- Tested on PC
- Test configuration: RTX 4090 + i9-9900K
- Time to complete the four episodes available in History mode: about 24 hours
Developed and self-published by the Hinterland Studios Canadiens, The Long Dark is a survival game to the first person who puts us in the crampons of Will Mackenzie, a bush pilot lost in the Canadian North following a geomagnetic storm. Born of a Kickstarter funded in 2013, the title recently benefited from a paid update of its Survival mode, entitled Tales from the Far Territory. This glance focuses on the four currently available episodes of History mode, named Wintermute, whose release from the last act is scheduled for the end of 2023.
-60 with the winds, it's frantic in sacrament
« Life always finds a way », Philosopher Ian Malcolm in 1993. « Water always finds a way », deplored the plumber in 2015, without diverting the gaze from the pierced bowl of my toilet. The cold, too, is no exception.
It is enough to rethink the wave of winter temperatures that hit Texas in 2021 to convince itself. Hundreds of refrigerated bodies were then found. These unfortunate people died in their cars, even in their beds, which were still embossed. Within a few hours, their houses and vehicles had become coffins. Inexorably, implacably, the cold simmers everywhere.
Without a nearby source of heat, it's hypothermia. The first symptoms are not very bad: bluish extremities, numbness and chills. A shelter, a chamomile and we don't talk about it anymore. Imagine now lost in the wild, by -50°C, at the northern end of the province of Quebec.
In the absence of a refuge where to run warm your old bones, you begin to feel difficulty talking. Confounding, you notice that your breathing is accelerating, in conjunction with your heart rate. « A fire, now, quick »Think about it. On the horizon, always the same ice plain, swept by a biting wind that devours you phalanges.
You continue to walk for long minutes in the hope of finding help, when suddenly a heat wave invades you. Exhausted, you fall on your knees, your eyes lost in the distance. You burn from the inside, to the point of removing your clothes. Your breath slows down, so does your heart. You're dead.
This fight against the cold, you will live it every second in The Long Dark. Whether you're lost in the blizzard or exploring an abandoned power station, this obsession to warm up will never leave you. This is a full gameplay element. Thus, it is the player's responsibility to keep his body temperature at a sufficiently high level. You'll never stop thinking about it. As in any game of survival that respects itself, hunger, thirst and fatigue are also factors to watch.
I love you at the bottom when you're gone.
The pace of The Long Dark is slow, even deliciously tedious. I remember this cold afternoon when my character dragged a half-carcase of deer for miles, and finally got attacked by wolves just steps away from his destination. I was forced to give up my pen.
Each action requires a calculation. Break a branch to make a little wood? Five minutes. Throw a curtain to convert it into a bandage? Ten minutes. Melt and boil snow to avoid getting dysentery and covering your beautiful camp with diarrhea? Fifty minutes. You see the picture. I tremble by remembering that tragic night when I had chosen to sleep for eight hours in a barn, after being bitten by a bear. My good old Mackenzie then emptied his blood in his sleeping bag, little surviving angel gone too soon...
Everything deserves in The Long Dark. Expect so to shout a loud « Hurrah! » to the discovery of a box of pâtée for outdated dog, found in extremis in the middle of the night in the glimmer of your final match, as you unravel an abandoned cabin with an empty belly. After spending a morning by -40°C trying to knock rabbits with stones, there is no small victory.
A polar bear on the bus
If the story of History mode, named Wintermute, is pleasantly followed, it mainly serves as a more defined frame for players intimidated by the character « infinite » Survival mode, which will inevitably result in the death of your avatar. However, the screenwriters of Hinterland Studio managed to shape a rather touching series, despite some pitfalls, at the crossroads of the influences of the television series. Lost – for the fantastic and mysterious side of geomagnetic phenomena related to the northern lights – and works by Jack London, such as The Call of the Wild, or To Build a Fire.
Somehow, The Long Dark is in the image of the Canadian winter: harsh and austere, of course, but exhilarating. Crossing the immense uninhabited regions of the game means being confronted with the poetic brutality of the environment and with oneself. When things go wrong, you quickly find yourself having to meet pressing needs in an emergency, otherwise you will die. When everything goes well, we enjoy a few moments of respite at the corner of the fire, sheltered in a cave, while the blizzard rages outside. Endless, it is all these small victories against nature that make The Long Dark an unforgettable experience.
He always looked at this one!