twisty on 21/8/2020 at 16:33
I was looking forward to playing the 4th episode but unfortunately it looks like it won't be coming until 2021: (
https://www.thelongdark.com/news/dev-diary-august-2020/)
Not really sure how effective their episodic model is really, considering that their game has clocked up over 6 years so far. While I love their survival mode and challenges (I've finished them now though), I'm disappointed at how long it's taken then to wrap up story mode.
PigLick on 21/8/2020 at 16:38
the game was good only until they introduced story mode
Anarchic Fox on 21/8/2020 at 20:53
Quote Posted by twisty
Not really sure how effective their episodic model is really, considering that their game has clocked up over 6 years so far.
What? Looking at your own words, their episodic business model is doing great. Few studios can support themselves on only one game.
Quote Posted by PigLick
the game was good only until they introduced story mode
Did they remove the other mode?
PigLick on 22/8/2020 at 03:34
No, but they totally redid the interface so that it was almost a different game to the one I had become very invested in. I just lost interest almost immediately and have never revisited it.
I did play some of the first episode and didnt like it at all. The original survival mode had just enough hints at story for my imagination to fill the gaps, thats what I enjoyed about it. Its probably still a great game but meh.
Anarchic Fox on 22/8/2020 at 07:39
Oh, that makes sense. It sucks when you invest time into learning an interface, only for it to be replaced without the option to revert. Worse yet, the developers expect you to be excited about having to relearn their program.
twisty on 23/8/2020 at 12:21
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
What? Looking at your own words, their episodic business model is doing great. Few studios can support themselves on only one game.
Fair enough, from an economic standpoint, they've done well to keep growing their business from a single product over such a long time. Without seeing their sales figures, it's just guess work to determine if their ongoing success is driven by their DLC or base game sales. Based on the Global achievement stats in Steam at least, completion rates of episodic milestones get woefully lower further into the series, which either says that less people are buying the DLC and/or finishing them.
That aside, as far as "effectiveness" goes, I was thinking more about this from the player's experience rather than TLD's commercial success. I remember when Valve started releasing episodic content for HL2, they positioned it as an experimental approach for releasing content. As we know, even with their deep pockets and wealth of development experience, they were unable to keep to their promised release schedule and abandoned this model after a couple of episodes. The main problem with this model is that it is meant to provide smaller, more frequent updates as an alternative to the big bang approach of sequels, but there are probably not many developers that have been able to pull this off (I can't think of any, off the top of my head). When we start seeing delays of years between episodes than the narrative tends to lose its impact.
Quote Posted by PigLick
No, but they totally redid the interface so that it was almost a different game to the one I had become very invested in. I just lost interest almost immediately and have never revisited it.
I did play some of the first episode and didnt like it at all. The original survival mode had just enough hints at story for my imagination to fill the gaps, thats what I enjoyed about it. Its probably still a great game but meh.
I wasn't too keen on the interface change either at first but it's so long ago now that I can't even remember it. The new version works really well though once you get used to it.
As far as episode 1 is concerned, they remade it, with a range of improvements such as removing some of the linear constraints. I really enjoyed the episodes they've released so far, apart from a few weird design choices such as the bear cave.
The survival sandbox had continued to improve as well.
henke on 23/8/2020 at 13:03
I like playing the latest TLD episode around winter, it's a shame they can't regularly release an episode every year.
Quote Posted by twisty
The main problem with this model is that it is meant to provide smaller, more frequent updates as an alternative to the big bang approach of sequels, but there are probably not many developers that have been able to pull this off (I can't think of any, off the top of my head).
Hitman, Life is Strange, all the Telltale games. Season pass expansions are a form of this as well, I'm eagerly awaiting the next "episodes" of Control and Snowrunner. And of course there's also "Seasons" in F2P/multiplayer games like Fortnite and Warframe, which I
guess could be called episodic content (I don't have any experience with these).
twisty on 23/8/2020 at 13:22
I was thinking of Hitman, but wasn't really sure if their missions are really episodes as such, but I guess it's close enough. Telltale certainly started off that way, particularly with Sam & Max, but their TWD games were often reused so far apart that they felt more like sequels than episodes.
On a related note, I was happy to hear that further Telltale employees moved over to Hinterland post the collapse of the former in 2018. I hope it's paying off them and their new masters.
henke on 16/11/2023 at 19:36
With episode 5 of Wintermute still eluding us, I fired up survival mode again for the first time since... well, since the start of this thread. After 3 botched attempts on Hard difficulty, I managed to get a foothold in Medium difficulty. I've now survived for 12 days or so. I've bundled up much so I rarely feel the cold. Got like 40 bullets for the revolver. Have read a buncha books. Wandering from region to region and revisiting old places. And getting bored. I can make my own fun for a while, but once I'm as "leveled up" as well as I am right now, I have a hard time finding something to do.
Still love the ambiance of this game. The sights and sounds of it feel nostalgic at this point. :)
