Is Episode Three Canceled?

[Le Petit Prince]

First month of 2018 is coming to end, and it's been nearly 6 months since Wintermute has came up. I really liked The Long Dark and enjoyed the hours playing it. But 2 episodes were not that long and 6 months is more than enough time for waiting other episodes i think. I really loved hinterland studios but I'm kinda upset about this mystery of releasing date of next episode. I mean they're not developing a new game, it's just another episode and it shouldn't be that hard. Please don't make us wait any longer and make us be able to play during semester vacation on winter. Or at least give us a releasing date like  'in a month' , or 'in summer' even maybe '2019'. But i'm really starting to give up waiting it. Is it canceled or something? Because I remember they said it will come at later on 2017 into 2018 and there is no news since december.

[Mixxut]

Im gonna give you a short answer. No

 

Also a little longer answer.

Do you really think that they would just abandon their game without saying anything? No. They are just putting effort making the next episodes less glitchy. Patience, please.

 

And also they have said that episode trhee is delayed to 2018. you just weren't looking for information

[Fuarian]

Episode 3 is taking time because they are introducing new systems, animating and voice acting, reviewing previous systems and overall improving the previous 2 episodes. It'll take time. I'm betting on the end of this year. Then hopefully the final 2 episodes won't take as long since everything will be more solid for development by then.

[JaySovereign]

It feels like it was released just yesterday.  I guess time really flies here. As for where it is, I'd prefer it to be as polished as possible as a result of them taking their time. I wouldn't have it any other way.

[selfless]

6 hours ago, Fuarian said:

 I'm betting on the end of this year. Then hopefully the final 2 episodes won't take as long since everything will be more solid for development by then.

LOL.  See you next year...

[ingrobny]

No it's not canceled, but since some player was disappionted with how Hinterland made the storymode, they want to change the storymode and that will take time, i for one was happy about the storymode as it was, but now we all have to wait for episode 3 .

[Mixxut]

42 minutes ago, ingrobny said:

No it's not canceled, but since some player was disappionted with how Hinterland made the storymode, they want to change the storymode and that will take time, i for one was happy about the storymode as it was, but now we all have to wait for episode 3 .

I don't think they are changing how the story mode works, they are just taking their time to make episode 3.

[Le Petit Prince]

I know that they said 2018, what i'm trying to say here the only bad thing is they're not giving informations. It's been 1 month since last news came up and we don't know how much longer we have to wait. First they said 2017 into 2018 and then they said 2018, so i thought it will be early 2018 because next episode was nearly ready. I know it's still early of 2018, but i'm little bit of impatient because i really loved this game and i want to play it during winter, also before my collage's next term beginning. I understand what you guys saying but i don't really think there will be much difference on story mode and i don't think they're changing it. Even if they're, i think 6 month is more than enough.

Don't be mad at me everyone, I just really missed playing Wintermute and waiting this long upsets me, without knowing how longer i have to wait. I hope it will be released soon

[Fuarian]

7 hours ago, selfless said:

LOL.  See you next year...

Bye! 

[Fuarian]

6 hours ago, Mixxut said:

I don't think they are changing how the story mode works, they are just taking their time to make episode 3.

They are revisiting some existing systems and introducing new ones (probably nothing too huge) and re-furbishing the last 2 episodes for release of Episode 3.

[Mixxut]

9 hours ago, Le Petit Prince said:

 

Don't be mad at me everyone, I just really missed playing Wintermute and waiting this long upsets me, without knowing how longer i have to wait. I hope it will be released soon

We all do. I'm playing my second playtrough of Wintermute right now trying to collect every supply box etc. 

Also you should try survival mode! That is really the mode where this game shines!

[Jolan]

hee! you should talk to the kickstarter backers.   I'm pretty certain they will give us a bit of notice, but because of that, I'm thinking that we're not going to see anything in the first quarter, probably not in the first part of the second quarter either.

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Le Petit Prince

No, the game has not been abandoned. Unfortunately, you usually won't hear anything from Hinterlands until there is something big to announce. They tend not to do incremental updates.  

You can get hints of what is being worked on if you follow @Raphael van Lierop's twitter feed. He'll sometimes post mini updates or screenshots. 

[ATC Channel]

Yes survival is fun. But what are you surviving for

These games have no reason to play them without some context or story. So you survived for 1000 days then what. Nothing that's what, boring. Go play fortnite just as pointless. 

 

[Patrick Carlson]

No, Episode Three isn't canceled! We're working on it right now, and will continue with the remaining Episodes until Wintermute is finished. 

[Nettie]

I have been waiting very patiently as well for episode three. First it was late 2017 or early 2018. Now middle of 2018...I mean I have no choice but to wait but it is quite disappointing and now the episodes 1 and 2 are bugged along with survival mode so i cant play at all  ( cant use cook or melt option).. so it def bums me out to say the least.

[Mixxut]

4 minutes ago, Nettie said:

 the episodes 1 and 2 are bugged along with survival mode so i cant play at all  ( cant use cook or melt option).. so it def bums me out to say the least.

They changed the cooking and melting mechanic, you should check it out:  

 

[ltnshinysides]

I believe somewhere it was stated that for episode 3 and beyond they wanted to move away from having so many "Fetch" quest that mostly dominated the first two episodes. I didn't even notice this was a trend until half way through episode 2. I did not find it annoying as it allowed a good pace for learning but I think everyone is ready for the next episode to really expand on the experience that The Long Dark is. I'm getting a little impatient as well mostly because I am rationing of what little I have left  but I also heard they are going to update the two previous episodes which really shows they are interested in creating something great as a whole. Unlike ARK who was already releasing pay for expansions before the base game was even completed. ARK was a good time but they hit what was acceptable and just kept forging ahead to cash their checks. Hinterland is legit, It would be nice though, when they get everything updated and released if they could have a rough timeline moving forward.  I'm a huge fan of The Long Dark and have to say hang in there, it will be worth it.

[EricTheGreat12]

Episode 3 is definitely not cancelled: we can look forward to having the Episode released within the next year or so.

 

It's not a good thing to be proud of however: a year has passed since the original Wintermute released, and yet we have had no significant update on Story Mode. Yes, the wait will be worth it once we can play a brand new Episode 1, 2 & 3, but a year with only 2 survival mode updates feels too long for Story Mode progress. It does not make sense that re-doing two Episodes, when the core structure is already there, has taken a year to accomplish. They are taking their time, so of course it's up to them, but they should consider that some people have been waiting 4 years for Story Mode to happen.

 

Episode 3 is coming, and when it will come it will be fantastic, but it's taking them a darn long time to do it.

[ltnshinysides]

Thats fair, Ive only been on the The Long Dark train for a year or year and a half. Props to those who have been waiting since the beggining. Hopefully there will be a good production schedule moving forward.

[Carbon]

 The initial release of episodes 1 and 2 were very revelatory for the team. I think they saw things a bit differently after release and understood that some things would need adjusting or tweaking.

 Each day that passes means the next episode will be that much better, that much more refined and polished and that much more enjoyable. I hope that these types of threads don't start showing up here often: no matter how well-intended or innocent they may be, they can't help but seem to lack a certain measure of empathy. I'm so happy that when looking through the forums, I see so much excitement not about what we might have, but about what we do.

 No offense to the OP at all with those last comments. I sometimes drop in on the Steam forums and while they are reasonably well-behaved by Steam standards, they can't touch this place in terms of civility and gratefulness.

[stratvox]

I'll say something about all that. I used to online play all the time; for reference, my Kali serial was under one thousand (somewhere around 850 IIRC). I don't really do that any more, because of the toxicity. This community is not like that, and that's a large part of the reason I'm still here. If it was more typical, I'm not saying I wouldn't play the game, but I certainly wouldn't hang out here in the way I've been doing. It's been a refreshing change from what's gone down over the last twenty years in online gaming.

When I saw the key dev diary that talked about this (Feb?) I realised it was a long time coming, and to a large extent that was because of the ambition of how they were going to be changing things, like NPC presence and interaction (more like HL2 instead of cinematic for certain aspects), the new conversation system with the floating words that need selecting (which looks extremely cool to my eye as a way of helping guide conversation without mandating sequence), and of course player presence in a way that hasn't existed before, which will mean things like the clothing on our hands will change depending on what we're wearing, and overall will be an absolute requirement for some kind of multiplayer descendant or DLC of TLD. 

I also have been working in software houses for most of the last twenty years. I have a reasonable handle on how long it takes to do things. They're not a large team, and they're trying to do good work. From what I've seen overall, very good work. That means it'll take time.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd guess that their internal goal is to drop the whole thing in November along with a marketing push. If it were to end up being smoking hot, it'll do really really well in their local market (i.e. Canada) with that timing and content. My eighty year old mom has become interested in the game and asked me about it (I heard there's a beautiful Canadian video game out... have you heard about it? Uh.... yeah. <PrtScn PrtScn> Here, have some screenshots ). In the meantime, I've played it so much I'm down into the $0.025/hr range for this game. That's really excellent entertainment value. A meteor could hit the studio tomorrow and I will have totally gotten my money's worth; the rest is really just gravy.

Not that I want a meteor to hit the studio tomorrow, that'd really suck.

[Admin]

On 2018-06-14 at 6:02 PM, Patrick Carlson said:

No, Episode Three isn't canceled! We're working on it right now, and will continue with the remaining Episodes until Wintermute is finished. 

Given that @Patrick Carlson answered the question we're going to close the thread. Be patient, we're working on it.

We'll give you more information when we're ready.