Ze Long Dark episode 3 walkthrough. The Long Dark development team has expanded, but the third story episode will not be released this year. Episode two: "Luminous Fugue"
On August 1, a story campaign appeared in the game on Steam, which consists of several seasons. In the first season, according to the developers' promise, there will be five episodes, in this moment Only the first two are available. The most useful TLD guides can be found here.
First, I wanted to refresh your memory about what The Long Dark is. A wonderful game that told us about the incredibly interesting adventures of a survivor in the snowy locations of Canada. A huge number of factors will prevent the player from holding out for at least some time, such as: cold, wind, hunger, thirst, fatigue, an incredible number of natural factors (illnesses, bruises, wounds, etc.), and of course wild animals. Death will await you at almost every step, no matter where you are.
Episode 1: "Don't Go Humbly"
Airplane pilot Will McKenzie(our character) and doctor Astrid Greenwood lost each other when a mysterious flash of light interrupted their flight over northern Canada and the plane crashed. After waking up our main character trying to understand what is happening and where he is. At first, they teach us the basic components of successful survival, tell us how to make a fire, how to determine the best place to spend the night, how to butcher animal carcasses, show the principles of hunting, etc. For those who have previously played the alpha version of the game, this will all be simpler and clearer. After we got a little stronger and got out of the gorge, the search leads us to the abandoned town of Milton, in which we understand the full scale of the tragedy.
Episode two: "Luminous Fugue".
Mackenzie's search for her missing companion leads her deep into the snowy and dangerous wilderness. There you meet a mysterious and possibly distraught trapper who may be able to help you. But can he be trusted? Or perhaps it would be better to ignore him or even kill him?
According to the developers, completing the first two episodes will take players about fifteen o'clock, the next three episodes will be available soon, and will be free for all owners of the game on Steam.
Dear friends,
Today I'm here to tell you that THE LONG DARK will be released from Early Access on August 1st, 2017. On this day, we will release the first two episodes of WINTERMUTE, our five-episode "story mode" for THE LONG DARK.
Here's a teaser of what's to come in WINTERMUTE:
The first two episodes of WINTERMUTE follow pilot Will McKenzie and Dr. Astrid Greenwood, and what happens when they are separated after a mysterious geomagnetic event lands them in the middle of the northern Canadian wilderness. In the first episode: “Don't Go Quietly,” Mackenzie tries to survive in the wild wasteland long enough to find shelter, hoping for help that civilization can provide. He quickly realizes that the world around him is not at all what he expected it to be. In the second episode: "Fugue Glow", Mackenzie begins to understand the true nature of the disaster, he is constantly looking for traces of Astrid. He also begins to answer the question, “how far will you go to survive?” by building relationships with other survivors he meets along the way.
Overall gameplay for the two episodes varies depending on the open world and nature in the game, but we find the 6-10 hour time frame to complete the two episodes to be fairly consistent. Episodes three to five will be released before the end of 2017, and in 2018.
I can't tell you how excited I am to finally be able to give you an exact launch date for the game.
Another thing that turned out to be surprising for our studio and team is that we will release version 1.0 of THE LONG DARK on three platforms: Steam (Windows/Mac/Linux), Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Since the “early access” programs on PlayStation no, previously we could not bring the gaming experience to the audience of this console and now that the expansion of THE LONG DARK communities will also affect PlayStation players, this is a huge step for us. This means more players and larger number resources that we can redirect back into the game itself, so that its development will go in new and interesting ways, which may even go beyond our current plans.
As many of you know, THE LONG DARK has always been our passion, and the first season of the game - winter - was always meant to be just the first part of the gaming experience. Expanding our audience gives us a better chance of being able to continue to invest resources into the world of THE LONG DARK, as well as retaining the rights to intellectual property, and also the independence of “Hinterland” as a studio. Unlike many indies in the space, Hinterland is 100% independent and self-funded. This independence is at the core of our development philosophy and team culture, and is largely why we have been able to take creative risks so far.
I know the PS4 announcement may not seem like a big deal if you're already playing THE LONG DARK on Steam or Xbox, but I hope you'll see what a monumental step it is for us to expand the diversity of the world and gameplay that is at the core of that we can continue to develop THE LONG DARK the way we dreamed of doing it.
It's hard to remember sometimes that our entire approach to story mode design - and the reason we've talked so little about it to date - is based on anticipation. It's also easy to forget that much of our community is waiting to get back into the game - waiting to wake up and feel that sense of excitement again. And the PlayStation community has never had the chance to experience the excitement of owning THE LONG DARK. As a small studio that does its own marketing, we need to use all of our tools to get people excited about our game, and often those people aren't the ones seeking out our posts on in social networks every day. These are the waiting and hesitating people, the journalists, the people who have yet to discover this game. That's why we haven't talked much about development in recent months, and why we'll be doing so in the next three months before we launch the campaign. We will do our best to meet the agreed time. Most Early Access games don't get a chance to release again, and we're doing everything we can to make it through. We hope you will support us in this because it is important to our success.
Let's talk about what's coming up in the next three months to give you a better idea of what the time leading up to launch will be. We need to complete the game's final art, Polish translation, and playtesting to make the first two episodes as compelling as they can be. This is until the end of this month. Then we'll fix any bugs we find in the first two episodes - which will happen over the rest of May and most of June. We need to work on some performance improvements (optimizations) and make all new translation and integrate it into the game. This will mainly happen in June. And then in July we'll go through an intensive certification process on Xbox and PlayStation to make sure everything is ready to go by August 1st.
Phew. There is still a lot to be done!
Additionally, I promised one more sandbox update before the story mode launches. Later this month, we will open a test version with an update for the game called FAITHFUL CARTOGRAPHER.
Here's a list of what you can expect in this update:
Complete system modernization
As you can imagine, maintaining backwards compatibility for saves for the last 3 years has caused our save system to get a little confused over time. We think this may be part of why there has been some instability, especially on Xbox One, with lost saves and some corruption from time to time. This new system should improve stability, as well as prepare us to handle new requirements for saving WINTERMUTE episodes. Keep in mind that all of your current profile data will continue to work - this means that existing progress on Feats or Survival Journals that you have saved will still be valid after the update.
Completely new interface
We've done a complete aesthetic overhaul of our UI and HUD and added a lot of new functionality - too many to list here. Every screen has been completely rebuilt. In some cases, like with Radial, we've made usability improvements (for example, you can now eat or drink directly from Radial). We've improved the Pack, Clothing and Status screens and updated the HUD with a number of improvements. Indeed, there are 100 improvements in this overhaul. The FAITHFUL CARTOGRAPHER update will be about 80% of this process completed, with the rest done in time for our full launch.
Cartography in gameplay
Mapping has never been part of the sandbox experience of LONG DARK, but as we've seen growing interest in using external community maps, we thought we'd add fully failsafe mapping gameplay. You'll have to use charcoal from campfires to update your own world map, which you view piece by piece, and the value of that map will depend on how well you update it. The goal of this system is to provide a useful tool for players who would like to map their world, without making the game easier or penalizing players who choose to continue playing as they currently do, without maps!
Throwing stones
You can now throw rocks at the wild. They make a good "last resort" tool against wolves - you might be lucky enough to scare one off - and you can hunt rabbits with them. Stun the bunny and then see if you have the heart to finish it. This tool provides a good "early game" tool for defense and food acquisition, and is something we plan to develop in the future.
Throwing fireworks and torches
Some of you may remember the game before we added swinging. This mechanic never achieved its intended purpose, so we removed it and brought back torch and flare throws. This gives you a useful, reusable tool for repelling wild animals.
Quartering of carcasses
A long-awaited community request is the ability to collect animal carcasses from shelter/safety/comfort...somewhere that isn't outside. We've added a system where you can quarter carcasses and move "pieces" around them. But keep in mind that, like everything in LONG DARK, there is a risk/reward scenario to consider. Quartering carcasses are less effective and also make you much more interesting for wandering wildlife, both on the Quartering site, and when you carry heavy parts of the carcass around with you.
Choosing a weapon for fighting
You can now select the tool/weapon you wish to use before engaging the wolf. We think this will work to resolve some long-standing complaints about the wrestling system, and we will build on this in the future.
First person
You'll see that we've added a first-person presence to the Rifle, Bow, Distress Pistol and improved the presentation of Light Sources such as Flare, Torch, etc. As always, we plan to continue improving the game as the game continues to evolve.
Tons of new art
In addition to the UI tweaks, you'll notice that a lot of the game world looks better. We're slowly updating all of the old item's labels and badges to create a more cohesive world.
New graphics settings
We've added more display variety and quality options so you can find the best balance of performance and beauty based on your specific system. (Please note, this is for PC/Mac/Linux players only.)
Tons of bug fixes and optimizations
We have fixed many bugs over the past few months. TONS.
See you in the silent apocalypse.
07.11.2018.Hinterland Growth, Episode Three Delayed, WINTERMUTE Redux + Survival Mode in December
Hello community,
I have some news and a progress update to share on how things are going with various parts of the game, and the studio. Some of it is good news, some of it will be disappointing. I hope that for the majority majority of you, the news is mostly good.
Hinterland Growth
Some of you might be clued in to recent industry turmoil and a spate of closures, Telltale being the highest profile of these. A bit lesser known, but really big news for our local Vancouver game dev community, was the complete shutdown of Capcom’s Vancouver studio. About 200 people lost their jobs, and in the weeks following we scrambled to interview people to see if we could help them, and to see how we could build up our own development strength.
Fortunately for us, we already had several ex-Capcom Vancouver people in the studio, so we were able to identify high performers who would fit in to our culture well. As a result of the Capcom situation, along with some other people we were interviewing at the time, we’ve hired six new team members in the last month. This is Hinterland’s most significant growth in the past five years.
One area we were really able to bulk up was animation, which has always been a challenge on this project. Our current animation team of three has been able to do some truly incredible technical and creative work over the past 18 months, but we’ve always been limited on how much content we could produce and that’s held us back in some areas of the project. For example, the decision to ship unvoiced dialogue scenes in the original Episode One and Two. We just couldn’t produce all the animation needed to support full voice over.
For Redux, we adopted some new facial animation technology, and things have improved significantly, to the extent that we’re able to ship Redux Episodes One and Two with full voice-over and fully animated characters. I think this really elevates the quality of the narrative presentation in the game.
We were also able to purchase Capcom Vancouver’s nearly new motion capture studio (or the equipment from it anyway). This purchase gives us a 36-camera set-up which will be more than enough to carry us through the next few projects. Having our own motion capture equipment means we no longer have to plan our production around a motion-capture studio’s availability, which will give us a lot more flexibility to shoot, iterate, reshoot, etc.
In addition to the two animators, we also hired two new programmers, a new user interface/visual effects artist, and a new tester. We’re also interviewing additional people who may end up joining us, including some folks from Telltale and other studios that specialize in narrative experiences, all people who’ve recently let go and are looking for a new home. This is a great opportunity for us to build up our team in anticipation of future work on The Long Dark, and our next game.
This team growth means we’re big enough to seriously consider splitting the current team into two production teams — one focused in WINTERMUTE, and another focused on Survival Mode. We’ve long struggled with trying to produce enough content to keep both Story and Survival sides of the project fully resourced. So I’m feeling pretty hopeful for the future of The Long Dark, and our update progress moving forward. Being able to have two dedicated teams will help ensure we can make more consistent progress in both areas of the game.
Episode Three Delayed
Suddenly having access to all this new development talent and the motion-capture gear makes a huge difference to what we can accomplish in Episode Three. I’ve decided that I’d like to be able to use these new resources — along with the new motion capture equipment — to add more content and polish to Episode Three. This means it won’t be ready for us to ship in December.
There’s not much more to say about that at the moment. I know this will be disappointing.
Episodes One and Two “Redux” for December
This may be bittersweet after the Episode Three delayed news, but we’ll be delivering the updated “Redux” versions of Episodes One and Two in December.
While the high-level narrative of these episodes remains the same, the details and the implementation of the missions and narrative content is significantly different from what you played last year. Everything has been re-written, re-recorded, and re-animated. There are also new mission beats that didn’t exist before, things that flesh out the experience and story of WINTERMUTE. In December, you’ll be able to play these Redux episodes and get a great sense of what to expect in Episode Three and beyond, as these now serve as the template for how we’ll approach all our mission and narrative content moving forward.
This also means that with the December “Redux” update, we'll be deleting your old WINTERMUTE saves . They will no longer be compatible with the game after the update, as so much has changed. So, if you haven’t already started playing WINTERMUTE, we suggest you wait until our December update. And if you really want to finish your current WINTERMUTE playthrough, we recommend you do it soon! If you finished the original Episodes One and Two and want to roll right into Episode Three when it launches, you can also do that, although we hope you'll go back and experience “Do Not Go Gentle” and “Luminance Fugue” again, as they are much changed and improved since their original iterations.
Survival Mode Update for December
Just so that we don’t leave you without something entirely new to look forward to before the end of 2018, we’re releasing another free update to Survival Mode this December.
I don't want to spoil the contents yet — that deserves its own dev diary — but I can say the update will include the following: New Craftable Hat, New Challenge Mode, New Condition Buff, some UI fixes, some gameplay tweaks, and general bug fixes as well. There may also be a few other surprises in there, if we can get them finished in time.
Story Mode Save Wipe in December
Remember: we are deleting all current WINTERMUTE saves with our December update .
If you arejust starting WINTERMUTE and don’t mind waiting a bit, we recommend you wait for December so you can play the revised and much improved Episodes One and Two.
If you have an in-progress WINTERMUTE game you’d like to finish before we wipe the save, please finish it soon! Pre-Redux (Predux!) WINTERMUTE saves will not be compatible with the game, post-update.
If you completed the original Episodes One and Two, Episode Three will be unlocked for you when it releases.
This save wipe has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on Survival Mode games. We will not be wiping those. If you play Survival and don’t care about WINTERMUTE, simply carry on.
We’ll release more info about the December Survival Mode update when we get closer to launching it. Thanks for reading, and if you’d like to discuss this dev diary with other members of the community, please jump into the conversation here in our official community forums.
The developers of the survival simulator The Long Dark have once again announced a missed release date: the third episode of the Wintermute story campaign will not be released in December. Improved versions of the first two with the subtitle Redux are still expected in last month 2018 In addition, the survival mode will also receive an update at the same time.
In the official blog, The Long Dark lead developer Raphael van Lierop explained that the delay was due to the desire to spend more time polishing and creating more content. The third episode will continue the story of the adventures of Dr. Astrid Greenwood and add a new region and survivors.
Interestingly, the postponement of the release is associated with positive changes in the studio. It recently hired six new employees, including those who lost their jobs after . According to rumors, at least part of this team, consisting of approximately 200 people, was developing a new Dead Rising. At that time, several people from this studio were already working at Hinterland, so it was not difficult for the developers to understand which of the specialists who had lost their jobs would fit into their team. According to Lirop, this addition was the largest in the last five years.
Among the new arrivals were two animators - there were not enough such specialists in the studio. The animation team consisted of only three people, and although over the past eighteen months they have done "incredible technical and creative work» , the developers were limited in their capabilities. For this reason, for example, the first two story episodes were released with unvoiced dialogue: the animators simply did not have enough time to fully animate the characters. Players will be able to evaluate the work of the extended team in Redux versions and the third episode: They use a new facial animation system and the characters are fully animated and voiced. Lirop noted that thanks to this, the quality of the storytelling has noticeably improved.
In addition, Hinterland purchased a nearly new 36-camera motion capture studio owned by Capcom Vancouver. It will be used in several future projects.
Other new employees include two programmers, an interface and special effects artist, and a tester. The studio continues to negotiate with other candidates, some of whom lost their jobs after the closure of Telltale Games. The team has expanded so much that the leaders are considering dividing it into two parts: one will create Wintermute, and the other will create a survival mode. This way, both modes will receive enough content.
Lirop also warned that the December update, which will improve the first two episodes, will destroy existing Wintermute saves. The developer advised everyone who plans to complete the story campaign to wait for the release of Redux. In December, Survival Mode will feature a new challenge mode and new items, and some bugs will be fixed.
Funded on Kickstarter, The Long Dark was released in early access on Steam in September 2014, and the final version on August 1, 2017, not only on PC, but also on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (the console release on disc took place in September of this year). The story campaign started late: the first episode was released back in 2016, but this only happened simultaneously with the premiere of the final version.