Hinterland released the next Tales From the Far Territory for The Long Dark earlier this week, this one called Last Horizon, and I’ve been looking forward to playing it. This release included the next tale, building off of Signal Void, where we found out about some kind of experiment going on on Great Bear Island; Buried Echoes revealed the machine built by Rudiger as part of those experiments. The story is creepy and haunting, and I can’t wait to learn more.
Along with the Tale we have a new map to explore: the Sundered Pass, which Hinterland described as their most vertical map yet. Apparently, there’s a lot of climbing to be done here, so I managed to bring a bunch of coffee and energy drinks. I’m exploring it first on my Voyageur save, because I want to focus on exploration and figuring things out before I try to survive on the most brutal gameplay settings. Not gonna risk my Interloper save on a map I’ve never seen before.
I took care to not learn much about the map or the story before I dived in; I avoided reading Reddit and the couple of TLD Discord servers I’m in, unlike Forsaken Airfield, the first new DLC map. And hoo-boy did I get lost just trying to find this map. But that’s all on me; I was looking in the wrong place. I paced the whole length of the Far Range Branch line, thinking that I would find the entrance point for the new map there, before I opened up the in-game world map and saw that Sundered Pass was between the airfield and the Zone of Contamination.
By the time I found the cave system that would connect me to the new region, I’d already spent more than a couple of hours wandering around. Which is good. I’ll never get another chance to find this area for the first time. And the caves were gorgeous; huge ice waterfalls, green-white in the darkness, howling winds cutting through the rocky crevices, crawling along ledges with sheer black drop-offs below, and the bright line of sky above. They do an amazing job of designing these spaces; the art style is one of the reasons I play this game.
Some of the game mechanics they’ve added I don’t intend to use. I’m still learning Interloper, the previous most difficult setting, so it’ll be a long time before I try Misery mode, the new hardest. The Cheat Death system is interesting, as it goes against the permadeath default for Survival Mode that the game has had since the beginning. I wonder if Hinterland is aware that some players (I have no idea how many) back up their saves to make their own way to cheat death, and that’s why they’re adding an in-game version that still punishes the player for dying? Could be, could be.
Sadly, Hinterland pulled the new predator, the Cougar, because they saw a strong negative reaction to it. I think their implementation is clever; unlike other predators, it doesn’t exist in-game until it attacks you; prior to that it’s an increasing level of notifications, sounds, and other signs that it’s taking an interest in you and is stalking you. To my mind, it’s similar to the way the Darkwalker challenge is set up, though less supernatural.
The communities I’m in liked it, or at least didn’t actively hate it, so I did not see the pushback Hinterland saw. And it’s super weird that they pulled it when they had already given people the option to just, y’know, turn it off using the in-game settings. Anyway, can’t wait to get it added back in so I can die to a cougar several times before figuring it out or getting lucky.