From the Archives: Old TLD screenshots

[Raphael van Lierop]

Hey! Trying to be more active here and share more stuff with this community that they might not be able to find in some of the other channels where TLD fans hang out.

I have a pretty massive archive of "old" TLD stuff going back to KS, Early Access, and honestly quite a bit from before (early 2013). A lot of this stuff will end up in our Art Book, once Ep5 is in the can, so that we cover the entirety of TLD and TALES development over the 10+ years (😬) of development.

Hope you enjoy these shots, from mid-2013. Those of you who backed our KS might have seen these before. You can see that the game's art style has changed a bit over the years. I'm sure you recognize Trapper's Cabin in the first shot.

[PrincessAutumn]

I love this. I started in late 2016 during the "Vigilant Trespass" update when I believe Interloper was first implemented and you could see the survivors hands holding objects such as a flare and the lantern. It sure has been a fun journey through the years and I'm ecstatic and thrilled to be a part of it. 

[Sebastian1992]

I played tld indeed since 1 november 2014, but last year I see this video on youtube

The wolf howl is always still the same today and this version had his old charm, even 2013 tld looks so good!

Edited April 30 by Sebastian1992

[ThePancakeLady]

1 hour ago, PrincessAutumn said:

I love this. I started in late 2016 during the "Vigilant Trespass" update when I believe Interloper was first implemented and you could see the survivors hands holding objects such as a flare and the lantern. It sure has been a fun journey through the years and I'm ecstatic and thrilled to be a part of it. 

Around the same time I started playing (June 2016), and I do have some old screenshots on this machine that are uploaded to Steam, but the majority of my earliest screenshots are sitting on my old toaster that I was using when I first started playing (not easy to get to and transfer over to this machine- and taking up a lot of disc space). But a few that I can get to on this machine:

And a few from when the first version of the game was first offered on the game release anniversary (pre Time Capsule) on Steam:

 

Edited April 30 by ThePancakeLady
One screenshot uploaded in the wrong order

[Leeanda]

These are great.i love looking at the archives to see how it used to look...  

The green trees against the snow look awesome

[Pyroxene]

I started playing in 2018 so I have never seen the 2013 version... Interesting.

[ThePancakeLady]

1 hour ago, Pyroxene said:

I started playing in 2018 so I have never seen the 2013 version... Interesting.

What platform are you playing on? Steam, and only Steam, has the Time Capsule feature that lets you download and play older versions of the game using Steam's Beta Branch tool. It sucks that console players and Epic Games players can't use the Time Capsule, but they don't have a tool that lets the devs give access to older versions of the game. And the very first version of the game is really brutal and quite different than the game is now, but a lot of fun to try out if you have the game on Steam: https://www.thelongdark.com/time-capsule/

I think my first time playing v.119 I survived for a whopping 18 in-game minutes, lol. And this was after having around 150 or so hours into the game, which was the Penitent Scholar update version of the game If I recall correctly?

[hozz1235]

6 hours ago, Leeanda said:

The green trees against the snow look awesome

The one with the dead deer?  I really like that one too.

Thanks for sharing, @Raphael van Lierop!  Sure is a treat to see how active you are lately - it is appreciated.

Edited April 30 by hozz1235

[Leeanda]

7 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

The one with the dead deer?  I really like that one too.

Thanks for sharing, @Raphael van Lierop!  Sure is a treat to see how active you are lately - it is appreciated.

Yes, I think it looks pretty realistic too.more like a photo than a screenshot

[ManicManiac]

It really is wonderful to see some the hold haunts again.  Thank you all for sharing.
Seeing the older screenshots takes me back to when I started my adventures on Great Bear Island.  

On 7/21/2023 at 9:11 AM, ManicManiac said:

I recall my very first run pretty well (it was back in the later part of 2014).

I'd woke up not far from Clear Cut.
I wandered around and found my way to the old Forestry Lookout.
(it's now the "destroyed lookout")

I'd taken cover there in the cab of the tower as a brutally cold blizzard hit.
I hadn't had much to burn... so I couldn't keep a fire going for more than a few hours.
However, this was an 18-hour (or more) blizzard.

I froze to death before I could even see the sun again.

  (Not one of my screenshots, I don't remember where I found it... but it's still nice to look at)

 

[Raphael van Lierop]

@ManicManiac That's one of my favourite early shots. I have a batch from that era that I can post soon.

We moved away from that sky/horizon contrast over the years but I do miss aspects of it. 

[ManicManiac]

@Raphael van Lierop

I do also remember seeing a screenshot at some point where the night sky had a little bit of a Van Gogh-esque sort of "Starry Night" feel to it.
I wish I could find it again... but unfortunately lost track of where I might have saved it years ago.
(perhaps it was some concept art I was remembering?)

Edited April 30 by ManicManiac

[thekillergreece]

That Artbook, can it be purchased digitally?

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, thekillergreece said:

That Artbook, can it be purchased digitally?

Not sure yet. Our focus is on a physical edition, as we owe it to some of our KS backers, and it seems like a nice coffee table book would be of value to many of our fans. 

[Lohaan]

Some of my first ever screenshots (2015)

 

[Sherri]

Oh wow what a cool post! Those green trees are so different! I wasn't playing in the early years so this is really nice to see.

[Pyroxene]

I play on PS4.

[stratvox]

Interesting. I've seen a few of those pics before (talking about the top post here) but I myself didn't come to the game until shortly before the 1.0 release, probably June or July 2017? I might've been interested in the kickstarter but I didn't even hear about the game until well after that was over.

Really interesting to see how the atmosphere developed and has changed over time. Thanks for dropping in and dropping these here, Raph. Speaking of physical media, a series of posters for each of the regions done in the style of the tourism posters found in the dam for Coastal Highway ("Drive the Coastal Highway!") would be cool, and something I would purchase; those'd be a good addition to the online store I reckon.

[artmunki]

Always interesting to see old screenshots from a world I'm so familiar with in its current form. One thing I've been wondering for a while - a few old plays I've watched (and maybe a couple of these pics) kinda had me thinking that the scaling of the outside world was a little different in early versions. Is this right, or am I just imagining it?

[Raphael van Lierop]

7 hours ago, artmunki said:

Always interesting to see old screenshots from a world I'm so familiar with in its current form. One thing I've been wondering for a while - a few old plays I've watched (and maybe a couple of these pics) kinda had me thinking that the scaling of the outside world was a little different in early versions. Is this right, or am I just imagining it?

Not 100% sure I understand what you mean by scaling. Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?

[ThePancakeLady]

7 hours ago, artmunki said:

a few old plays I've watched (and maybe a couple of these pics) kinda had me thinking that the scaling of the outside world was a little different in early versions. Is this right, or am I just imagining it?

 

28 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Not 100% sure I understand what you mean by scaling. Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?

Maybe the old frequent comments many people had about the character's height in older versions of the game? We did seem like either the railings on porches and forestry overlooks were either way too tall, or our character was really short, and the size of cattail plants felt a bit too tall in places. But then the character seemed to be taller than many doorways going into buildings. Some animals were larger while alive while tier carcasses seemed to be very small. All of these things have been addressed and corrected over the years, but that's a few of the oddities I remember from the earlier days.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Oh yeah -- we had a lot of issues with that in the past, and we have worked to remedy it over the years. Hopefully people don't encounter those problems much in the game anymore. 

[mfuegemann]

What great images of the past versions. Thank You all for posting. I do not have an archive of my screenshots, unfortunately.

There was once a discussion to make the main menu idle screens/themes of older releases aviliable somewhere - even maybe actively configurable within the options.
Would such a thing be possible? The menu themes are always such a piece of art and reflect the version, they were made for, in a nutshell. 

[artmunki]

15 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Not 100% sure I understand what you mean by scaling. Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?

I can't find the video I first noticed this on, but it was a play of a early version back when ML was the only region. The part that really stuck out was when the player was sorta chasing a deer on the hills beside the cliff wall between Trapper's and the train tunnel, and the hills seemed notably bigger than I'm used to, in comparison to the deer and the player perspective. But I also remember that the interior scaling seemed much more familiar in the same video. Just something I was kinda curious about.

[GrandmotherG]

LOVE seeing these old screenshots. I didn't discover TLD until 2017 or so. Thanks for posting 💝