Sounds like an argument for version 1.2, if you ask me.
Yes, I’m aware. Not my first rodeo, nor did I just spend a few minutes in story mode. The problem is that often last save and last checkpoint are hazily similar, and often end up converging because resting areas end up being checkpoints themselves.
2 patches yesterday, which is nuts. 3 patches total, which, yeah, is crazy.
And all of those patches clearly could have been avoided if he had just kept the same EA model for the story mode that he did with sandbox. It’s not like The first few chapters are revelations story wise. Most of it you have probably already guessed by looking at the steam store page.
OH no! I crashed! I need to find out why, and find a person and get them a Mcguffin! Stat!
I don’t think that sentence even counts as a spoiler but will tag it happily if someone disagrees =)
You’re right Fozzle. And even if just the first chapter had been pushed out for 2 weeks to the EA players, so much of this would’ve been pointed out and could have been addressed.
Honestly, the mess with story mode looks like a critical error in the design document. Story mode went from this sort of guided tent-pole thing to take people through the world and instead became this super-involved deal with back stories and waaaay too much mythology around the storm and whatnot.
I suspect that the original design documents were drawn up when story mode wasn’t a very involved process and so testing was kept in-house with Hinterland’s small staff. Story mode got much larger…but they never changed the testing process to match it.
I’m actually surprised the story mode is as involved as it is. Given how small their staff is, I wasn’t really expecting much out of it. Having gotten 150+ hours out of sandbox mode already, I can’t say I’m very concerned with it.
They could have very easily just released this as a sandbox game, and kept adding challenges and it would be more than enough of a game. They have a real opportunity with the challenges, as you don’t really have to do anything much to the game world to implement them, and some of them were quite fun.
Hopefully the rocky launch of the story mode, doesn’t tank opinions on the game so that they lose a bunch of potential sales. This is a great survival game, and well worth the purchase price.
Hmm, it’s a Play Anywhere title, which hopefully means I can play the same save on my XBox and my laptop!
Thanks for the impressions, everyone. I’ll be holding off on story mode I guess. But I’ve always looked upon that as a bonus anyway.
Cripes. Summer is the only time I can play it. Winter is just far too cold. Last time I tried it here, with a blizzard raging outside, I was shivering so bad, I had to quit the game. Not that it was cold in here, but it sure felt that way. Even during summer, the game’s atmosphere is daunting for me.
This was in my backlog and I started playing it having forgotten all I had read. The story mode is so bad and useless for new players I was, for the first time in my life, figuring out how to ask for a refund. It just does nothing to help learn the mechanics of the game, in fact it does a good job obfuscating them, and it’s play is about finding specific hidden solutions via trial and death rather than it’s actual core gameplay. It sucks.
But I came to this thread, read the posts above, and decided to give it another shot just in the sandbox mode. This game is actually really great. I love the tension of hanging on by a thread, while trying to plan for both the immediate and at least short term. The game lends itself to such a wide range of possible narratives.
Yeah honestly, they screwed up “story mode” so badly, I can’t even believe it’s the same company that did the survival mode and challenge mode aspects of the game, since those are SO GOOD.
What “story mode” should have been, honestly, is a breadcrumb trail that tells whatever goofy backstory they came up with through found newspapers, notes, and scratchy radio transmissions found here and there. Have that lead the players through months (in game-time) of exploration/survival to find some sort of generator and beacon that works, and if you can do that, you win/live.
Instead, they came up with this elaborate nonsense with cutscenes and bad dialogue and it just doesn’t work.
I hope the good folks behind Subnautica were watching this and taking notes.
The Long Dark is a very good game…but the part of it they built up the most in the minds of players turned out to be a spectacular failure.
The story mode isn’t nearly as bad once you know what you’re doing from having played the game. It’s still bad, but you can get around some of the stuff that would stump a new player.
The sandbox mode is so good in this game, and just playing it as a pure survival game is more than worth the price of admission. The story mode is largely worthless. Oddly enough, Longest Dark is one of those games that easily could have stopped about halfway through the early access. There was one point where they changed the UI and some functions, that really put a damper on the game as well.
At any rate, at least there is still a great game in there somewhere.
UPDATE, with story mode difficulty levels.
And sliders with the ability to share custom game difficulty.
So I picked this up on sale today and, based on the comments here, started up in Survival Mode. Based on that I have a few questions:
-
I built a campfire but it didn’t seem to warm me any, no matter how close to it I got. Being inside didn’t seem to help. What am I missing?
-
There’s a special place in Hell for whoever thought a white cursor was a good idea. Is there a way to change the color? I couldn’t find anything in the options menu.
3)I couldn’t find a way to save. Does it autosave when you quit?
2 months with no response! Egads! @Sonoftgb here are what I think is going on:
- If the fire doesn’t warm you past the point of freezing outside, you can still freeze outside. This can happen if you are wearing little to no cloths, and are in a storm or something. That’s all I got for that one.
- short answer is nope. I do not know of a way to change the cursor.
- It autosaves when you quit, and when you die, you are done. you start over.
Now is a pretty good time to get into the game, as the big patch @lordkosc just mentioned just came out. I was hoping that the teased conversation trees made it to this patch, as I want to redo Wintermute but looks like I will have to wait on that one for a bit longer. The cooking changes I am on the fence about however. Seems like a lot of tedium for very little immersive gain.
I’d pay extra for a pre interface change beta version of this game. Every time they change this game I like it less.
More episode 3 news…
I did not give this game a fair shake when it first came out, with not much time into it before I was annoyed by lack of anything and, “standing in the dark: the game.” I fired it up this weekend, this game has changed a TON. I like it. I’m horrible at it, struggling on Voyager. Any tips or pointers to a decent and recent video guide?
I see they had a Halloween event we all missed!
Also back in September they released on XBONE and PS4 , so I am guessing this trailer is the most current version of the game:
This is one of those games where I played a whole lot around the time it was released and got mid-way through the story, but then got distracted by something else in life and I’m afraid if I got back to it I won’t remember what I was doing and I’ll quickly and repeatedly die.
I need to find out if I can pull off the save files from somewhere so I can keep around the last save from before I put the game down so I can revert to it if I go back in and completely screw up.