{"id":1408612,"date":"2025-11-29T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kSF8q34RCqjxe7rk3knemh"},"modified":"2025-11-29T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"the-long-darks-final-episode-has-been-pushed-back-yet-again-but-at-least-it-has-an-actual-release-date-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-long-darks-final-episode-has-been-pushed-back-yet-again-but-at-least-it-has-an-actual-release-date-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Dark’s final episode has been pushed back yet again, but at least it has an actual release date now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The end of The Long Dark<\/a> is nigh. After more than ten years in development and seven years working on its controversial story mode, Wintermute<\/a>, the climactic episode is in the final stages of production. However, those stages aren’t quite as final as developer Hinterland Studio would like, so they’ve announced the episode won’t arrive until next year.<\/p>\n

“While the majority of the episode is now finished, there was just no way for us to wrap up the remaining cinematic work, the soundtrack, or complete the last bit of mission polish in time for the end of this year as we had originally planned,” Hinterland studios explained in a Steam post<\/a>. “So we’re taking an extra couple of months to finish that work, then to optimize, fix the bugs, and get it ready for console certification.”<\/p>\n

No doubt this will come as a disappointment to fans of the survival game, not least because Hinterland has previously said it would release in both 2024<\/a> and<\/em> <\/em>2025<\/a>. That said, as Hinterland explained in April, “once it’s done, we can never go back.” So I can understand the studio’s desire to get it right.<\/p>\n

And at least Hinterland has committed to a specific date, namely March 31. This was revealed in a new trailer giving us a glimpse of Wintermute’s finale. The video mainly comprises panning and tracking shots through a bunch of different environments, like a rocky river, a mine with cart tracks running through it, and a control station with a satellite dish visible through the window. They are nice environments, though, and are a few cryptic narrative nuggets dropped in, such as an ominous suggestion that the aurora is “changing”.<\/p>\n

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