Pillock

A question about the writing process of Wintermute: Did you start out with an idea for a story, and then build the game around it, or did you have the idea for a winter survival scenario game, and then come up with a story to fit? Is the story already written in its entirety, or are you adapting it to include new ideas and to fit with additional game mechanics as you go along?

Can we expect to see any addition to the Custom settings soonish? For example: enabling/disabling skill perks, adjusting movement speed, more precise loot spawn controls? And maybe a 'save settings' function?

This is turning into the Wish List subforum / suggestions thread! Is that the idea you're going for with the Mailbag feature, or is @Raphael van Lierop looking for more general, conversational questions about the game and the studio, influences, etc?

Once Episode 3 (plus 1 & 2 reworkings) is released, what's the target schedule for the getting 4 and 5 out after that, roughly? And a more conversational one, if I'm allowed: How different is the game as it is now from the one you envisioned when you first started the project? And how much change from it's current form do you think there will be, once you eventually consider The Long Dark to be 'finished'? (in terms of content and gameplay systems)

Welcome to the Hotel Campoffornia. Or Hotel Trappershomesteadfornia. Or whatever.

Brands lasted 30 in-game minutes, if I remember rightly. Right now, I can consistently pull torches out of a fire that are 40-50% condition, which I think is longer than that. Torches and brands used to give off +5 heat bonus; now, I think torches give you maybe 1 or 2%, so the brand could have that if they reintroduce it. The main point for me is that the current 'Take torch' mechanic makes it completely worthless to ever craft a torch, in terms of resource usage and time taken. It also diminishes quite sharply the value of flares, of matches, and of lanterns and fuel. It causes a fairly significant unbalancing of those aspects of the game in my view. Brands were just flat-out better: not only in terms of functionality and game balance, but they looked nicer and felt more convincing and immersive. (And by the way, I've never understood what our character is actually doing when we 'harvest' a spent torch into a stick. If a torch is a burning stick that you pull from a fire, then when the flame goes out it is... a stick! What actually happens to it during the 2 minutes of tapping-noises?)

I seem to remember something said at the time about "streamlining" or making the game "more elegant" or something. It actually made the game worse, though, reinstating a clear gameplay exploit that had been very effectively removed before. If I could change only one thing about about TLD, it would be to bring back brands.

Right, I seem to be racking these silly deaths up at the moment. This one wasn't strictly my fault, I don't think, but it was so ridiculous that I thought I'd report it. I was in the repair shed on Broken Railroad on my second night of a new run. I'd spent the previous day there repairing the clothes I'd found to an acceptable level, and planned to head out at first light. It'd started to get dark, and my final task before resting was going to be to light a good long fire to make water and a bunch of exploity-torches. I didn't have any fuel, but there were plenty of crates lying around in the shed. It was already dark, though, so I had to cheat a little: I started breaking up a crate. About half way through that process an aurora must have started, and my crate must have - unknown to me - been right next to an electrical cable. So I was instantly electrocuted and killed in the middle of my crate-breaking. One second I'm watching the progress bar, the next second I'm dead. It's only because I've been electrocuted there before that I was even able to work out what happened! Anyway, it's probably the most unlikely way that I've ever died in TLD, due to the specific combination of circumstances. I can't really imagine it happening again. Maybe it was karma for gaming the mechanics a bit?

Busy man-splaining the game to my girlfriend: "So, you see you these plants that grow by the river - you can take them for food. They don't give you many calories by themselves, but I've collected about 8 of them here so that should be enough for now. I can eat them before I sleep and recover some of my health condition." <closes inventory window to see a wolf charging towards me about 10 yards away> "Wuuuurrraaaagghhhh" Dead.

That immediately reminded me of the opening scene from "The Road"

I got maximum Trust with Grey Mother. Gave her loads of tins of dogfood and raw meat to eat, and lots of sticks to play with. She made me play fetch.

I think the Steam Store page is a bit vague on this, too. But it does also say at the end of main promo video that only Episodes 1 & 2 are released in the August launch of the game. And given that the OP claims to have been following the game for years, I don't really see how he could have missed this bit of information - unless he's been following it by not reading the Dev announcements?

In Survivor Mode, the objective is to survive. If you fail to survive, you have failed to achieve the objective and it's Game Over. That is the whole point of it. Having the option to remove permadeath from Survivor Mode would be a bit like having the option to remove the story from Wintermute.

This is pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear. I haven't played TLD at all since shortly after the full release, and it's precisely because I didn't like Story Mode at first. I didn't want to play Survivor Mode because I didn't want to spoil the new areas for when I played the story - but I didn't want to play Wintermute because, well, I didn't really find it much fun. So I ended up shelving the game altogether. These developer update posts are always very open and honest - which is great to see in itself - but more often than not they contain very interesting and exciting news on the future of the game, too. Hats off to the team.

Amen.

I think the new Cartography gameplay will make quite a difference to the Nomad Challenge, for new players. If they take advantage of it and are diligent at updating their map, they'll be able to use the 'gaps' in their map to guess at where the unvisited locations are, rather than stumbling about in a more random way to find them. This could well make the challenge more interesting in that way for them, and give more of a sense of exploration achievement. But for experienced players who know the maps already, it will never present any kind of "challenge'' at all, and will always feel like a waste of time and a chore, unless the amount of available loot is significantly reduced. Perhaps the best solution would just be to change the description, so that it's clearer about the purpose of the challenge and the level of the difficulty, so that people don't wait until they know the maps like the backs of their hands before they attempt it?

Ouch! i'm sorry, man. But take heart in the thought that each death in TLD teaches you something new: in this case, it teaches you that you should quit your job.

I really enjoyed it. Watching The Thing immediately before listening to the podcast certainly made a big difference. Perhaps I'll go and watch the Mad Max movies and then re-listen to episode 0! If you're going to reference a particular movie or book in future episodes, maybe you could let us know a little in advance so we can keep up? It'd be like a TLD book group! It's interesting to hear what has influenced the lead game designers in terms of their pop-cultural upbringing, particularly if there are nods towards those influences in the game (as there clearly is with The Thing). I found the discussion you had about the characters' backgrounds in The Thing to strike a particular chord, as this is the most obvious aspect of TLD that we are (or I am, at least) anticipating now: who is this character we are playing as and how did s/he wind up in the situation? Also this: (Spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen the movie)

Great! Now I have to watch the rest of The Thing before I listen. Will be on the lookout for TLD references.

I think it might be made more interesting by extending the time you need to spend in each place, rather than reducing it. Maybe 7 days or something? That way, you probably would use up the loot food/drink before being able to move on, and be forced to make a base in each place for a short time. Also, the ability to play it with Stalker settings would make it much more appealing to players who know where the stop-off locations are before they start. I appreciate it's designed to introduce newer players to the idea of exploring all the maps, but it doesn't tell you this in the description. I made the mistake of leaving this challenge unattempted until the point where, unknowingly, it would no longer be any fun for me - if there had been a clearer indication that you ought to play this before you are confident playing on the higher difficulties, so as to maintain the fun aspect of the challenge, I would certainly have played it earlier.

I got the Pacifist achievement from doing Nomad, by mistake! As I said, there's so much loot that you never have to actually bother killing anything, and you still have more food and water than you can carry between the locations.

If I want to vote "no" to Question 1, I can't answer Question 2 and then it won't register my vote at all. I agree that the Nomad Challenge is hilariously easy, but I don't think it's got anything to do with how long you have to stay in each location. It's just because there's too much loot, and you therefore never have to do any 'survival' tasks like fishing or hunting, or crafting. I'd like it better if you had to stay three days in each place, but that you had to spend the three days actually 'surviving', rather than just eating, drinking and passing time in bed

Does... Not... Compute Guru Meditation...

If I may say, I'm not sure I found the extended Mad Max chat terribly relevant! Discussing influences is interesting, but I don't think in this case you related it back to the game? Unless we are to infer that the criticism of it for not 'making sense' in terms of a timeline was something you intend to address in TLD. Because that is something that's come up as a criticism (of the Sandbox, at least). I don't know how often you're planning to do these, and I for one might well tune in for a regular discussion on Apocalypse in popular culture, but I think would like to hear more about the game, perhaps.

I like this one best