The end of The Long Dark is nigh. After more than ten years in development and seven years working on its controversial story mode, Wintermute, the climactic episode is in the final stages of production. However, those stages aren’t quite as final as developer Hinterland Studio would like, so they’ve announced the episode won’t arrive until next year.
“While the majority of the episode is now finished, there was just no way for us to wrap up the remaining cinematic work, the soundtrack, or complete the last bit of mission polish in time for the end of this year as we had originally planned,” Hinterland studios explained in a Steam post. “So we’re taking an extra couple of months to finish that work, then to optimize, fix the bugs, and get it ready for console certification.”
When Episode 5 does finally arrive, players can expect it to last a fair while. Hinterland explained in April that the episode has “between two to three times as much cinematic and story content as episode four, which is our largest episode to date.” It will be a more linear affair than previous episodes, but will also take players to unexplored places.
Hopefully, Episode 5 can live up to the long wait, not least because fans of the game were a mite peeved when Hinterland revealed The Long Dark’s sequel before putting the original’s story to bed. Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2 was announced during 2024’s Game Awards, promising to evolve “every aspect of the survival formula to its 2.0 iteration, setting the table for the next generation of survival game.” As with Wintermute’s final episode, the sequel is expected to enter early access in 2026.