Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity's technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches…

The breathtakingly picturesque Pacific Northwest frames the backdrop for the drama of The Long Dark. You take on the role of William Mackenzie, a newly stranded bush pilot crashed far from the nearest human habitation. Lost, wounded, and with wolves circling, you'll have to quickly master basic wilderness survival skills if you're to last long enough to understand how the world has changed since the aurorae appeared in the sky. And that's just the beginning.

In the first season of this episodic series, players experience this grim new reality through the eyes of bush pilot William Mackenzie, isolated with other survivors in the Northern wilderness as a result of the event. Gameplay emphasizes exploration to gather resources and knowledge about the world, while mastering a deep survival simulation to overcome the myriad natural and man-made hazards of the new frontier. Players will also face difficult moral choices that will affect the outcome of gameplay, story, and ultimately, the course of humanity’s recovery.

The Long Dark will be available for PS4 and Xbox One at retail game stores on September 4th in North America, and September 7th in Europe and other territories.

The Long Dark has already captured the attention of 2.5 million players in digital stores like Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation, and now existing fans and new players alike can pre-order the physical retail edition starting today!

To pre-order in North America visit the Skybound website, and in other territories visit individual retailer’s websites.

Every retail edition box of The Long Dark will include a code to download the game’s Original Soundtrack, as well as a limited edition physical Field Journal. Used by an unnamed survivor on Great Bear Island, this naturalist’s Field Journal includes a map of the Island, as well as plenty of room to log your day’s activities - the perfect companion for any survivor of the Quiet Apocalypse!

After a long period of you waiting for news about the next installment in the story of The Long Dark, I’m excited to share the news that Episode Three will release December 2018, along with the “Redux” editions of Episodes One and Two, unveiling a whole new experience of WINTERMUTE, The Long Dark’s story mode.

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. I talked a bit about the reasoning behind the Redux work in our February Dev Diary. Some of the work that’s gone into the Redux episodes includes:

• 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 repurpose this system for elsewhere in the game)
• Completely overhauled Bear Hunt mission and added new gameplay (Episode Two)
• Improved tutorial presentation
• Improved story UI elements
• and many other fixes and improvements.

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.

Please note that because so much has changed, in-progress playthroughs of Episode One or Two will be wiped when the Redux versions are released in December. Players who have already completed the original versions of Episodes One and Two and who wish to just continue directly to Episode Three will not be affected by the save wipe. So, if you are in the midst of a WINTERMUTE playthrough and don’t want to lose your progress, you have until December to complete it.

So, to recap: Episode Three, along with the “Redux” versions of Episodes One and Two, will all be releasing together in December!

 

Features:

• Immersive first-person exploration gameplay featuring a stunning, original art style. Players take on the role of franchise protagonist, Will Mackenzie, as he navigates the savage beauty of the Northern Wilderness and faces the hazards of the new “post-digital” frontier.
• Be on the lookout for potential supply caches, all the while using survival skills to overcome hazards introduced by harsh weather, wildlife, lack of food and water, and other survivors.
• Deep survival simulation gameplay where every decision matters. Explore a large open world in search of resources, and balance Condition and Willpower against the needs of your daily survival.
• Morally challenging scenarios that challenge players to answer the question: “How far will you go to survive?” Any survivor you meet in the world can be friend or foe. Will you risk your life to discover what they know and selflessly sacrifice for the common good, or live — and potentially die — by the adage “might makes right”?
• Rich episodic fiction featuring dozens of locations, a cast of memorable characters, and a mature post-disaster storyline inspired by the creative risk-taking we see in many of today’s exciting television series. This isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here.
• urvival Story mode provides hours of narrative-driven exploration gameplay where you play as Will Mackenzie, struggling to understand what has happened to the world. Survival Sandbox mode provides potentially hundreds of hours of free-form survival gameplay where you push yourself and your skill to last as long as possible in a variety of survival scenarios.

The Long Dark is currently available on Steam Early Access for $19.99, but will be increasing to $34.99 USD later this month.