1. The Long Dark begins w/ a disclaimer that it's no substitute for survival training. Don't get me wrong, The Long Dark provides some harrowing moments but how a person could mistake its mechanics for realism is beyond me. You can't permanently heal a sprained ankle by taking an aspirin. If you have to be told that, maybe consider playing a different game.
2. The Long Dark contains a story mode which they have given its own title: Wintermute. It provides an interesting twist on game play vs. a straight survival sim.
3. Actually, Wintermute is a bit like the story campaign in a Call of Duty game. A lot of time and effort was put into it but it sometimes comes across as an extended tutorial. This is in part because, as of this writing, only two of five episodes are released. You don't need to play it at all if your main interest is playing survival games and you'll get a full experience from The Long Dark even if you skip it.
4. Even unfinished, Wintermute is a pretty substantial game in its own right. The two episodes span several distinct areas, all of which have substantial content on their own, and you will have to use most of your survival skills to get through it.
5. The Long Dark's wilderness feels cold and beautiful and its lovely artstyle is possibly its greatest appeal. It is naturalistic but slightly abstracted. Snowflakes and sunlight play together in broad brushstrokes that bring to mind Claude Monet at times. The one exception to this is the actual characters in games who have skin of pure titanium white w/ bright cherry blossom cheeks and noses. I get this is a stylistic choice to convey the coldness of the environment but it just looks goofy to me.
6. Sound design fits the mood perfectly. It's mutedly wintery.
7. In any mode, the survival aspects are more or less the same. You start out largely unclothed and w/o any food of water and you set out immediately to rectify this situation. You find shelter, build fires, and find and craft food, clothing and shelter. Inventory is limited so successful strategies seem to push you towards building supply caches throughout the landscape so you can explore further and further w/o putting yourself at extreme risk.
8. The one thing that stands out is the incredible importance of wood and other fuels. They are not only critical to keeping you warm--esp. early on before you find or make warmer clothes--but also your source of potable water and safe food. It's heavy too so if you want to bring along a supply for safety's sake, it takes a huge hit on your inventory space. (In the Wintermute story mode, this aspect is nerfed somewhat by NPCs who have infinitely burning fires where you can stop in, have a nap and eat a snack at little cost to yourself.)
9. Actually, inventory generally has a huge impact on everything. If you go carrying every tool and weapon you can think of, you are not going to carry anything you can gather using those tools. Because when you pick what tools you bring, you are also pick what you are going out to do and that gives you a bit of purpose in the day-to-day business of not starving to death. Also, inventory weight impacts your movement speed and how much you have to eat. No matter how little you carry, you can't jump at all, which leads to you getting stuck in the terrain occasionally. Good times, good times.
10. As far as story, Wintermute has one. Your estranged wife comes to you asking her to do her a favor which, as you'd expect, leads to you crashing an airplane and losing her. Then you have to do fetch quests for NPCs until you find her. The main appeal is not in your own story line but discovering the history of the remote Canadian island you've crashed on and the greater world it exists in.
11. Developers, Hinterland Games, have redone Wintermute once at this point to make it more open but looking at the game now, I'm not sure what they might have done. Each area is open to do as you please in theory but the story is progressed by doing tasks in order for NPCs. There are lots of opportunities for player driven solutions to problems that arise but they are seldom taken. For example, there's a major plot line involving a supernatural killer bear and there is one exact specific way this must go down. There is no option to trap the bear or befriend the bear or avoid the bear entirely. An NPC instructs you exactly what to do and you do it. It's not bad as it is but having the story railroaded to such a degree clashes w/ the more open ended nature of the survival mechanics.
12. There's a variety of difficulty modes which range from just finding everything you need hanging out all over the place to getting almost nothing. The various maps you can play also substantially impact how difficult the game is. All these options, ironically, kind of make me wish there was even more granularity. It'd be fun to play on a map w/ tons of easy-to-find shelters but almost no food available w/o hunting or one where guns and ammo are plentiful but so is bloodthirsty wildlife. It just seems like even though they've done a lot here, there's a lot more they could do.
13.The Long Dark is ultimately worth playing as The Long Dark and also as Wintermute. The experiences are related but distinct and both are compelling in their own right. I do hope in the future, the two styles of play could meet more in the middle to make for some ultimate version of Wintermute but you could easily view either mode as bonus content to whichever mode you prefer now so I can't really count that against it.
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