So far, Hinterland Studios has always been appreciated for their transparency with their audience base by keeping everyone updated about their progress and developmental pace. Today, Hinterland Creative Director Raphael Van Lierop Discusses Upcoming Features and Difficulties with the Long Dark through a monthly update.
After having discussed the first order of business, Lierop also shared their difficulties and inconveniences that have set in their developmental progress owing to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, as per him, his team at Hinterland is more fortunate than others because their work can be easily translated into a virtual format. In spite of this, they have experienced the impact of the pandemic that directly affected the productivity and pace of the collective workflow of the studio.
In the discussion, Lierop also said that they have been following the condition of the world and the amount of disadvantage and inconvenience that everyone has to go through at the moment. He also shared their humanitarian involvement. During the beginning of the month, they led a campaign to raise money on Stream for the World Health Organization and United Nations Foundation with their contribution to the fight against the virus.
They conceived the idea of the fundraiser in early March, something the whole team of Hinterland would be proud to be a part of. The developers roped in the gaming community and the money they raised over just a short period of time was huge. The amount will directly go into the undertaking of relief efforts. They did all this from their own profit in a unanimous decision and was the right move to make during this global crisis.
After sharing the update on their COVID-19 campaign, Lierop took to discussing the upcoming and much-anticipated update of the navigation-theme set to release on Survival Mode. The creative director of Hinterland was hesitant to share too much information or detail about the release and wants to keep it a surprise. But he did say that the array of new features will drastically increase the functionality of the in-game Map without sabotaging their currently implemented paradigm of Landmark-based navigation. As of now, the update is going as per planning for an eventual mid-May release.
He also highlighted some key points regarding the content in the Episode Four mission. The creative director discussed the various unexpected issues that came into being owing to the pandemic and has impacted the development and generation of dialogue mode or cinematic sequences as these processes require specific settings and equipment along with the actors who would make the characters comes to virtual existence.
Hinterland put together an online team to shift focus on maintaining mod support along with user-generated content through the use of addons and mods from the players’ community. The developers are also working towards the release of a Switch version and also working towards creating an Xbox business so that the game continues to thrive even during such an economic downfall.
For the player, it is always a matter of utmost excitement to see transparency from the developers and get to know of behind the scenes workflow. Hinterland Studios is proving to be a benchmark company that delivers what is promised.
