What you need to know:
- The Long Dark is a first-person survival game developed by Hinterland and set in the freezing Canadian wilderness.
- Hinterland has announced a campaign to add paid DLC content to The Long Dark through an Expansion Pass titled Tales from the Far Territory.
- The "Forsaken Airfield" region will launch first, with two more regions to be added later. Three narrative themed challenges will also be added to Survival, as well.
- Free updates will continue for The Long Dark, including quality of life improvements, new items, and global loot and wildlife refreshes.
- Hinterland plans to release new content every 8-10 weeks.
- Tales from the Far Territory will be priced at $20 when it launches in December, with the price increasing by $5 twice as more content is made available. The final price will be $30.
Originally released in 2014 in Early Access on Steam and later in 2015 as part of the reveal of Game Preview on Xbox, The Long Dark has come a long way in its development. The game has since seen the release of its free story mode DLC, Wintermute, along with multiple free quality of life updates. Hinterland has recently announced via a dev diary that players can look forward to an additional 12-month long campaign that will add even more content, this time as expansion DLC for survival mode titled Tales from the Far Territory.
Tales from the Far Territory is the first paid DLC to release for The Long Dark and will span across a 12-month long campaign to add three new regions specifically to the game's survival mode. The first of these new regions, "Forsaken Airfield" will launch at the start of the expansion pass's lifecycle in Dec. 2022 and will be the first time The Long Dark's setting on Great Bear Island has been expanded. Players will need to survive a long and perilous journey along railways, tunnels and caverns to eventually reach a hub region that will provide access to all three new areas that will eventually be available as part of Tales from the Far Territory's content drops. Hinterland is currently planning an aggressive slate of content with the goal of releasing new drops every 8-10 weeks.
Tales from the Far Territory will launch with a $20 price tag; however, Hinterland has said that the price will increase in increments of $5 over the course of its 12-month lifespan as additional content is released with the final price at the end of the campaign settling at $30. While picking up the DLC at launch may provide the most value, players who choose to wait to see the outcome of the content drops and their long-standing effect on game play can feel free to do so as there are no plans to vault content over time.
In addition to the paid DLC content, players can also look forward to a continuation of free content drops and quality of life features coming along to The Long Dark. Hinterland plans to initiate a full global loot and wildlife refresh with changes to the loot tables, pre-placed loot, and a rebalanced economy across the entire game. A full resource refresh will go live with the launch of Tales from the Far Territory while a wildlife refresh will come later on in the campaign cycle. New items like a thermos and edible plants, as well as visor notes pointing to the locations of supply caches and other useful resources will also be added. New first-person animations and other visual enhancements geared toward high-end systems are also planned.
Unfortunately, players with existing Survival saves will lose that progress once the update for Tales from the Far Territory is released, even if they do not purchase the expansion pass. This is due to a series of changes to the save system and the game's base architecture that results in previous saves being incompatible with the new format. These changes were necessary to improve and future proof The Long Dark's base structure. It's not all doom and gloom, however, as any unlocked Feats and progress toward Feats as well as existing achievements will be carried over. Likewise, saves for Wintermute content will also be salvaged despite the changes. Only Survival saves will be affected. Players on Steam will have the option to utilize The Long Dark's Time Capsule feature to continuing playing existing saved games on older build versions, though those builds will not have the benefits afforded by the Expansion Pass, nor any quality-of-life improvements featured in those updates.
Hinterland does note that the plans in this current content roadmap are not complete and can change over time based on player feedback and experience. The Long Dark is regarded as one of the best survival games on Xbox, and is currently available on Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and via Xbox Cloud Gaming.
