, and then we assign bugs out based on priority. The first step to fixing a bug is being able to reproduce it reliably, and this is where getting info like log files, screenshots, and videos can be very helpful in pinpointing the issues. Things like crashes and progress blockers are always the top priority to fix. Minor things like floating items get prioritized last. These bugs get assigned out by the team leads. The development team works on fixing them, and we create an internal version of the game that has all these fixes in it. At some point in the process we have to lock the build so that the Test team can test it all again, because every time something new is added to the build it invalidates most of the testing that has been done.

For really big releases like our Episodes, we supplement our internal Test team with an external team of about 5-10 testers (depending on the release) who help us review the entire game. Remember, every time we release an Episode, a Survival Update, or a Hotfix, we have to pretty much test the ENTIRE game again, to make sure we haven’t introduced issues elsewhere (it’s common for bug fixes to cause or reveal other issues). This includes all the Survival Mode mechanics on all Experience Modes, all the Regions, all the Challenges, and every Episode of WINTERMUTE. It’s a huge game that requires a massive amount of testing.

This explanation isn’t meant to sound like I’m making excuses for why bugs end up being released -- as you know we work hard to release a “clean” build and we then work hard to stomp out any bugs that come to light after the fact. But it’s a really big game and every release reminds us that it’s getting harder and harder to ensure we find all the bugs before release. This is something we’re discussing internally to see how we can improve our approach and ensure a better quality product for you, because I don’t think the current testing cycle is sustainable, and it just slows things down too much.

Hotfix Work

The development team has a hotfix with our internal Test team now. This hotfix contains fixes for over 200 issues (many of them pre-date the Episode Four release and were held back until post-release). We don’t have an exact ETA for this, but we’re hopeful that we can get it out some time late next week (the week of October 25th). If it comes in too late we may have to push it to the following week because we don’t release hotfixes right before the weekend, since we can’t be around to monitor and help players if things go wrong.

We will be following our standard hotfixing protocol, which is to bring hotfixes to platforms as quickly as we can (rather than holding some to simultaneously ship on all platforms together), therefore the Hotfix will not arrive on every platform at the same time. The typical order is: Steam, Xbox + PlayStation, other digital stores (Humble, Nuuvem, etc.), WeGame in China, and Switch. This order is purely determined by how quickly and/or convenient the hotfixing process is. (For example, on Steam we can simply update the game immediately. On the other end of the spectrum, Nintendo usually takes 7-10 days to review every hotfix before it can be released). Unfortunately, these are not timings that we control, and we apologize if you happen to be impacted by any delays around deploying these fixes.

We’ll share more info on Hotfix progress on our Social accounts and in the Steam and Official forums, so please follow us on Twitter if you want to have up-to-date info.

End of the Year Survival Update & Halloween Event

As mentioned in the lead-up to Episode Four’s launch, the team is working on bringing Blackrock Region to Survival Mode for the end of this year. They are also incorporating the Noisemaker into Survival Mode, and we’re including one new gear item that was not in Episode Four. We’ll share more details about these things in the lead up to launching the update. We don’t have an ETA on the Survival Update apart from “before the end of the year”.

Between the Episode Four launch, the subsequent hotfixing work, and preparing the Survival Mode update for the end of the year, I unfortunately had to make a tough call to sacrifice the Halloween Event this year. I know many of you were looking forward to getting a refresh on Escape the Darkwalker, and we were excited to release a 2021 version, but the team just doesn’t have the bandwidth to produce the Hotfix, release an updated Darkwalker, and also produce a Survival Mode update for the end of the year. In terms of priority, it felt that the Survival Update was more important to you than the Darkwalker event, so we triaged out the event. Apologies to anyone that will be disappointed by this, but there’s only so much development bandwidth to go around and we need to make these calls at times. We’ll try to make it up to you next year.

* * *

I’ll share another dev diary closer to the end-of-year Survival update, and as mentioned we’ll keep you posted on Hotfix progress as it unfolds in the coming weeks.

Thanks for your patience and support of our efforts! We hope you’re enjoying Episode Four, and for those of you who are currently impacted by bugs, we hope to get you some fixes very soon.

- Raphael

Oct 6, 2021

Episode Four is Here

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Today is a big day for Hinterland. After two years of development, we are finally launching Episode Four of our WINTERMUTE story mode for The Long Dark. “Fury, Then Silence” continues Mackenzie’s story after his ill-fated meeting with the convict Mathis in Carter Dam. You may remember that meeting didn’t end well for Mackenzie. Now we get to see what happens to our everyman bush pilot as he tangles with some very unpleasant people in a prison complex at the end of the world.

Developing the majority of this episode during a global pandemic has been a challenging experience to say the least. All the while, the team has banded together to support each other during the ups and downs. Within our small team, we’ve experienced the highs of births and new life, and the deep lows of losing people we love. And all the while, we pushed forward to tell the story of Mackenzie and Astrid, the quiet apocalypse, the wintery wilderness of Great Bear, and the mysterious aurora in the sky, all to the best of our ability. The parallels between our isolation and fears of the outside world and Mackenzie’s experience in the episode were not lost on us.

For us, Episode Four will always be the pandemic episode. The experience of making it, and of playing it, will always be coloured by this time. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so maybe you will feel some of those influences as you go through and experience Blackrock for yourselves.

Today is a bittersweet day. We give you the fourth episode of our survival odyssey, and we come one step closer to the final part of our story. We have set the table for Episode Five, and now we turn our attention to bringing it to a close. There are still many challenges ahead.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more information about our plans for the future of Survival Mode, next-gen enhancements, mod support, and other things we’re doing at Hinterland. But today is about Mackenzie, a prison in the mountains, and a tough journey that will push him -- and you -- to your limits as a survivor.

We hope you enjoy the experience we have created for you, and on behalf of the entire team at Hinterland, I thank you for all your support and patience as you waited for this day. Thank you for believing in us, as we believe in you.

All the best, and safe travels.

- Raphael

The Long Dark, Episode Four: FURY, THEN SILENCE is available now on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, Epic Games Store, and Nintendo Switch. Watch the full trailer below.

Visit our Support Portal to find useful articles or to log an issue you encountered.

To stay up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter @IntoTheLongDark | @HinterlandGames

Accessibility Features

We’ve organized all of our accessibility features into a single menu available through OPTIONS->ACCESSIBILITY. We’ve also added two new options to assist players:

Swear Filter - Disables swear words in both spoken dialogue and subtitles
Misophonia Filter - Turns off the sounds that often play when eating or drinking food items in the game. There may be other sounds that trigger misophonia (ex. yawning when the Survivor is tired, lip-smacking when they are thirsty) and we will address those as we are able.

Known Issues - We’re currently working to address these issues in an upcoming Hotfix:
Switch Only

The In-Game News Messages will appear as placeholder text
When setting the Gyroscope Controls to “Aim Only” they will act as if they are set to “Always On”

Windows 7 Only

The game will freeze after the disclaimer screen, when trying to play the Intro videos. Please see this support article for a workaround https://hinterlandgames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408005055636-Windows-7-Black-Screen-After-Disclaimer-or-Starting-WINTERMUTE-Episodes

General

If the Player unlocks a Feat and then exits the game before saving, the Feat will not be unlocked and progress may appear incorrect after restarting the Long Dark. To avoid this issue trigger a save after earning the Feat to ensure it is saved, before exiting.

Sep 7, 2021

September 2021 Developer Diary

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Hello everyone!

The long wait is nearly over. Today we reveal the key art and title for Episode Four of The Long Dark’s WINTERMUTE story mode:

Episode Four: “Fury, Then Silence”

A murderous gang of convicts has captured Mackenzie. Desperate to escape one of the darkest corners of Great Bear Island, he must somehow survive his fiercest enemy yet. Can Mackenzie recover the Hardcase, continue his search for Astrid, and also save the innocents caught up in this deadly confrontation?

The episode takes place in a brand new region dominated by an old prison complex built under the shadow of Blackrock Mountain. Featuring 7-10 hours of gameplay, 60 minutes of narrative cinematics, and over 40 minutes of new music, Episode Four also introduces new key characters to the WINTERMUTE storyline, and puts the final narrative threads in place that will later be resolved in Episode Five (ship date TBD).

The team is heading into the final stretch of the episode. Most of the bugs are fixed, and we’re in the final stages of localization, optimization, and preparing things for launch.

True to our typical tradition, we aren’t announcing a release date until we are very close to launch, so stay tuned for that. For our Survival Mode fans, Blackrock Region will be added to Survival Mode before the end of the year, along with a few other additions.

UPCOMING PRICE CHANGE

When we had THE LONG DARK in Early Access on Steam and on Xbox Game Preview, it was priced at $19.99 USD. When we launched our 1.0 in August of 2017, we bumped the price up to $29.99 USD. With the launch of Episode Four, we’re increasing the price for THE LONG DARK to $34.99 USD ($5 increase). We feel this is more reflective of the current state of the game in terms of quality and the scope of content. The new price will take effect when Episode Four ships, so this is your last opportunity to purchase THE LONG DARK at its current $29.99 price. Please note that this price increase will not impact you if you already own the game. (Your local pricing may vary.)

ROADMAP AFTER EPISODE FOUR

After we launch Episode Four, I’ll post some details about our plans for THE LONG DARK, onward to Episode Five and beyond, including how we plan to update Survival Mode in the future, our plans for Mod Support, and more.

Now, back to preparing Episode Four’s launch. We’ll see you soon!

- Raphael

Apr 28, 2021

The Long Dark Hotfixed to v1.94 [76129]

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

We’ve released our v1.94 Hotfix for The Long Dark. If you encounter any issues while playing the game please visit our Support Portal.

To stay up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (Game | Studio).

*****

GENERAL FIXES

[General] Fixed a systemic issue when tracking time that caused tracked time in Challenges and the Journal screen to be incorrect.
[Gameplay] Fixed an issue where liquids would not become “Burnt Dry”, when being cooked for too long.
[Gameplay] A loaded Rifle will now no longer lose the additional weight of the loaded cartridge, after transitioning between locations.
[Gameplay] Fixed a rare issue that could cause a player’s keyboard controls to become unresponsive, for no obvious reason.
[Audio] Cans and Pots now play sound effects when placed onto a cooking slot, as intended.
[Audio] Fixed an issue that prevented Players from starting Episode 1 if their Master or Voice volume was set to 0.

GENERAL ART FIXES

[Enviro] Fixed several rough geometry locations found in the Crumbling Highway that could hinder the Player's movement.
[Enviro] The Wolf’s Jaw Overlook Polaroid location is no longer blocked by terrain.

USER INTERFACE

[UI] Fixed alignment of the Carcass Harvesting trigger to better align with the center of the model.
[UI] Fixed an issue that caused the Technical Pack’s item description to disappear after a transition to a new area.
[UI] Implemented a check in the Journal to try and recover lost Survival mode stats. Note this cannot recover data from deleted saves, but will try to recover the best values available.
[UI] Menus will now correctly remember the last selected item, when returning from a sub-menu.
[Map] Filters no longer reset when navigating away from the Journal page.

WINTERMUTE

[EP 3] Removed “Pass Time” as an option when the Player is unable to pass time due to narrative events.

CHALLENGE MODES

[Nomad] Fixed an issue that caused the Player’s Journal to appear empty, when first starting the Nomad Challenge.
[Nomad] Fixed an issue that caused the Nomad Challenge to only track half the time spent at a location.
[Darkwalker] Localized several missing strings.

Mar 18, 2021

March 2021 Developer Diary

The Long Dark - hinterland_community

Dear community,

It’s time for an update on Episode Four progress, which I’m sure is the topic at the top of all your minds right now.

Episode Four Progress

The aurora illuminates Blackrock Penitentiary, Great Bear’s maximum security fortress and the main location in Episode Four.

We’re at the stage of episode development where I’ve been able to complete a couple of full run-throughs of the entire episode from start to finish. This is an important stage as it shows us what we have as a contiguous experience (this is different from how we build and test during development, which is often more in chunks that are out of order), and therefore highlights what is working and what isn’t. When you can experience the full flow of the episode from start to finish, you can get a sense of the overall pacing, the relationship between narrative and gameplay, clarity around objectives and motivations, peaks and troughs in the player’s activities, and generally a sense of how the whole thing fits together.

This is the period of episode development where we usually change (or remove) things that aren’t working, and add moments or content here and there where we feel the experience needs to be shored up a bit. It might be something as minor as a single line of dialogue or editing some objective text, all the way to cutting a section of a mission or adding an entirely new piece of narrative (as we did throughout Episodes One and Two when we released the “Redux” versions in 2019). In the specific case of Episode Four, this includes adding a new section of gameplay and a new mechanic we’re experimenting with. It’s a bit late in the process to be doing this, but we just feel the episode needs a bit more of a “punch” in some areas so we’re testing things out to see how they feel, and hopeful that we can make it all work and feel intriguing.

In terms of overall progress, I can say that the episode environments themselves are mostly finished, apart from a few small areas that are getting completed right now. After that we’ll roll into the polish phase for environment content. All the cinematics are complete and have had multiple passes with full voice-over, so we’re now moving into the lighting phase on most of them, and audio (sound-effects and music) which is the last phase. We’re tightening up some objective text, adding collectibles here and there where they are needed, and layering some secondary “side mission” content to reward you players who like to explore off the beaten path a bit.

We met Mathis in Carter Dam at the end of Episode Two, when he threatened Mackenzie within an inch of his life. Things have not improved for Mackenzie since then.

The whole team has done a great job despite the challenges of COVID, but I’m particularly proud what the animation team has managed to pull off in Episode Four, despite not having access to our motion-capture equipment (due to COVID and it not being safe to travel to the studio). Instead, they used home-based capture suits and a lot of keyframed (i.e. hand-made) animation including for facial animation, which is a big departure from some of the time-saving tools and tech we were able to use for our Episode Three development. The narrative moments in Episode Four are some of the most complex we’ve produced yet in The Long Dark, many involving multiple characters with heavy acting beats, so seeing them turn out so well is a real testament to the team’s work ethic and creative problem-solving. We also hired our first lighting specialist at Hinterland for Episode Four, so you can expect the general quality of the lighting to improve significantly, both in terms of execution and how it’s used to highlight atmosphere and the sense of drama.

We have at least a couple more months of production and then a testing and optimization phase, which could take a long time or be resolved quickly, depending on how things go. Being on the Switch now, and also continuing to support a low-spec on PC that goes back to our Early Access launch in 2014, means every major addition to the game introduces a lot of extra optimization and testing work. So, as per our usual studio policy with regards to release dates, I’m not going to guess at this point -- we’ll share a date when we are closer to launch. But, we’re in the final stretch now. You can expect a teaser trailer and a date announcement before we launch; we aren’t planning a surprise launch.

Just like everything in The Long Dark, there’s more to Blackrock than meets the eye.

What Comes Next?

With Episode Four development coming to a close, I’m finishing up the writing on Episode Five so the team can roll into that development. But, this also brings to mind a big question for Hinterland -- with the end of WINTERMUTE in sight, what comes next for The Long Dark, and for our studio?

This is obviously a lot on my mind lately, not only because I’ve been working on The Long Dark for nearly 8 years at this point, but because incubating new project ideas and building prototypes to prove those ideas is a time-consuming process. It’s important that these things have the space and resources they need in order to find success. The expectations around our work are a lot different in 2021 as compared to when we first launched The Long Dark in 2013. We’ve also learned a lot in the past years, become a stronger studio and better developers, and want to build more sophisticated and more meaningful experiences for our players. These things require time and resources.

One of the gifts of The Long Dark is just how expansive it has the potential to be. The world and gameplay systems themselves are highly extensible, although we have run up against some technical limitations going back to decisions we made in the early years of the project -- things we’d do differently if we were building something from scratch today, but things that we can’t really change at this point without tearing the entire game apart and rebuilding it. That would be time-consuming, expensive, and would delay a lot of other things we’d like to be doing.

We’ve been hearing a lot from our players that you would like to see more content beyond WINTERMUTE and the free Survival updates and events we produce a few times a year. Given that we’ve never charged for content beyond the purchase price of the game, our revenue has come entirely from new sales of The Long Dark. We’re really fortunate that the game still has a vibrant audience and continues to sell really well for us, allowing us to cover our costs and make a tidy profit which we pour back into the business. But in thinking about new projects and how we’d like to build them, and how important it is to maintain our independence and avoid putting ourselves in a financial position as a studio where we lose that independence, we have to start weighing the future of The Long Dark against the future of the studio.

To be clear -- we are 100% committed to shipping Episode Five for all our players, as part of your game purchase. That’s a promise we made back when we did our Kickstarter in 2013, and that’s a promise we will deliver on. What I’m talking about here is what comes *beyond* Episode Five. Since so much of what we’ve done as a studio has been informed by what you’ve told us about what you hope for the game, we’d love to hear from you.

We’ve set up a simple survey that will give us some idea of what you’d like us to do with The Long Dark after we finish Episode Five. There are also questions about what you’d like to see us do with Survival Mode, which while it can always be improved, has technically been complete for a while now. Please take a few minutes to review the survey and share your thoughts so we can take them into consideration as we plan our future. We aren’t committing to anything beyond Episode Five, but depending on how passionately you want us to keep expanding The Long Dark, and provided we can make it work from a business perspective, we are open to considering a variety of things. We love The Long Dark as much as anyone, and would love to see it continue to grow and flourish into the future. For us, it’s more than a game. For me, I still want to push forward and show that Hinterland is the industry leader in creating thoughtful survival experiences.

Milestones

We don’t tend to focus too much on these things publicly, but I’m really proud of what the team has made and it’s not often you get to celebrate these achievements, so I just wanted to share with you the exciting news that sales of The Long Dark have now surpassed 5-million units, with another 3.5-million active players coming to us through Xbox GamePass and the Epic Game Store (through the free give-away there at Christmas), bringing the total to over 8.5-million players to date!

That is a shocking number to me, when I think back to the humble origins of The Long Dark (which was then called, simply, “Survival Story”) back on a whiteboard in my basement home office years and years ago. One of the most exciting things about this number is how international our audience is! We’ve been humbled and amazed at how popular our little Canadian survival experience has resonated with players around the world. Thank you for your support over the years, and we look forward to continuing to deliver delightful experiences to you in The Long Dark, and hopefully in other games in the future! For us, there is a joy in exploration in its many facets, and we are excited to continue sharing this journey with you.

Onward!

In any case, it’s back to Episode Four reviews for me! I hope this developer diary has been informative and answered some of the questions you have about our progress, and we hope you like the teaser content we’ve shared here. Expect more news about Episode Four in the coming months including a teaser trailer, episode name, and a release date. And please take some time to respond to our “Future of The Long Dark” survey. While we’ll always make our own decisions about what is best for the game and our business, we love to hear from you and feel privileged to have your participation in this virtuous feedback circle.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!

- Raphael