8/2/2019 The Long Dark Paradise Meadows Farm
The Long Darkâs [official site] story mode, Wintermute, is finally with us. Well, the first two fifths are, of what developers Hinterland are calling the first season. Due to review code only showing up yesterday, Iâve been able to complete the first (âDo Not Go Gentleâ) of the two eps before launch, so below am reviewing that episode on its own. Iâll be back with more details about episode two (âLuminance Fugueâ), very soon.
Itâs been three years to the month since I first played The Long Dark. Back then in 2014, I wrote about how the story mode was due by the end of that year. Coming back to it a short while later I chronicled my uncanny ability to be eaten by a wolf. The game grew much bigger over the next six months, but no story mode appeared. In February 2015 I went back, and concluded, âOnce a story mode appears, goodness, this could be The One.â
But instead of a story, the game just kept growing larger. Come September 2015 I went back yet again, and yet again concluded that the story mode was what I was âachingly waiting forâ. That December it received a trailer, and hope returned! Its first part of a first season would arrive in spring 2016. Come that spring, no. Delayed to become bigger, more elaborate.
Updates kept coming, Adam took over from me in the Being In Love With The Long Dark duty, by the beginning of this year creating his own stories within. And now, some three years later, itâs here. Well, the first two of five episodes are, far longer than previously promised. Goodness me, thatâs a lot of build up for it to deal with.
Of course, a story mode in a sandbox survival game has two roles. It needs to both, you know, tell a story, but at the same time, introduce players to the concepts of the game to hopefully guide them through to the larger, more open sandbox that lies in wait after their scripted tales are over. And while both are necessary, getting that balance right is essential â you donât want a multiple-hour tutorial, not after the gameâs been available for three years. But you also want to be true to the survival challenge of an incredibly difficult game.
As the story opens, it can afford to be slightly more generous than its sandbox mode ever would be. You have, as ever, crashed your plane into the snowy wilderness of Canada, although this time matters of how, or why, are going to be more important. But first, live. The game introduces the most important elements: heat, health, water and food. In that order. Youâre given tasks to complete and an incredibly small play area, on a frozen plateau sticking from a cliff, in which to complete them. Search through the debris for first aid equipment, forage for wood (which, for those who played the game in 2015, now means just picking it up or breaking it down, rather than a daft menu choice), start a fire, bandage your wounds, sleep. The next day is about water. The day after that about food. Small, sensible tasks, just keeping yourself on the brink of alive.
It hammers home those key concepts in a way thatâs both realistic to the setting, and ensures a calm, moderate start while still demonstrating the brutal difficulty. Although itâs nothing yet, because wolves canât get you here.
As the first lengthy episode progresses (itâll keep you busy for a good six hours), youâre funnelled forward by a series of tasks, all centered around trying to find your missing companion. Flashbacks begin to fill in the background to your accident, and who it was you were with when you crashed. There are signs of your companion having travelled ahead, and you follow these while still carefully learning the ropes of the game.
This is a fairly relentless and tough jaunt, although the game is definitely much more generous with items than youâd usually expect, and â thank goodness â food is more sensibly balanced than in the sandboxâs tougher modes. It is slow to kill you through exhaustion, although it will if you wander too far, too dangerously. It is not, however, slow to kill you with wolves, and as ever the peculiar magnetic storm that hit this region (and indeed your plane) has sent the usually skittish beasts into a more deadly and ferocious frame of mind. They are always best avoided, although you can expect to frantically patch yourself up with crafted first aid items after at least a few attacks over the episode.
Things eventually settle a little after you find a small town, and indeed a static source of quests. With a home base, your play style shifts significantly, as the emphasis switches from scrabbling to find enough of anything, to being frustrated by the 30kg weight limit that makes you pick and choose between all the items youâve scavenged that feel absolutely essential. You pick your way through the recent history of this snowy village, and through the former citizensâ drawers, combining both survival and story.
Itâs this combination that is The Long Dark story modeâs biggest strength and weakness. The world the game has occupied for so long has always felt like the ghost of a story hangs around it, all these places so recently abandoned, all these lives so recently lived, and having it be filled in can be a pleasure. But rather unfortunately, the story theyâve decided to tell is⦠well itâs really boring.
Iâve done my best to avoid giving anything away, since not knowing a thing is pretty much the point from the outset. So Iâm not confirming either whether this is a game about being the only survivor in an abandoned region, or if itâs a place where others remain and can be engaged with. Clearly not establishing either makes it trickier to critique in a meaningful way, so bear with me. The issue is, the nature of how it does choose to give out quests, and the results of completing them, are just so bizarrely bland. What could have been unfolding tales of either recently departed, or only just remaining, citizens that explore their emotional and relational reactions to the cataclysm thatâs taken place, is instead a faintly mystic snorefest of fetch quests. The stories I ended up accidentally creating for myself were always better than the ones on offer from the script.
Which is, I suppose, also the saving grace. Because that time I was making my way back from the farm in a horrendous snow storm, having retrieved the safety deposit key for the abandoned bank, and somehow found myself entirely off course and barely alive a good mile from where Iâd been intending to walk â that is the moment that most sticks in my mind. I was certain I was following the road, but the conditions had become so severe I couldnât be sure, and Iâd been turned a good ninety degrees from my intended direction. I was somehow back at the church, my energy so low, and my burden too heavy. I had so much food and water with me, and none of it was a bit of good when I was so damned cold and tired. And then I heard the howl.
Diving into a nearby car, the wolf ran up to the door and growled outside, while I regathered myself and plotted for how to reach the town again. I could run back up to the church, attempt to warm up in there, then try again, but it felt like backtracking, and the storm wasnât easing. So instead I made the decision to just pelt. To run, exhausting myself even further, but if I could only make it to the bank I could warm up, get rest. I opened the door, threw a lit torch at the wolf to temporarily scare it, and sprinted to the bridge. And then staggered, wearily, dizzily, the distance longer than Iâd remembered, and then finally collapsed against the bank door and dove in.
Amazing moments! Moments of course already available in the sandbox. But moments that are undeniably made more meaningful when I was always doing that run, having that experience, because I was trying to get that key.
And that, appropriately enough, is the key. What The Long Dark has always lacked up until now is motivation. Less so admittedly in the last year since they added challenges, but even so, it was hard to answer satisfactorily why you were surviving. In similar games like The Forest there was the notion of essentially becoming self-sufficient. In Stranded Deep it was about infinite exploration. But The Long Dark had a finite location and the utter inevitability of death. So giving you a reason, a purpose in getting from A to B, definitely invests a lot. I come away from episode one just wishing it had been a better purpose, a more interesting motivation.
The acting is great, your character sounding spookily like George Clooney, as he laconically and sincerely gruffs his way through the tale. Itâs a proper shame, then, that at moments the dialogue drops from audio to text, mid-way through a scene. But by the end, by this episodeâs revelation, my reaction was, âSure, okay,â rather than anything more involved. It tries for a Walking Dead-style emotional beat, and fairly colossally misses.
However, the result is something that feels like the game I wish The Walking Dead could have been â a free-form, free-roaming tale of brutal survival, but with a story to experience too. The two conflict as you play, knowing that the game has deliberately supplied you with what you need to follow its threads, but then also let you wander off into the wilderness at your own discretion. And it handles this well, letting you hunt and forage to scrape by when stepping off the path. With a better, more involving path, this could have been really something. As it is, itâs the glorious The Long Dark with a reason for surviving, and that definitely proves enough.
The Long Dark is available now for £26.99 via Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux, costing
Learn where you can find all of the Deposit Box Keys and Supply Cache in The Long Dark Story Mode.
If youâve been playing through The Long Dark Story Mode, you may find yourself looking for all of the Deposit Box Keys and Supply Cache locations. The reason being that in order to uncover The Long Dark Story Modeâs many secrets, youâll need to do one of two things. Either earn the trust of Grey Mother by offering her rabbit skins, bandages, and cloth, or by finding hidden Supply Caches.
There are several Supply Caches and Deposit Box Keys hidden throughout Milton, and if you donât know where to look, you can find yourself wandering aimlessly through the map. To help make your search a bit more cohesive, weâve put together a guide on all Deposit Box Keys and Supply Cache locations in The Long Dark Story Mode.
The Long Dark Story Mode - All Deposit Box Key Locations
Deposit Box Key #7
The #7 Deposit Box Key in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found in the town of Milton near a blue car parked beside the bankerâs house. Once you find the blue car, stand bit it and look across the road. There, youâll see a small house.
Head inside and look under the bed for a plastic container. The #7 Deposit Box Key will be inside this plastic container. Using this Deposit Box Key, you can head into the Bank of Milton and open the #7 Deposit Box. Inside, youâll find a bundle of cash and a flare shell for your Distress Pistol.
Deposit Box Key #13
The #13 Deposit Box Key in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found hidden inside a backpack attached to a corpse. This corpse is located on the bank of a frozen river that flows under the smaller wooden bridge at the farm.
As you investigate the area, youâll come across the corpse and the backpack. Upon searching the corpse, youâll find the #13 Deposit Box Key and some supplies. Using this Deposit Box Key, you can head to the Bank of Milton and open the #13 Deposit Box. Inside, youâll find a ragged balaclava, a book, a pair of ragged ski gloves, and a stack of papers.
Deposit Box Key #15
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The #15 Deposit Box Key in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found hidden inside an urn placed atop a fireplace within the Paradise Meadows Farm. You can find the Paradise Meadows Farm by heading towards the western part of Milton.
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Once you locate the earn, youâll find the #15 Deposit Box Key. Using this Deposit Box Key, you can head to the Bank of Milton and open the #15 Deposit Box. Inside, youâll find an item stolen from Grey Mother as part of a quest she assigns to you. As such, youâll need to speak to Grey Mother first in order to utilize the #15 Deposit Box Key.
Deposit Box Key #20
The #20 Deposit Box Key in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found at the gas station inside a blue pickup truck. If you open the passenger side door to the pickup truck and sit in the passengerâs seat, youâll spot the #20 Deposit Box Key on the floor.
Using this Deposit Box Key, you can head to the Bank of Milton and open the #20 Deposit Box. Inside, youâll find a magnifying lens and a bundle of cash.
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The Long Dark Story Mode - All Supply Cache Locations
Cache #1
The first Supply Cache in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found in St. Christopherâs church right before you enter the town of Milton. Behind the church, thereâs a fallen tree.
Head towards the tree and youâll see the Supply Cache on the ground. Inside the first Supply Cache, youâll find a small bottle of lantern fuel, an Emergency Stim, a basic sewing kit, a piece of cloth, and an MRE.
Cache #2
The second Supply Cache in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found as you make your way towards the Tower. However, instead of going straight for the Tower, youâll want to turn left and head down the path into the dark cave nearby.
At the very back of the cave youâll spot a pile of rocks and in them, the second Supply Cache. Inside the second Supply Cache youâll find a pack of MRE, water purifications pills, a wool ear wrap, and a flare.
Cache #3
The third Supply Cache in The Long Dark Story Mode can be found inside a house belonging to The Millers. This is the last house in Milton, and is extremely destroyed and disheveled. If you head behind the house, youâll spot the third Supply Cache on the ground. Inside the third Supply Cache, youâll find antibiotics, antiseptic, an energy bar, and painkillers.
There you have it, the locations of all Deposit Box Keys and Supply Caches in The Long Dark Story Mode. Which do you prefer? Going directly to the Deposit Box Keys and Supply Caches, or earning Grey Motherâs trust? Let us know the strategy you went with down in the comments below!
By reading through this guide, you should now know the locations of all Deposit Box Keys and Supply Caches in The Long Dark Story Mode.
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