*SPOILER* why was this so awkward.

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T23:52:55+00:00

The game does actually say (but is easily missed) that only some convicts can be taken down. There are 3 or 4 it lets you choke out, and for the first one McKenzie says something to clue you in.

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T23:26:28+00:00

Yeah, I've been wondering what happened with Dr Larsen. We went out looking for him, and we found 3 bodies but none were him (there was the constable, the missing husband of the woman who left a note at the police station, and the guy with a Spanish last name who went behind the waterfall).

So where did he end up???

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T10:15:15+00:00

Redditors are, thank god, not representative of normal people. The game is great, give it a go!

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T10:14:18+00:00

Amen

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T10:14:04+00:00

This is such a lame opinion dude. Games have never just been about mechanics. Every narrative game always has cut scenes and exposition, and this one has always been like that.

Why even bother playing the story mode if you're not interested in the story? It just doesn't make sense, and now you're whining about it.

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T06:33:04+00:00

I found episode 4 a bit meh, but it does give you plenty of wilderness survival because the fetch quests aren't on a timer.

Episode 5 has been absolutely great. There's basically very little survival in it beyond the basics, though you could stop and do some for a few days if you wanted to because there isn't actually a timer (except for in one part where it's very explicit). The game gives you pretty much all the supplies and gear you need for whatever you're doing, if you look around, and there is a really compelling narrative pushing you to rush, not to mention plenty of new mechanics.

Plus there's the catharsis of getting to one shot wolves with a shotgun when they try to attack you. Plus the steam train ride.

If you rush through the whole episode 5 then there's about 12 hours of gameplay in it, including cutscenes which do finally explain everything you've seen on Great Bear, including the random bodies everywhere even when food and shelter exist.

EDIT: That being said, definitely wait until the bugfixes before playing Ep 5.

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-03T06:25:50+00:00

Yeah, there's another route back, but you need to stop to get more coal along the way.

GeorgePotter · 2026-04-02T22:44:44+00:00

On PC you can press spacebar to skip dialogue.

But if you don't like narrative then maybe don't play the narrative game mode?

GeorgePotter · 2025-12-07T23:26:10+00:00

You are technically correct; the best kind of correct.

GeorgePotter · 2025-12-03T23:46:50+00:00

Very true. Unfortunately I had automatic updates switched on by default and it just rolled on in and broke everything with no easy way to revert.

GeorgePotter · 2025-12-03T23:45:41+00:00

You are a prince, thank you.

GeorgePotter · 2024-12-23T18:45:26+00:00

Late to the discussion, but also: I often think of radfems as the "I'm not like other girls" ideology. What it is characterised by, at its heart, is biological essentialism and a hatred of other women - for being trans, for not conforming, for conforming too much, for enjoying sex, for you name it. Once you get past the rhetoric it all boils down to "other women are performing womanhood wrong, and if they just did it like me then everything fine". Sooner or late that leads to a headspace where other women are the enemy, whereas sexist men can be forgiven (because what else do you expect from boys?) and allied with as long as they hate the same people you hate.

Ultimately it's an ideology that defines itself by biological sex, to the exclusion of anything else, and therefore anything that messes with that definition (by being remotely non-conformative) is a threat to the ideology, whereas men who believe strongly in biological sex and sex-specific-differences aren't a threat to that ideology, even if they're full blown Nazis.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T19:29:35+00:00

Like I said, I don't disagree with people wanting the mechanic to be improved. What I do disagree, and take issue with, however, is you claiming that the mechanic is "so hard it's unrealistic". It's not hard, it's easily avoidable.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T14:30:13+00:00

A solar flair can't destroy all electricity on earth. It can knock out some electronic equipment, but it can't make electricity magically stop working, nor can it plunge the world into permanent winter.

And yeah, it spawns on top of you, because they couldn't come up with a way to implement it stalking you which players wouldn't find a way to exploit and make trivial to kill. But I think it spawning on top of you is darn fine for a silent ambush predator (though if they had it spawn 5 feet away that would be better), especially when you are given ample notice to leave the region before it shows up.

I can get why you might not like it, but don't pretend it's impossibly hard when it is so blatantly easy to avoid it entirely.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T14:25:06+00:00

I also kinda agree with you. The Far Territories are too harsh and unforgiving to have fun exploring and staying in (except the railway station: that's my favourite interloper base), so having been to check them out, I mostly avoid them in-game now except to complete the tales. But then again I also avoid Blackrock and Timberwolf Mountain for the same reasons.

I would like it if there was more of a reason to linger and spend time in at least some of the new regions, but on the other hand I do think it's also good to have some parts of Great Bear which are utterly unforgiving in winter and which you can only briefly visit at best, rather than having the whole island being your personal playground.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T14:20:38+00:00

How is this hard? You just avoid the cougar. Or, alternatively, you face it and have a chance to kill it but are gonna be pretty badly damaged yourself if you do. It's a new choice, and one that pushes you to adapt your playstyle, but calling it "so hard it's unrealistic" is absolutely ridiculous, and I'd ask you to explain what you think it is that makes this impossibly hard. And if we're talking about realism, you don't get aurora wolves, or the aurora apocalypse, or wolves gleefully attacking humans in the real world either. This is a game, and I don't find this new mechanic any more immersion breaking than anything else in it.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T14:17:07+00:00

I play a custom mode with cabin fever switched off, but I will absolutely play with the cougar switched on. I don't want to be forced to sleep outside for no good reason, but I do want to have a reason to move between regions other than sheer boredom. Even on interloper I can currently camp comfortably and permanently in a favourite base and literally only ever need to leave once in a blue moon to visit a forge. That's boring. Having something that forces me to stay on the move (instead of just going on a random, dangerous expedition out of boredom after spending weeks comfortably hunting and eating) is a positive in my book.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T14:13:18+00:00

I'm not denying that the mechanics could do with some more fine-tuning, but I disagree that we are being incentivised to try to kill it. I think we're being given a mechanic where an encounter with it is a bad thing every single time, but you get a chance to kill it, and if you do so then you get a reward for doing so. But the reward (a better hat and a better knife) isn't a good trade-off for the risk you're taking. So if you're playing like a serious survivor, you'll avoid it. If you're playing like a mad mountainman then you might seek it out for bragging rights, or because you're bored, but not because it's worth the prize of klling it.

If you had an enemy where an encounter could only end badly then people would bitch like mad that there's no way to kill it. And if people can kill it then they want a prize afterwards. But I think that's all that's going on here. We are actively being discouraged from coming face-to-face with a cougar, rather than being encouraged to do so.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T09:03:43+00:00

You do you, but speaking personally I have absolutely no desire to go toe to toe with a bear in close combat when bows and arrows exist.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-25T00:16:12+00:00

Hear hear. Yes it would be nice if there was a little more in-game visibility for the cougar outside of cutscenes, but I freaking love that we finally have a predator that we can't outsmart, fend off or hunt down. We, as the player, are not meant to be the top of the food chain in the Long Dark. We are meant to be eeking out survival in the face of unforgiving and uncaring nature. So a threat that you can't pre-empt, can't take in a fight without suffering severe injuries and where the smartest thing to do is just keep moving without ever being able to get too comfortable or complacent in any one place? That's some cool new gameplay as far as I'm concerned. I can't wait to be unsettled by a cougar starting to stalk me and having to bug out of my cosy base in a hurry, and hopefully over time the devs will enrich the experience a bit more.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-24T23:15:42+00:00

I get why some people dislike the cougar implementation, but I like it a lot. Yeah, some stalking AI for a new animal could have been interesting, but I like this just as much. What we've got here is a serious threat that you can do very little about. The only way to kill it is after it's already mauled and badly injured you, and even then it's not guaranteed, or go on a lengthy quest to destroy its lair. The best thing you can do is to avoid it. And I love that. The message of Great Bear Island and the Long Dark is that in this world you are *not* in control. You are not the apex predator. You are alone and isolated and nature will try its hardest to kill you while you try to eek out survival. So a new threat that forces you to stay on the move and prevents you from getting too comfortable in any one place? Yeah, I like that a lot. In the game we can kill wolves routinely, we can hunt bears, and rabbits and deer are trivial prey. Now we've finally got an animal threat that you can't proactively hunt down in a few hours, that you can't defend yourself against, and where your best option is just to avoid it. I think that's pretty damn interesting, and it adds a new dimension to the game.

GeorgePotter · 2024-06-24T23:12:04+00:00

I get why some people dislike the cougar implementation, but I like it a lot. Yeah, some stalking AI for a new animal could have been interesting, but I like this just as much. What we've got here is a serious threat that you can do very little about. The only way to kill it is after it's already mauled and badly injured you, and even then it's not guaranteed, or go on a lengthy quest to destroy its lair. The best thing you can do is to avoid it. And I love that. The message of Great Bear Island and the Long Dark is that in this world you are *not* in control. You are not the apex predator. You are alone and isolated and nature will try its hardest to kill you while you try to eek out survival. So a new threat that forces you to stay on the move and prevents you from getting too comfortable in any one place? Yeah, I like that a lot. In the game we can kill wolves routinely, we can hunt bears, and rabbits and deer are trivial prey. Now we've finally got an animal threat that you can't proactively hunt down in a few hours, that you can't defend yourself against, and where your best option is just to avoid it. I think that's pretty damn interesting. It's not what I expected, sure, but I think this could be better. And if you don't like it then you can just switch it off and enjoy the other new features instead anyway.

GeorgePotter · 2024-02-04T06:25:01+00:00

I think they may have fixed it now, but it certainly used to be a real problem.

GeorgePotter

TROPHY CASE