Hinterland, the developer team behind the frozen apocalyptic game The Long Dark, had made a few hefty decisions back in early November about the direction of their game. In his developer diary, game director Raphael Von Lierop talked about how Hinterland was able to obtain their own studio. This studio included several equipment that they could use for themselves, which allowed them to create a whole new schedule on redoing the entire first two chapters of The Long Dark. This carried some risks with it, Lierop had speculated, about having to push new content back from their originally planned dates, and there was a fear of losing the support from their fanbase.
This turned out to be a risk well taken as Wintermute Redux Chapters 1 and 2 was finally released:
And from the look of the trailer, no stone was left unturned. Hinterland has gone out to do exactly as they hoped to do: complete update the entire game. While the main story of the two chapters has stayed the same, new story elements, areas, and characters have been added. All the voice acting has been redone and parts of the characters movements were re-motion captured. Game mechanics have been tweaked as well with the levels becoming more open-world sandbox like, and the scarcity of ammo has also been fixed.
Survival Mode, as well, has been updated. There is a new craftable item called the rabbit-skin hat, a new health buff if the player manages to survive without starvation for 72 hours, netting that can be improved to increase carrying capacity, and a new challenge called “Archivist” which has players collect memories in Aurora-animated computers.
The Wintermute Redux is currently live, and has been added as a free update to players who already own the game. For those just coming in, this is the version that they will be getting. With Redux out of the way, players can anticipate the third chapter, though there is currently no information from the developers on where the third chapters stands or when it will be released.