The Long Dark, the open-world survival sandbox set in the frozen Canadian wilderness will be getting its thrid episode in December 2018, coinciding with the holiday theme.
Raphael van Lierop, Founder and Studio Creative Director at Hinterland, recently wrote the announcement on the official The Long Dark’s website, where he said that the studio will be releasing ‘redux’ versions of the first two episodes out of the planned five along with episode 3. In Raphael’s dev post on this site, he stated that:
“We’ll be teasing out more Episode Three details in the months ahead, but as a reminder: in Episode Three, you’ll play as Dr. Astrid Greenwood, and the story picks up in the aftermath of the events of Milton, as experienced from Mackenzie’s point of view in Episode One. You’ll meet new survivors, explore a new region, and find out more about the events prior to, and after, the First Flare event that engulfed Great Bear Island — and perhaps the rest of the world — into “the long dark.”
“Along with Episode Three, we’ll be releasing the “Redux” editions of Episodes One and Two, which we’ve spent the last year reworking in order to set up a stronger foundation for Episode Three and the remaining parts of the five-episode WINTERMUTE story mode. The improvements made in the Redux versions are pretty extensive, and most of them were made based on community feedback, so we hope you’ll go back and replay them before continuing on to Episode Three.”
The Redux episodes will feature:
- More open and flexible mission structure, reducing the forced linearity of the story missions; this includes restructuring the side missions and making more of the content optional
- Whole new playable intro sequence for Episode One
- All NPC dialogue is now fully voiced and animated using an entirely new animation system
- All dialogue and narrative scenes are now presented in first-person, using an overhauled dialogue UI
- New major story elements in both Episodes, including a new NPC
- Although the high-level episode story arcs remain as before, almost every story beat, dialogue moment, and mission element has been improved, with about 80% of the dialogue rewritten to accommodate
- Removed the Trust system as it contributed to the “fetch questy” feeling of the first two episodes (we plan to re-purpose this system for elsewhere in the game)
- Completely overhauled Bear Hunt mission and added new game-play (Episode Two)
- Improved tutorial presentation
- Improved story UI elements
The Long Dark is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and Linux.