Notes from the Valley - Impressions as I Play Episode 3...

[Nervous Pete]

[Spoilers if you've not completed Chapter One...]

I came home from work eager to play, and to my muttering frustration upon browsing my emails at home discovered I had to get some photo-editing done ahead of schedule for a client. That side-job might be good for the odd holiday, but it's not always terribly convenient. Still, I'd waited patiently a tidy period for Episode 3, I could wait a couple more hours. 

I've now played around half an hour or so of Episode 3, having just reached Chapter Two in the community centre and man oh man, was the wait worth it. When the Redux came about for Episodes 1 & 2 I was struck at how much better the story flowed and the atmosphere maintained itself with the new animations, better script, voice acting and more human characterisation. Although there were still the tutorial aspects (albeit more cleverly disguised) I felt much more wrapped up in the story. 

It's kind of hard to put my finger on it... but there's something subtly and magically different about Episode 3 from what I've experienced so far. I had great fun as Will Mackenzie and I loved the exploration, the mystery, the magical realism of the bear. But I felt as if it were very much my adventure, that I was striding through a game solving problems for characters who would 'unlock' the next stage of the adventure for me. With the accomplished second-pass of Redux they became problems I really wanted to solve, people I genuinely wanted to help, and a land with it's own story I was very keen on figuring out.  Everything felt more human, but still a game - and the strange and wonderful 'quiet apocalypse' concept behind The Long Dark didn't shine through quite enough for me.

In Episode 3, so far, I feel I'm living a great work of fiction. It feels real to me, because everything I've done so far is everything I would have done in that situation and everything I've seen and heard felt raw and immediate. Waking up in that cosy kitchen. The woman, Molly, immediately reminding me of a great Francis McDormand character-study... home-spun warmth and cutting-through-the-bullshit, shrewd, folksy... but something brittle... perhaps dangerous if cornered. She's sizing up the situation and within minutes - organically - she smoothly addresses one of the great issues of Episode 1. Why did Astrid leave Will behind? Astrid's answer is genuine but stumbling and lacking conviction, and Molly homes in on the guilt. Immediately we know that Astrid is not a perfect person... in fact, beneath her brusque competence, there's uncertainty, and perhaps even a lack of empathy. She does the right thing, sure, but there's a degree of coldness there. I get the feeling that like a fair few doctors out there Astrid's humanity has become spread too thin. And yet I like her, I enjoy being her. There's a vulnerability, she's human.

Out of the house and into the howling white to find Molly. Characters you meet in Episode 3 really are no longer static points of interest but feel like roaming people with their own agency. I suspect we were all a little harsh on the first iteration of Wintermute as the characters felt a little too much like static quest dispensers. The Redux vastly improved on this, but still it was hard to imagine them leaving the place and going about their lives when we'd moved on. As I walk through Valley of Pleasant over the bridge, towards the crossroads, I feel like Molly is already stepping out of her house to chop more wood for the fire, or to better hide her secrets.  And the man in the community hall, I can't help but wonder is he suffering from mild shock...? There's something very fragile about him... and yet he's doing the best he can. He's taken charge. But like Molly he's been trapped inside too long - trapped inside the valley, trapped inside the four walls with a storm raging outside. What are their breaking points? 

The stalled cars, the bodies, the talk of the crash. This feels like a world that's dramatically opened up to me. Pleasant Valley feels like a place. The people feel like people. And we get the first thrilling intimations of a major disaster at hand. 

Like a good book I can't wait for the next chapter, but I also don't want to rush myself. I'm going to be taking this slow. When I walked into the community hall I looked at the huddled folk on the floor first to see if one of them was Will. As I walked the fields, wolves howling in the distance, I felt so jittery - a city girl unused to the wild gone strange and one who was seriously out of her depth. I hope this episode, and subsequent ones, keep to this standard of storytelling because for me it blows a lot of other games clear out of the water. 

So far I feel both yourself and your team can all feel very proud of yourselves. This is another leap forward for Hinterland Studios, and the Long Dark.

Now if only I could stop jumping a mile at every wolf bark. 

...

P.S: I felt kind of good figuring out why the phones were still working too. Such a thing happened before, didn't it? A long time ago, with telegraph wires.