The Long Dark pits players against the wilderness in icy northern Canada amid unnaturally cold weather. After crash-landing, you're tasked with surviving the harsh realities of mother nature, fighting against the cold and wild animals as you hunt, fish, and just generally try to stay alive. In addition to its signature survival mode, The Long Dark offers episodic content where you have to make tough decisions that impact other characters.
Today, the developer released another update which completely overhauled Episode 1 and Episode 2 of the game. According to the company, "This reflects over a year of effort to improve our Story Mode experience based on player feedback, and to strengthen the technical foundation of our game in anticipation of the remaining three episodes." The patch represents thousands of fixes and improvements, as well as entirely new content.
- Narrative Presentation: There's a new diloague mode, the entire story is now experienced in first-person mode, and the dialogue is fully voiced and animated.
- Narrative Content: All dialogue has been rewritten and redone. Many of the supporting details have changed. There are new plot elements, new locations, a much more.
- Mission Structure: Previously there were several plot elements or side mission content missions that were prerequisites to progressing in the story. As much as possible, while maintaining a logical story flow, the team made the mission structure more flexible. Side content is truly optional now.
- Gameplay Improvements: Many mission objectives have been retuned to provide the right amount of challenge.
Hopefully these changes will improve the experience. It's great to see that the team went back to fix these grievances.
The Long Dark has been available on Xbox One for quite some time now, but a physical edition launched on September 4, 2018. Usually smaller Xbox One experiences don't get physical editions, but The Long Dark is a welcome exception. If you were holding out on playing it, or want to supplement your catalog with a disc, be sure to check it out on Amazon.
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