The Long Dark: Preview

The word “survival” in the game community is so firmly associated with the concept of “Horror” that even the assurances of developers are sometimes divided about the reinforced concrete confidence of players and critics that another horror is approaching them.

So it happened with The Long Dark -A curious project from the new indie studio Hinterland. The authors had already had to reject the “accusations” several times in an attempt to create a swimming player. The creators of fun themselves claim that they intend to release the “survival simulator”-a genre innovation or at least something close to these loud words.

The houses on the hill seem even cozy. Especially a traveler who has stuading many kilometers through a snowy forest.

To Canada – and no pampas

We just called here Hinterland Indie-studio. Typically, such a phrase involves again a little not what we are dealing with in the case of these specific developers. In the team working on The Long Dark, people come in who managed to stick up more than one AAA-class game. In particular, the ideological inspirer and founding father Hinterland Rafael Van Lirop (Raphael Van Lierop) decided to follow the independent path after the end of work on Warhammer 40.000: Space Marine in the composition RELIC. What is there “independently” – on the real road of downshifting, here’s how! In the process of creation The Long Dark This amazing person took his whole family in an armful and went to a permanent place of residence in a remote corner of Canada to imbue the spirit of a wild, sometimes hostile nature, with which the main hero of the game has to fight with.

The latter, apparently, will hide behind the scenes – we will find the first -person view and a small set of biographical data, not so important in the current situation. In any case, our future character has a name and profession: his name is William Mackenzie, a specialty is a pilot, a feature is fatal bad luck. It was necessary for this glorious guy to be in the air just when the whole system of space satellites was covered and all electronics on the planet refused! Mackenzie makes a very emergency landing somewhere in the middle of a cold, snowy forest. Now he is forced to survive in adverse conditions, and survive in the old fashioned way – without these Internet, phones and superpowers.

Calory counting

Judging by the first https://sistersitescasino.co.uk/casinos/rainbow-riches-casino/ gameplay video, the gameplay should be quite meditative. There will be no invasion of bloodthirsty mutants, a terrible eight-handed monster with a semi-navigated jaw will not jump out of the corner. Instead, our hero can easily pursue an ordinary wolf, which William will not be able to just fill up from a rifle. In a number of situations, salvation will be the opportunity to drive away a wild beast with the help of fire.

It seems that we will not be able to season our car here. However, it is unlikely that we generally have a car.

By the way, the fire will provide us not only by temporary protection against hostile animals, but also by the warmth, which is constantly not enough in the McCanzi body. The developers approached the case thoroughly. Survive so survive: you have to fight hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue and constantly monitor the balance of kilocalories.

Initially, the hero has a certain amount of energy that he can spend on actions. Walking «stands» calories. Standing in place also takes them away, but less. The colder, the more strength is spent on “heating” the carcass of the unlucky pilot. Our character will not be able to roam or run through the snowy forest tirelessly – he will have to look for a shelter from time to time, make a fire there and relax there.

It is necessary to share

However, it seems that the cold or the desire to fall asleep in itself, no matter how strong they are, will not become the greatest problems of the player in The Long Dark. In conditions of inevitable exhaustion of resources, such as food or matches, we will have to seriously fear meetings with other survivors. After all, these people can easily want to take away from us all the hard difficulty, at the same time killing William McKenzi as unnecessary.

At the same time, the developers promise us not just the mode “fight with everything that is moving, for the right to survive”, but several examples of a serious moral choice, which will inevitably faced the hero. The creators of the game even hint at the dependence of the fate of all mankind on our actions. So, we will have the opportunity in a certain situation to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of survival of the species or spit in appearance and save our skin.

Naturally, no moral elections and self -sacrifice would be possible if the “survival simulator” did not sit in the most strong way on a strong plot axis. So this is not only about the gigantic “sandbox” for a proudly cutting survivor – although there is also such a regime – but also about a full -fledged scenario that we have to meet. The game will be divided into episodes and mission. In some mysterious way, the creators promise to combine such a structure with freedom of action in the spirit Fallout 3.

The trees on the horizon look either stunted, or just plucked. On the eve of the New Year, they were extinguished on branches, not otherwise!

Post -apocalyptic beauties

By the way, it is no coincidence that we spoke about the post -serving RPG. The developers themselves admit that they were partly inspired by the creation Bethesda. They want to not just tell us the story of the struggle of man and wild nature: it is assumed that The Long Dark will become a story about a kind of “quiet apocalypse” and about the post -apocalyptic existence of man in the middle of a hostile, but beautiful, majestic world.

Indeed, it is enough to look at the first screenshots and a gameplay trailer to understand: these forests, fields and roads, covered with snow and lit by bright rainbow radiance in the sky, will seem not only unsafe and cold, but also amazingly beautiful in their eternal tranquility. True, real beauty, without stretching and the need to think up something independently, we can only see when some textures will be added to the compositional verification of each landscape. Now they are clearly not enough.

But the idea of ​​the dependence of what is happening on the time of day, albeit not new, is very captivated in the context of the declared genre characteristics. In the afternoon, the ambient temperature rises slightly, visibility improves, and our brave researcher feels more vigorous. Other survivors, which, as we recall, are far from always friendly, are also cheerful. At night it becomes colder, surviving people hide on scattered buildings and other caches, but animals go hunting.

The sky is the main element of all these screenshots. It is equally fascinating and attracts the eye at night, day, at dawn, at dusk.

The Long Dark Already raised the required amount of 200 thousand Canadian dollars on Kickstarter – even more, in fact. So now we can only wait for the last quarter of 2014, when this, no doubt, can be “felt” by an unusual project. If the authors manage to perform at least half of the promised, the result will turn out at least very original.