Raphael van Lierop

WINTERMUTE doesn't mean any of these things.

The game has always been developed using Unity. We did some significant modifications to the post-FX stack in our December REDUX launch, though. Best way to get help is to submit a request to our Support team, with as much information as you have: www.hinterlandgames.com/support In general we fix all the bugs we find, although we do prioritize, which means bugs that are most serious and affect most players tend to get fixed first.

Hey community! Hope you've had a good week. The Community team wanted me to remind you that I'll be producing a Dev Diary before the end of the month, with a general update on what's going on at Hinterland and some info on Episode Three progress (as spoiler-free as possible). Also, I'll be out at E3 next week (not showing) so I probably won't have the time to write a Dispatch next Friday. On to the Mailbag! ***** Question from @Its_the_Gman: Yes, we definitely want to add more Challenges to the game. We have some ideas. We were holding off on Hunted, Part III until Redux was finished, b/c of the Bear Spear and other things, so if we can, we'll wrap up this trilogy this year, and maybe add one or two more. ***** Question from @DaveMcD: It wasn't inspired by that scene, but it's cool that it makes you think of it every time! Curious to know what other sounds from the game evoke movie scenes in people's minds, and which scenes? (I've been playing this game for so long that I hear our game sounds in movies now, not the other way around.) ***** Question from @TheKaneB: Yeah -- there are some known issues with this screen. Currently it doesn't update the crafting time based on what Tool you pick, due to a logic order issue with how the screen was set up. We'll fix it when we can. Sorry about that! It's not great, I know. We'd like to clean up this interface in general. ***** Question from @IceOnecy: Google Translation: Response: Mackenzie is voiced by Mark Meer (most renowned for voicing Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series). We also have Jennifer Hale (who also voiced, amongst many other roles, Commander Shepard in Mass Effect), and David Hayter (Solid Snake), and a variety of other actors we're really lucky to have working with us on the game. I'm super excited about our Episode Three characters and actors! Google Translation: Маккензи озвучивает Марк Меер (самый известный за высказывание командира Шепарда в серии Mass Effect). У нас также есть Дженнифер Хейл (которая также озвучивала, среди многих других ролей, коммандера Шепарда в Mass Effect), и Дэвида Хейтера (Solid Snake), и целый ряд других актеров, нам действительно повезло работать с нами над игрой. Я очень взволнован нашими персонажами и актерами Эпизода Три! ***** Question from @FrozenCorpse: I'm not going to get into the weeds in responding to this because it would just take too long, but I'll cherrypick a few items to respond to. * Things you place on the snow surface should not "sink down" into the snow, although this has happened in the past (due to bugs). * After Blizzards, you will find that Sticks have been replenished. * Some things lose Condition faster when left in the snow, others lose Condition less quickly. * Blizzards damage your exterior Clothing layer. * All snow (light, heavy, blizzards, etc.) make your outside layer Wet. Once that layer is Wet, it loses a lot of its warmth properties (it also weighs more). One an exterior layer is 100% wet, the layer under it will begin to get wet. When that layer is also wet, it will also weigh more and will lose most of its warming properties. When your skin is unprotected by clothing, you become vulnerable to Frostbite. * Carcasses or Meat Bags you leave outside are subject to predation by wildlife, and may be ravaged (eaten) when you are not around. Hope that helps! ***** Questions from @kosatka: 1 - iSome aspects of it, yes, but probably not the way you are thinking. 2 - For the most part, the level of detail and object density you see in the world is what we intended, although there are still some locations that are getting updated to bring them to the same level as, for example, Milton (Mountain Town) which was built specifically for Story Mode. ***** Question from @SneakySquid: 1 - Mostly the Unity editor and a variety of things built for the game. 2 - We'll most likely provide tools to create your own regions when we provide official Mod Support in the future. It's likely that people will need to learn how to use the Unity editor in order to make region mods, but we'll do our best to support this with tools and documentation, when we are ready to do so. ***** Question from @Mr. TwoPump: Yes, I'd like to do something like this, but it's a deceptively challenging problem to solve. We'll see where we end up with it. ***** Question from @frickoffanddie: The Main Menu is a little scene, not a cinematic -- meaning it's a small piece of world that, if you could get into it, you could walk around. (We've had bugs in the past that spawned the players inside the Main Menu scene). Yes, it's inspired by Half-Life 2, which is my favourite game of all time. ***** Question from @noahvanbaal: More birds -- yes, hopefully. Base building -- I'm pretty sure I've responded to this before, so please check the Index thread. ***** Question from @bongoplayingmonkey: I like the idea of providing a warmth boost due to digestion at night, but it becomes tricky to communicate all these various states to the player. But I'll keep it in mind and see if we can come up with something. You do currently get a bit of a Warmth bonus from sprinting, but we don't expose this in any UI -- it's handled by the underlying system. ***** Question from @TheRealPestilence: That sounds like a bug. Drinking hot Rosehip tea should provided the Warmth buff regardless of where you drink it from (inventory, radial, or first aid). Please log: www.hinterlandgames.com/support ***** (Skipping a question about Sprains because after 3+ weeks of discussing it I'm a bit burned out on this particular system.) ***** Question from @MikeV: Survival for the sake of survival alone has been core to The Long Dark's Survival Mode from Day 1. We could add the idea of an objective, but most players seem to embrace the current game. So, to you I say -- it IS cool. ***** Question from @Gazbeard: Could happen some day! ***** Question from @ThePancakeLady: We didn't make our change for Stadia. It's fully about performance improvements (for us) and the code-wrapping preventing decompiling is, to me, a nice bonus. People should not be able to hack our game apart. But that topic has been discussed elsewhere! Re: feelings on Stadia -- I'm cautiously optimistic but we'll see what the biz model does for developers. As a creator, I like the idea of not having to limit myself to only thinking about what a "gamer" might look for an inexperience, so if I assume Stadia has the potential to really broaden the player community beyond the current core group who own high-end PCs and consoles, that's kind of interesting just on a philosophical level. (Even when designing The Long Dark, I try never to approach anything from the standpoint of "well this is how other games do it so this is how we should do it too", because I don't want to assume our players are familiar with any other games, genre tropes, etc.) I don't think we'll make anything specifically with Stadia in mind, but I do think the future is streaming -- to some degree -- so I'm trying to be open to what that means and trying to ensure our next projects capitalize on the strengths so that Hinterland doesn't become a dinosaur. Adapt or die, right? In my mind, all these new streaming/subscription game platforms means there will be a huge appetite for content (much as we've seen in TV/film over the past 5+ years) so companies that can create good original IP will be in a strong position. My goal is to ensure Hinterland can capitalize on our strengths in this area. ***** Looks like those are all the questions (that aren't also Wishlist items) we have for this week! Enjoy the weekend and I'll resume the Mailbag the Friday after next. - Raph PS Did you see the short video of The Long Dark running on Switch? We still have a lot of work to do, but we're one step closer.

If you want to play a board game based on The Long Dark IP, you might just want to wait a bit...

Hello community, It's been another busy week at Hinterland -- the team's been hotfixing and testing but we think we've nearly got most of the issues from STEADFAST RANGER sorted out. I hope you've been having fun with it! I was out on holiday last week so looks like we have a hefty double-batch of questions this week. On to this week's Mailbag Dispatch. ***** Question from @Jaffa: We've talked about adding stacking functionality and it's a bit tricky, but it's on our list. In general I'd like to provide a better way to organize and stack/arrange items so this might be something we look at in a future Survival Mode update. For me, better placement tools need to be about more than just arranging things more nicely -- I'd like to make sure improving this also enables other useful gameplay actions. ***** Question from @JeremiahJohnson: You're welcome! Splitting axe -- we could add one pretty easily. The main issue would be with Struggles. You'd expect to be able to use it there as well, and even new Struggle tool adds a bunch of animation work for the team, and right now our animators are very focused on Episode Three work. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't add a bigger/better axe in the future. Don't give up! ***** Question from @GothSkunk: The Long Dark is still a narrative single-player adventure in a remote part of post-apocalyptic Canada. If we'd known we'd create a "sandbox" and release that first, we would have made that part of our pitch -- i.e. produce the sandbox foundation first, and then build the narrative mode on top of that. The only thing this would have changed is probably fewer people feeling pissed that Story Mode has taken so long. All that said, if Survival Mode hadn't taken off, The Long Dark would have ended up being a much less significant game, because we wouldn't have had the time or budget to build it out to the degree we have, or to deliver on the scope and quality of assets we've been able to invest in the game. I'm happy with how things turned out in the end, but I'm not happy to have players who feel let down by progress or feel that somehow their favourite "part" of the game isn't progressing as quickly as they would like. But I think the only way to mitigate that is to one day finish The Long Dark and hopefully have fans (including people we lost along the way) come back and say..."yeah, it took hella long but it was worth it in the end." ***** Question from @Sito: It's a bit tricky to answer this because I'm not sure when you last played so what version you'd be comparing to. We've done a few different things that have improved the skies, most recently in the big Redux update (December) we completely redid our post effects "stack" which means all our colour and lighting effects for weather and skies are improved from before. We also did some work on the Aurora effect to remove the "banding". We have some other visual improvements in the works but you can't see those in the game yet, so I'd assume what you're seeing is the stuff we did for Redux. We didn't do any work on skies or lighting in STEADFAST RANGER. Glad you like them though! ***** Question from @Dan_: We're looking at this. Deadman is not an official Challenge so we didn't balance the Birch Bark around it, but we've seen this feedback from the community and we'll see what we can do. ***** Question from @OveRMolo: Growth cycle -- yes it's been asked about many times. I don't think most things regrow in winter so respawning Cat Tails feels a bit wrong to me. We do respawn some natural things though, where it makes sense (ex. Sticks that can be found after Blizzards). If you use up Cat Tails you should move to a new region -- the world is huge so there are a lot of Cat Tails to be found. Compass -- no plans for that. Geomagnetic disaster etc. etc. Mission Designer -- anyone can apply, but please meet our requirements before you do (also, all our roles are on-site). ***** Question from @amadeuszbx: We use standard artist/developer tools for the most part -- Max/Maya for modeling and animation. Photoshop for texturing. We have a few extra tools we use for optimization/quality of life here and there but generally we use all the same authoring tools as anyone else. No big secrets there! ***** Question from @yollarbenibekler: Steam Market -- we haven't really discussed this but we'll look into it. Could be cool. Crowdfunding Game 2 or DLC -- could happen; if it does, we hope our TLD players will jump in! ***** Question from @Drizzi: Glad to hear you're having fun with RANGER. Currently the Revolver keys off of the Rifle availability custom setting, but we should separate that out. We'll look at it for a future update. ***** Question from @Someone: I have a lot of answers to the first part of your question, but you're just going to have to wait and see what we cook up for you. (And no, that's not a subtle hint.) For the second question -- what other uses would you like to see for the Flashlight, keeping in mind it only works during the Aurora? ***** Question from @Hovejester: Yes, but only if it doesn't make the game too fussy. The more of these details we take into account in our simulation (meaning, the systems that drive the game), the more complex things like our UI become. It's a fine balance. ***** Question from @hozz1235: No, they don't grow back. ***** Question from @Azdrawee: Yeah we'll probably release something like this again. Spoiler: The numbers are all much higher now. Those stats were for our first 3 months on Early Access. ***** Question from @jkripper: I love working with Jennifer. We have a ton of fun. She brings so much to the character of Astrid, cares so much about the game, and is -- above all else -- a wonderful human being. I hope to work with her on all my games. ***** Question from @Samwise117: Glad you're enjoying the Revolver! Yeah, we do need not just a "fuel management" but a "liquid management" system/interface. We've discussed it a fair bit. Not sure where it sits in our internal roadmap but we'll get to it eventually. ***** Question from @Kenshinzen: Sadly, I don't have an answer for you, because I have no idea. Could be next year. Could be never. No idea. We have no plans to "port" the game to VR but we could create an experience in The Long Dark that is purpose-built for VR, but not until it makes business sense to do so. ***** Question from @AstraRune: I'll pass your compliments to the support team! Thank you. As for being able to sit down on chairs -- yes it's been discussed and could happen, but I have no firm plans for it at the moment as we are working on higher-priority things. I agree that it'd be cool and nice as a meditative thing (but only if I can move chairs like onto the porch at the Mystery Lake Camp Office and watch wolves walking across in the distance while I smoke my pipe). ***** Question from @Faithful Cartographer: I missed it, sadly, but I'm proud of Team Canada! I think anyone who played in the quarterfinals should be pretty proud of their team/country. ***** Question from @Skelegutplays: If I tell you it's a XX calibre, you'll start comparing the in-game behaviour to what you know of the real-world equivalent which is irrelevant. The Revolver is "good at deterring wolves" calibre and the Rifle is "better chance of taking down a Bear if you're lucky" calibre. That's great to hear! We're working on even more optimizations so hopefully it will just keep getting better and better. ***** Question from @Aiden Milroy: Sounds like you might have encountered a bug. You should hear music play at a pretty consistent frequency. We don't have an option or slider for this because we tune music frequency very deliberately so it doesn't get overplayed. ***** Question from @Alonzo.: I can't say it will never happen, but I will say we've only done it once (wiping story mode saves when we launched Redux). We provided warnings for months before that. If we do know we have to wipe saves, we'll always do our best to provide tons of warning. Sadly, we can't reach everyone if they don't read the in-game notifications, mailers, social media messages forum posts, Steam announcements, etc. But if you are plugged in to our comms channels, you will know well in advance before any intentional save wipes happen, for sure. ***** Question from @Wade: Maybe if you ask nicely. ***** Question from @alex_p: Yup, we've thought about it. ***** Question from @Nogen: I still think about it, yes. ***** Question from @Arran: Go to Options > Key Bindings. You can change a bunch of stuff. Separating out Struggle from other interactions (with its own key) is more work; we've discussed it and will do it when we can, unless we find a better solution. ***** Question from @hozz1235: Not at the moment. ***** Question from @yollarbenibekler: No plans for this. (But what if you fail?) ***** Question from @ThePancakeLady: Yes. Yes. Depends. ***** Question from @LkP: Most of them are from samples. There are tons of different varieties of birds you hear in the game. All have been researched to ensure you hear the right bird sounds in the right places (near the coastline, in the mountains, etc.), right time of day, and right altitude (in the lower areas near water vs. up in the mountains). ***** Question from @ajb1978: Could be. ***** Question from @Jendo: For the first question -- It's a combination of hardware, memory, CPU/GPU speed, engine optimization, etc. We're still finding ways to squeeze out more performance but we're also always trying to find ways to make the game look better so there are tradeoffs. For the second question -- we'll ship WINTERMUTE on this generation and we'll see what happens on the next one. We could do a re-release/uprez/remaster potentially, but we'll see. I'd rather be working on something new. ***** I think that's all the time I have this week. I know there are a few questions at the end that I didn't get to, and I'll try to tack them on next week's Dispatch. Otherwise, if I skipped your question, it's either because (a) I've already answered it before (check the Mailbag Index), (b) answering it will spoil things, or (c) you came across as rude (I'm not talking about people for whom English is clearly a second language -- I'm talking about people who should obviously know better.) Thanks for all the questions, and see you next week! - Raph

Thanks for sending the info to Support.

Can't speak 100% to which version GoG is updated to as the team is on holiday today -- I'm pretty sure they have 1.49. 1.50 might be on the way. In general GoG is a lower priority platform for us (due to very small player base and their generally slow update speed -- it often takes days between when we submit our hotfixes and then they get released). And, because they are much slower to update the game when we send them hotfixes, we sometimes bundle more than one together. In general, when we are in a post-update hotfixing cycle where we might release a hotfix every day or two, we prioritize the platforms we can update the fastest which are: Steam, Xbox, and PS4. GoG will get caught up eventually!

The second issue was addressed in the original release of STEADFAST RANGER, which is why it wasn't mentioned in the latest hotfix release notes.

Hello community, We'll it's been another busy week in Hotfix Heaven in the aftermath of STEADFAST RANGER's release. Feels like we managed to get a better handle on the Sprain system tuning, fixed some aiming issues with the Bow and Rifle for you, and hopefully got the Revolver spawn tuning feeling a bit better. We'll have another set of fixes coming out hopefully later next week or early the following week, but I think we've hit the more critical things so we'll let the game settle a bit. Fixing things in a hurry is sometimes necessary, but it can always have unintentional knock-offs so we'll take some extra time with the remaining issues on our list. Thanks to everyone who sent feedback, and in particular those who sent bugs to our Support portal -- that's been extremely helpful to the team, and we really appreciate it. Next Monday is Victoria Day, a stat holiday in Canada, so the team will be off for a long weekend, but we'll be back at it bright and early Tuesday morning. Now, on to this week's Mailbag! - Raph ***** Question from @Morphe: Just to be sure I understand the question -- are you saying the placement of this Rosehip bush means that a misclick may end up causing you to climb instead? If so, can you send a screenshot of this to our Support portal and we can get it onto the bug list (assuming it isn't already fixed and sitting in our fixed branch, waiting to be released): www.hinterlandgames.com/support **** Question from @Sito: Most of the team is not exposed to community feedback, by design. The people who have frontline interface with the community are trained to deal with that feedback. But, it would be a lie to say that negative feedback isn't occasionally frustrating. We've been updating The Long Dark for a long time now, and have survived some pretty big furors in the past (Parasites, various rounds of wolf tuning, every UI update, etc.) so I think we're pretty used to it. I've come to see patterns as well. Often the immediate reaction to something is negative, because something familiar has been changed. We all have this same reaction every time Gmail or any app we use regularly suddenly does some kind of interface or UX change that throws us off. But then over time when we get accustomed to the change, we can often recognize how much better it is. I'm not saying this is always true for all our players, but I've seen it happen more than once that the initial "hateful" reaction to something is tempered over time. In the end we all want the same thing -- for every player to have a great experience. If the negative feedback is based on something not working as intended, it's easy to take it well because we know it isn't working as intended and we want to fix it! If the negative feedback is based on something we've intentionally changed and believe is better (like many of our various UI iterations over the years), it can be harder to take, but in the end it's our game, our vision, and we believe firmly that we're making this game for the people who like it, not for the people who don't. Just, who those people are can change over time, as the game changes. I think that's to be expected for a game and community that's been "live" for almost 5 years now. ***** Question from @amadeuszbx: 1) Pretty sure you'll find this answer elsewhere, but my top-10 are probably (not in any order): Half-Life, Half-LIfe 2, STALKER, BioShock, Deus Ex, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, Thief, and Red Dead Redemption. (I'm sure I'm missing some but those are the ones that I can think of right now.) 2) Myself and most of my team come from "triple-A" so we've all been in the position of having to ship something earlier than we wanted to. This is something we really don't want to ever have to do, because ultimately we are craftspeople and artists who create interactive experiences, and the most important thing for us is that we can be proud of our work. Beyond that, I believe that long-term quality and good-will from our players will translate into long-term success for Hinterland, more than any short-term "cash grab" we might be able to gain by releasing something quickly. Also, you will find that when you focus on creating great things, other people who want to create great things will want to bring their talents and energy to your endeavour. This is not a guarantee of success, but it definitely takes you a big part of the way. Ultimately, I am not motivated by money -- I am only motivated by creating things I love and can be proud of, with people who feel the same way, and money is only a means to freedom so that we can create more things in the future. I think that as long as we are true to these values, even if we "fail" economically, we will succeed as creators, and leave something positive and lasting behind after we are gone. (So far, we are not failing economically either. ) ***** Question from @MarrowStone: 1) Not yet. 2) Yes, it should. ***** Question from @Azdrawee: I've noticed that you like to ask questions that are often thinly-veiled attempts to get me to share information about release plans or dates. I'm on to you! We haven't said anything about the contents of Episode Four, so you are making assumptions about the content therein. We will release Episode Three, and *then* Episode Four, and *then* (spoiler) Episode Five. And then WINTERMUTE will be finished. Then we will rest. ***** Question from @ThePancakeLady: Not sure. We'll see. We'll be doing big overhauls of all our websites this year (and into next I suspect) so we'll see how the Hinterland site turns out. If the team wants to be showcased more, I'll be open to including bios again. I personally like them having what small anonymity I can offer them. The internet is not always a friendly place, as you well know. ***** Question(s) from @vta4ever: Could happen! If we do, it'll be a new standalone game. Positive user reviews help. Sharing news about The Long Dark in your social circle. Reporting bugs you find to www.hinterlandgames.com/support. Gifting copies to friends when the game is on sale. Being in these forums and spreading positive vibes. These things all help a lot!! ***** Question from @LilWolf: I have two new non-TLD games I'd like to start on ASAP. Both of them push their respective genres forward a bit, I believe. One has links to survival and the other has links to immersive sims. I'm thinking about them in terms of how we've built The Long Dark over the years, and also in terms of how the business is changing right now. Not sure when I'll be able to get started on them, but I hope soon!! Every day I wake up worried some game will come out that is too similar to those ideas and I'll have to throw them out and start again. ***** Question from @CalNieDaGtarGuy: Even though the regions have different names (Forlorn Muskeg, Broken Railroad, etc.), geographically that whole area would be known as Mystery Lake, to the people who had built the lodge. Or, a better way of putting it, the lake would have been a pretty major landmark for that area, which is why the lodge is named after it. We have some internal lore about the hunting lodge and the area around it, but I'd have to dig it up out of the archives from years ago.... ***** Question from @apple_geek101: We don't have an official Discord server. We discussed it a while ago and felt we didn't have the bandwidth to manage and nurture another community. We also felt that Discord didn't seem to be doing enough to maintain a healthy community itself -- there seems (or seemed) to be a lot of issues with toxic people or groups using it. Similar, in some ways, to how communities like Reddit, which are not moderated by devs, can sometimes end up being really toxic places for players, and in the end just serve to turn people off. We made a decision early on only to spend our time and energy nurturing communities that we can moderate properly, because it does't make sense to spend money in a place that is hostile to you and your players, and we know that every toxic person turns off 10+ non-toxic players who might have become positive contributors to the community. If we felt Discord offered good tools for us to moderate a community there, and if we felt there was enough interest in an official Discord, we might consider setting up an official channel. But until we're confident it's a good place for our players, we won't encourage people to go there. Please note I'm not talking about individual Discord servers or TLD players at all. I'm just speaking in generalities about a business decision. ***** Question from @melcantspell: We don't, currently. We shut down our use of GameAnalytics because of GDRP, and Unity Analytics isn't GDRP-compliant at the moment yet either. Until we can roll out an opt-in analytics solution that complies with GDRP, we have no way of pulling this info right out of the game. That said, my gut tells me Mystery Lake is the most popular due to it being the first region that appears in the menu and also a good, well-balanced region in general. Someone could start a poll here in the forums if they wanted to do an informal survey. Could be interesting! ***** Question from @Aiden Milroy: Yeah...it's tough because we try to contact those backers and don't always get through. We're still hopefully we'll be able to get them to contribute their info. I don't feel good about the idea of taking those away from backers and giving them or selling them to the general player population, because they are meant to recognize the contributions of our earliest supporters. We might have to just take the blank ones out for now, so at least there won't be empty cairns. ***** Question from @ajb1978: 1) We don't have current stats on this, but I believe the Stalker+Interloper side of the spectrum is about 15% total. The rest play Voyageur or Pilgrim. When we can enable in-game analytics again, we'll share realtime data on that. I would say that Stalker+Interloper players are more highly represented in the community forums than they are in the game. (Feels like 30-40% of Official Forum users are Stalker/Interloper players.) 2) I honestly can't remember where those came from. People on the team I believe. We've replaced a lot of them over time. ***** Question(s) from @CuteBeaver: 1) Yes, I've been thinking about this. 2) Yes, we have. 3) Not unless I can find something interesting about managing frozen water supply. ***** Question from @Faithful Cartographer: 1) For the present, the whole team is currently focused on Episode Three and Survival Mode of The Long Dark. 2) Mackenzie's (family's) service is called "Jackrabbit Transport". Jackrabbit Island is unrelated to this. 3) I'm not religious about watching hockey, but I do check out the olympic and sometimes the worlds depending on who Canada is playing. It's always exciting to see the Russians and Canadians playing against each other. Old rivalries. I hope our teams don't meet before the final either. Good luck! ***** Question from @Its_the_Gman: Hi! Yes, we did retexture the train cars. Thanks for noticing. Not every headshot will result in a death. Might have been a "glancing" shot. I don't think you're using it wrong. ***** Question from @Moll: We'll see! The Rifle has been in the game for years. The Revolver, for days. Give it some time. ***** I think that's it for this week! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and I hope you have a great weekend. - Raph

If you have new questions, please add them to the Mailbag Questions thread. Thanks!

You can quote the dictionary to me all you like. What I'm telling you is -- realism is not our goal. I'm not sure why you persist in this argument. It's not like I don't have some insight into the motivations behind the project. If you're looking for realism, you will not find it here, and continuously beating that drum is a waste of everyone's time.

Hey wait...that should have been a Mailbag question... 😏

What you hear are the Goldberg Variations, by Bach. We don't have the rights to distribute them on our soundtrack, nor any of the other licensed music. But, you can buy the Goldberg Variations in a lot of different places. I recommend the Glenn Gould versions, though I do prefer the later recordings.

If I sound frustrated, it's only because "realism" gets used as a cudgel to bludgeon any argument someone doesn't like the response to, or a mechanic or tuning decision that someone doesn't like. (After working on WW2, 40k, and now survival games, I've become familiar with how each of these audiences "wins arguments" using realism as the metric, and I've never seen it do any good.) My goal by bringing it up is to excise "realistic" and "fun" from the discussion around The Long Dark, so that we can focus on useful feedback. Making the game realistic is NOT our intent. Making the game fun is NOT our focus. Making it interesting, compelling, full of thoughtful choices, memorable moments, close calls, and wonderful moments of serendipity -- and maybe sometimes poetry -- THIS is why we're here.

Show me where it says "realistic". Simulation speaks to gameplay approach, not to whether something is realistic or not. "The Sims" is a simulation. It is detailed, complex, layered, and rich in systems. It is not realistic.