Over 10 YEARS in development - Still not finished.

[[OT]Nekrage]

The game was release into early access in September of 2014.

That means over 10 years of dev time has gone into this game.

HOW. HOW does a single player game have 10 years of development under it and we still don't have the completed story?

What happened? I am genuinely asking the question because something had to have gone wrong for this game to still be in this state.

[Penny Dreadful]

1. Hinterland is a small indie studio.
2. Hinterland doesn't crunch.
3. TLD is a labor of love made with care and a clear artistic direction.
4. Wintermute isn't the only focus for development; Survival is the "main game" and often comes first.

[MaiZure]

Originally posted by OTNekrage:

HOW. HOW does a single player game have 10 years of development under it and we still don't have the completed story?

How? Because Hinterland diverted most of their resources to most things NOT story mode. Mostly by popular demand -- as you can see by the achievements, only 4.5% of the player base has completed Episode 4.

That's how.

[Lazarus Long]

How have I played over 2300 hours of survival mode and less than 3 hours of the story?

[Evendark]

they could, you can not speak for hinterland XD but what i read so far they have there own visions, it is there game off course.... and nobody knows why they do the DLC or Darkwalker first. my suggestion the DLC is a Part of the final Episode

[dreamsandrain]

Originally posted by OTNekrage:

Mostly by popular demand -- as you can see by the achievements, only 4.5% of the player base has completed Episode 4.

And yet interestingly, more players have attempted story mode ('Your Journey Begins' achievement = 52.9%) than have stuck it out longer than a day in survival mode ('The First of Many' achievement = 50.9%) so, I don't know- either story mode is a touch more popular than appears, or achievements are not quite reliable in the question of popularity. :) I'd love to see some actual survey data about people's preferences (especially since, fascinatingly, the amount of players who've completed Ep. 4. is just shy of the amount of players who've survived a day on interloper, which always seemed to me to be the difficulty most preferred by the game's most avid enthusiasts)


But apologies, OP- it is a long time to wait. I'm eager to see Wintermute brought to its conclusion, too.

[[OT]Nekrage]

Man…I really want to pick this game up again but going to have to wait for it to be completed story wise.

Appreciate your input on this guys.

[markwars]

I've got a lot of hours in...check if you'd like, plus I play on Switch and even XBox and PS4 - and I've never even opened the story mode.

[Evendark]

Originally posted by OTNekrage:

Man…I really want to pick this game up again but going to have to wait for it to be completed story wise.

Appreciate your input on this guys.

oh you are not playing? you should play it i mean there is a dlc story to play, learn about the new things get the new feats. we all like to see the the final chapter. but in the mean time you can allways enjoy the game :). there is also a trader? coming and finally the story.

[James]

There is an awesome story - "Tales from the far territory" - that blends perfectly with survival mode (including new regions, mechanics and gear). I think you'll have a great time with it while "waiting" on the final Wintermute chapter.

[MaiZure]

Originally posted by dreamsandrain:

Originally posted by OTNekrage:

Mostly by popular demand -- as you can see by the achievements, only 4.5% of the player base has completed Episode 4.

And yet interestingly, more players have attempted story mode ('Your Journey Begins' achievement = 52.9%) than have stuck it out longer than a day in survival mode ('The First of Many' achievement = 50.9%) so, I don't know- either story mode is a touch more popular than appears, or achievements are not quite reliable in the question of popularity. :) I'd love to see some actual survey data about people's preferences (especially since, fascinatingly, the amount of players who've completed Ep. 4. is just shy of the amount of players who've survived a day on interloper, which always seemed to me to be the difficulty most preferred by the game's most avid enthusiasts)

I think that's easily explainable too -- there are a lot of general recommendations to 'try story mode first' to get the feel of it before cutting over to Survival. That is what is happening. Most gamers DO want to see the story behind a game and naturally gravitate towards that option initially. 'Survival' sounds more like a challenge mode to be done after the story.

But we know that is not the normal lifecycle of a TLD gamer. They try story for a while and move to survival and never go back. If you follow all of the episode completion achievements, roughly half of the people jump out of story with each subsequent episode.

Me personally, I've beaten all four episodes at least four times. Normal, Completionist, speedrun, etc. I like the story. Most people aren't interested in see where it's going. Hinterland's focus has followed this trend

EDIT: TL;DR - Most people start the story (hardly anyone finishes it), many cut over to survival.

[pizza_pauser]

They asked the community what we wanted. We wanted survival mode. Its simple

[Planchetta]

I do wish the story mode was finished because I don't really play survivor mode anymore. It's fine though. I have plenty other games. I will buy the DLC when/if it's finished and on steep discount.

Like with tv shows, I nowadays only buy games if the story is finished as I'm sick of cancellations. If TLD came out today, I would have waited for it to be finished before I bought it.

[jayess65]

Originally posted by Lazarus Long:

How have I played over 2300 hours of survival mode and less than 3 hours of the story?

haha, almost 4k hours for me and I doubt I played more than an hour on Story mode. Once I got a hunch that it was just likely going to be hour upon tedious hour of fetch quests, I tapped out and played the real game exclusively from then on.

[TRICKY]

689 InGame hours and I am still not finished..

[Getty]

I don't think I've ever played story mode, but I've survived at least 100 days on Interloper. Eventually, I get bored just sitting in the snow shelter (and pretty much staying put, as when you get to a certain point, the amount of cloth you have to rebuild your snow shelter if you leave for too long vs using sticks for regular maintenance is probably close to the highest value consumable, as you can have mountains of pelts, guts, food, and water.) I just started playing again a couple days ago. But that sense of accomplishment when you get a whole sequence down, and have done it enough you know the risks of about every move you'll make, its pretty amazing. Admittedly, I did use interloper loot tables (if item A is here, item B is there). My memory sucks, but I probably did enough runs that if I wrote things down, I would've made a fairly complete list anyway.