So I’ve just finished episode four of wintermute and thought and was left with a few nagging feelings that I thought I’d come here to discuss, and it’s quickly developed into a full episode by episode review, but hey ho, if that’s your cup of tea enjoy the read! Full disclosure, I wrote this on mobile so if the formatting is wonky I can only apologise. It also goes without saying that this will be openly discussing spoilers, so you might want to avoid this until you’ve finished episode four.

I’ll try and break this down episode by episode as best I can, and I suppose this will end up as a critique, but I genuinely want to express that I absolutely love this game so far, and that any criticisms I have are from a place of wanting the game to be the best is could be. I will also mention issues I have plot wise that might be explained in some note somewhere, and if that’s the case I retract that point with the caveat that I did explore fairly thoroughly, so it must have been rather obscure, but I haven’t actually checked the wiki for any of this so I am more than happy for corrections to come! Also worth noting that the two times I’ve played it, I’ve played on the middle difficulty, so some of these issues might be better or worse depending on what difficulty you choose.

Let’s start with some overall points:

1. The crafting of the animal clothes is FAR too excessive a time sink for the length of each episode. I did craft the deerskin boots and trousers in episode two, but it involved me literally sleeping in the lakeside cabin for five solid days waiting for the stuff to cure so I could do it once I had finished all the story points, and then just walked to the dam and had them taken right back off me. I totally see how these would be high end gear that’s really worth it in survival, but it needs some kind of rework to fit in wintermute, either some kind of speedy curing (leaving the skins and guts near a fire maybe?) or making the cured ingredients salvageable from somewhere. Most episodes just aren’t long enough to justify taking the time to hunt, skin, and cure, unless you do it right at the start, and even then they likely won’t be finished until you’re mostly ready to move on.
2. The looting system could do with being slightly more adaptable. I’m totally fine with finding different thinks in “realistic” locations, but I have definitely been left thinking at times that I’m just not doing things in the order the developers thought I would and it felt like I was almost being punished for it, finding way too much of one thing (food, fire stuff, etc) while really struggling for just enough of others, then later discovering that if I had done the objectives in a different order I would have had a steady stream of things to keep me going without ruining the flow of the gameplay.
3. I think food should generally be more scarce in the later episodes as you get more adapt as a player to survival. I spent a decent amount of ep2 hunting to keep my food stores where I wanted them (which was normally excessive) but in 3 & 4 I had literally no point where I was even considering hunting as I couldn’t run out of food if I tried. The level of firewood available is pretty reasonable I found though, though maybe tending slightly on the generous side.
4. Ammo is way too plentiful. When you first get a weapon, scrounging for ammo makes it feel like every bullet counts, but you quickly end up with more ammo than you would ever need to kill every animal on the map. I finished Episode 2 with around 20 spare rounds and a fully loaded rifle, as well as 20ish flare rounds which I ended up just dropping. I finished episode 3 with around the same, and a ridiculous 76 spare revolver cartridges. I abandoned the flare gun because I had such a ridiculous ammo count. Even episode 4, where the difficulty has ramped up and the wolves are far more present, I had plenty to spare by the end. As an aside, i was religiously policing my brass early on as the game SAYS you can use them to craft ammo, but i never found out how to do this, even when gunpowder was added in episode 4, and i was never in enough need to investigate properly. Maybe a survival only feature?

I have a few other minor tweaks I think would maybe improve things slightly, but honestly nothing worth mentioning that isn’t episode-specific. Speaking of which…

Episode 1:

For me, episode one was the second best episode of the four. The story is pretty solid, does a good job of letting you learn the mechanics as you go, and impresses on you the importance of forethought and planning, while not punishing you too much for making mistakes.

I would actually really appreciate more moral choices like the convict at the farm. I’m genuinely glad that there’s no consequences to your actions for that, it becomes much more of a litmus test for your own moral compass without being told you made the right or wrong choice by getting rewards or punishments for it. Does this man deserve to die? Should you be the one to do it? Would killing him prevent him harming others in the future? Full disclosure, I stabbed his ass both times and didn’t feel a shred of regret over it, but it did leave me with a sense of unease as I waited for the hammer to drop from my decision, genuinely added a lot to the immersion in the game. I think a prime spot for this would be grey mother’s final request. I think you should have the option to just straight up lie to her that you went to the grave. Again, no repercussions for your laziness, just you have to sit and listen to her story knowing full well you haven’t done the rather minor task she has asked of you. Again, a great test of your character.

I do think that the tumbler locks should be totally removed, as they are easily unlocked without ever actually learning the code. It’s not a huge deal in this episode, but is more significant in later episodes. Perhaps making you type the numbers and randomly generating them will encourage players to actually hunt down the codes in their game, rather than googling or just brute forcing it (which I’ll admit I did more than once).

Another highlight of this episode for me is methuselah. I’m not sure if the writers are meant to be writing him as god (this is my personal theory, methuselah being the longest living human in the bible), or as almost a stand in for the writers themselves to comment on your moral choices, but his wise musings on your actions and the brief respite he offers from the bitter cold struck a good note with me. I do think however that he should get up and leave after your chats, with his fire dying out shortly after, as the endless heat he provides does somewhat make survival much more trivial, but so does grey mothers and honestly for episode 1 I’m totally willing to let it slide as you are still easing players into the mechanics, but I do have more issues with these eternal fires later on.

Other than these rather minor suggestions I think episode 1 is really well rounded and sets you up for the rest of the game. Moving on.

Episode 2:

For me this is the strongest episode of all, I honestly have almost no complaints. The survival seems to be knocked up a gear, the story progresses naturally and, for the most part, logically. The trapper, or should I say “trapper” (I’m convinced he’s a spook) is an interesting character that honestly I wish we had more time with, as our interaction boils down to maybe three or four short conversations.

I do think there’s some execution issues in this episode though, mainly surrounding the old bear. I spent the first while of this episode genuinely walking on eggshells; afraid that the bear would be lurking around every corner…..until i realised it just wasn’t. As far as I can tell, there’s no meeting the bear outside of scripted cutscenes until after you’ve forged the spear, and it feels like a wasted opportunity. I feel like it would have been better to have the bear randomly spawning throughout the maps to keep you on your toes, with the caveat that it should only spawn in more open areas so you have a chance to spot it and avoid it before you have a way to fight back. If the player is spotted before getting the spear, perhaps a few rifle rounds could make it retreat, similar to the initial bear spear fights. It would also be a nice ammo sink, since my Mackenzie was armed to the teeth with 30 rifle rounds and flare shells by the time I left the episode behind.

I do also find the forest talker storyline a little lacklustre. I’m never fully sure of their overall plans, and while helping the cabin guy get his evidence that the logging is illegal scratches your little eco-warrior itch, it just feels insignificant somehow. I also don’t think it’s ever explained who shot the man on the lake. Is it someone working for the logging company? If so, how did they even know to shoot this forest talker? They clearly hadn’t removed the evidence yet. And why is it happening now? Did they think “wow lots of crazy stuff happening round here, perfect opportunity to go shoot a dude in the middle of a frozen lake”? It’s just not fleshed out enough to make it a satisfying story.

Again, we get to see methuselah near the end of this chapter, but I haven’t got a goddamn clue if he has anything wise to say. I made the mistake of talking to him before I finished all the storylines in the episode, so he gives you a little nudge to go back and finish them if you want. When I did just that however, there was no second speech to reflect on the story beats of the episode (or on your moral choices, but that’s just because there was none). I don’t know if it was just an unfortunate glitch, or if he really is just sat there to say “don’t skip the stuff we worked hard to make please”. Maybe that developer stand in theory has more validity than I thought….

Episode 3:

For me, this was weaker than 1 and 2, but still a solid episode. That being said, I feel like the story writing is starting to get a bit funky here, with plot holes starting to rear their ugly head.

Initially I was slightly disappointed to leave Mackenzie behind and to jump into Astrid’s shoes, but quickly came to enjoy playing as her, but it did bring to my attention some annoying plot holes as well.

Technically this is an episode one plot hole, but it’s really bugging me that Astrid just walked away from the plane crash without even making an attempt to check on Mackenzie or retrieve the hard case. Like this episode impresses on you that she really does care about him, and she is desperate to get the case back, so why wouldn’t she make any effort to go check? It’s not like she would have been much further away from the crash site than Mackenzie was; so just wandering off to Milton seems confusingly out of character.

Playing as Astrid also raises another issue - she knows more than the player. When playing as mackenzie, you feel like you ARE him, as he learns things at the same time that you do. Astrid however, clearly knows a lot more than the player, and it seems like at times she is deliberately awkward to avoid the player learning what she knows, and it feels like it breaks immersion to separate the player and character like this. This is compounded by lots of her voice lines sounding more like she is talking to the player, rather than thinking out loud. Sadly, I think this isn’t fixable at this point as the story would need massive rewrites to fix this, and Mackenzie just wouldn’t fit in here at all (I’ll discuss later) so we move on.

I’m not sure if the temperature in this episode is lower generally, or if the clothing you get just isn’t as good as in episode two; but the cold really does become more of a challenge, but often feels almost a little ridiculous. I think it’s a by product of trying to make a small map feel bigger, coupled with the condensed timescales to give you a day night cycle, but Astrid's temperature seems to drop almost absurdly quickly. This means it feels like you have to stop far too regularly to light a fire, making progress feel slow in the early portions as you constantly are hunkering down to warm up with not much else to do but wait. It does provide a needed bump up to the difficulty, but feels a bit ridiculous at times.

There is also two problems I have that I think would be solved with one addition to the game. These are:

1. The food and wood gathering for the priest is laughably insufficient for the situation the survivors are in. The wood supplies can be gained in maybe two minutes of gameplay by walking behind the building opposite the church and breaking down the pallets there. Keeping the fire going for 48 hours seems like a decent start to the churches fire needs, but seems short sighted considering the situation. The food gathering is even worse. if I remember correctly, the requirement is somewhere around 16k calories. By the time you have all the survivors back, you have 16 people (by the way, someone needs to tell the devs plane cranes are not fender benders. You do not get this many survivors from a plane hitting goddamn mountain. There’s literally more survivors than corpses) in the church, 17 if you count the father too. That means you have less than 1000 calories per person. That’s maybe half a days food each. Not accounting for the fact that the injured and sick should really be getting EXTRA food to help them heal. Both of these stockpiles are woefully inadequate.
2. Carrying the survivors is boring. It isn’t difficult, it isn’t interesting, it’s just dull and painfully slow. It doesn’t even pose a challenge when you run into the Timberwolf packs, as all you need to do is take a second to drop the person, then deal with the pack as normal and pick them back up. The wolves literally just ignore the person, so you don’t even need to worry about staying close to them to protect them.

I think both of these problems could be solved by introducing some sort of craftable sled that could be dragged by Astrid would mix up the gameplay in interesting ways. I picture it like this: a sled that takes wood and maybe scrap metal for the skids to craft, that Astrid can drag behind her as a moving storage chest. Whole deer could be mounted on the sled and dragged back to the church for breaking down, meaning that a realistic calorie stockpile could be achievable. The same could happen with firewood, maybe there’s an abandoned logging area with logs you can break down, or an abandoned barn filled with a wood store that you can transport. Survivors can also be placed on the sled to make them easier to transport, however to keep things interesting, the wolf packs can smell the injured people and will stalk you slowly as you drag the sled, making you decide between faster two handed pulling, or slower one handed pulling that allows you to wield the revolver when the wolves are closing in, also forcing you to be more aware of what’s behind you as they try to sneak up on you, and making stopping less of an option as they will also attack the survivor on the sled.

I also found the story with Molly not only unsatisfying in that it has no actual resolution and doesn’t really make any difference, but also rather worrying in how it ends. I may have been picking it up wrong, but as far as I can tell the story ends with Molly admitting that she is now spending her days hunting men for sport, and the most Astrid can come up with to say is “stay safe”, like she isn’t on the phone to a deranged lunatic. Like that’s really where we are leaving the story? I’m fairly certain the bag of “meat” Molly had at the beginning is a human head given its shape, so she is also potentially a cannibal. Look at that bag again and tell me it doesn’t look like a head, it’s the first thing I thought when I saw it, and here constantly referring to it as just “meat” is unsettling. I feel like this whole plot really desperately needs a rewrite. Initially I thought her story was going to be another moral choice, do you turn her in for letting her husband die? Is that even the same as murdering him? Can her character be redeemed if so? But then it just goes off the deep end at the end! I’m not even saying that Molly killing the escaped convicts necessarily is a bad plot point, but her just randomly deciding to hunt men because her husband “held her back” is just insane. You could argue she’s only hunting the convicts; but she makes it perfectly clear it’s not just convicts when she asks about Mackenzie and says “I hope I don’t meet him then”, implying she would kill him if she did. I really don’t know where the writers were even planning on going with this, but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The whole radio tower section also just feels tacked on for no reason. Nothing is actually gained by going there other than learning mackenzie is alive, but you end up just walking straight back from where you came from to go to the mine, which is where you were going to go before the radio tower is even mentioned. It just seems like a pointless detour that could honestly have been skipped without many problems, and therefore feels like its just there to pad runtime.

Finally, what is going on with the special animal missions in this episode? I thought the Bigfoot one was actually a nice touch and a cool way to get a good coat, but the white deer and big fish ones just don’t seem to fit the plot at all. By all accounts, both the overall plot and the local plot put Astrid in a time crunch. Now admittedly, there isn’t actually one as you can take as long as you want, but still, in what world is she gonna go sightsee a deer and catch a fish that has absolutely no use? The cache missions on earlier episodes make sense as mackenzie would want survival supplies to keep himself going, and helping others survive seems like the sort of thing both Mackenzie and Astrid would do, but these just seem to serve no purpose. Very bizarre.

Episode 4:

For me, this is by far the weakest of the episodes, in terms of both story and gameplay. Which is odd considering it has probably the best plot idea of the story so far, but it just fails to deliver. In case you missed it earlier, SPOILER WARNING.

The premise is great, being forced to work for the convicts to get various items from the world, but secretly working against them to keep Donner in solitary. I’m sold.

First up, Mathis beats the warden almost to death, and you have to go get meds to save him. So off Mackenzie trots, with wolves everywhere that you have to deal with. So, you wander a bit through the prison and its grounds until you get to the infirmary, learn that the meds have been taken to a crash down the hill, and head off to get them. You also get on the phone with a mysterious woman who seems to be doing things to the prison to stop solitary being opened. More wolves, more dead people, we keep it moving. So far so good, I’m invested, and the wolves are a definite step up challenge wise. But then things start to go downhill.

As you get back to the prison, the game informs you that you should hide your equipment, or else the prisoners will confiscate it. In theory, this could add extra layers of complexity, having to find places to stash what you need the most, deciding what you really need to make it back to the prison, maybe even having to bring some things back to be confiscated to avoid suspicion. Sadly, none of this happens. You can just dump all your gear in the locker of the guard station you NEED to pass through on your way into the prison, and run buck naked back to the prison and no one even mentions it. Then, when you get back out for your next errand, you just sprint to the locker, pick everything up with one click, and carry on with your day. The premise is fine, even good, but the execution just adds a thirty second trip to a locker and then you’re good to go. Why this locker can take all your gear is beyond me. Yes, in real life you probably could stuff all of your stuff in it, but gameplay wise it would be much more interesting to either have to find stash spots, or for them to be very limited so as to make you pick and choose what gear you really need to survive. A big missed opportunity.

Regardless, we move on. Now, we have to head up to the old power dam to see if we can get it back up and running. I have no idea why they think a pilot could do that, but hey, they’re convicts and they’re desperate, who knows. Once you get to the dam, you speak to the woman again, now called Jace, and she tells you how to sabotage the system to try and keep solitary closed. You get a fun little puzzle section inside the power plant where you redirect steam to thaw pipes and open doors, which eventually gets you to a control machine. You need to mash this with a heavy hammer found in the power station, but the game never actually mentions this if you don’t have it, so you might need to run around for a while before you actually work it out. You give the machine a damn good thrashing (points for getting the reference) and head back through a convenient door that opens up inside the prison grounds. Once again, we just dump everything in the locker and run back to the prison.

Mathis explains that someone has sabotaged the machine in the power plant, but Mackenzie claims to know nothing about it, and he just….accepts it? Like it was CLEARLY Mackenzie, but he just accepts it was Jace. I mean maybe he doesn’t and he just needs the detonators in the next part, but it certainly comes across that he genuinely doesn’t believe Mackenzie sabotaged the plant. Wait, detonators?

Yes, the convicts have found dynamite and plan to blast their way into solitary, and Mackenzie needs to go get the detonators (I feel like this should be blasting caps? Correct me if I’m wrong. Normally I’d just call this nitpicking, but it’s significant in the story further on) from the abandoned mine. This is the longest trek on this map, but allows you to pick up a few side stories en route and deal with some Timberwolf attacks, so it feels engaging, even though by this point you again have plenty of ammo and noisemakers to deal with them.

The mine is another puzzle section basically, but not as complicated as the power station. There is a new mechanic around lack of oxygen, but honestly I only really worries about it once in the whole section, you have plenty of lung capacity to do what you need to do. You get the detonators, along with the forest talker cache which you have been receiving clues about as you progress through the mine. Again, this is let down by being a tumbler lock, so actually solving the clues is not necessary.

You then head back to the prison for the final act. When you get back, Mathis has his goons seize you and reveals he beat the warden to death while you were away, but got out of him that in fact YOU are the one sabotaging him….duh. He is just about to beat you to death when suddenly the prison is rocked by an explosion and everyone runs to see what happens. Apparently the detonators went off too early or something and lots of people are dead. Jace then comes on the loudspeakers and informs the prisoners that she is the one messing with them, and that she had full control of the prison and initiates a lockdown. Mackenzie makes a dash to the wardens office to get the hard case, and then escapes back to the dam to meet Jace, running from the prisoners as he goes. She tells him that she set off the detonators early, and They get cornered by Mathis and his goons, and end up having to dive into the water to escape.

Washing up downstream, they have a little chitchat and decide to keep moving.

So, what plot issues do we have here?

Firstly, how does Jace have any control in the prison? It’s mentioned she’s a hacker, fine, but how does the prison have any power??? It looks like the aurora doesn’t just stop electronics working, it actively fries the circuits, so even if you could get power to them they are just broke. Yet, Jace somehow manages to not only watch everything in the prison via CCTV, but also manages to initiate a lockdown remotely. Bearing in mind, none of this is happening during an aurora, so nothing should be powered at all.

Secondly, how the hell do the prisoners get out of lockdown so quickly? The whole point of prison lockdowns are that they aren’t easily escapable regardless of where you are! It’s not like there’s a big button on the corridor wall that says “end lockdown” they can press. This whole issue could be avoided by just not having mackenzie stand about like a dumbass listening to Mathis and Co explain what happened and just heading straight for the wardens office. This then explains how the prisoners are chasing him, as they were initially distracted by the explosion but still have free roam of the prison.

Third, how did Jace set off the detonators? These things aren’t exactly wifi enabled, they’ve come out of an abandoned mine for goodness sake. Even ignoring the random student who is a l33t haxor AND the mysteriously working power, there is no way she should have been able to remotely activate those detonators. I’d honestly have been more okay if you were told she is a crack sniper and shot them through an open window or something, cause there is no damn way she did it the way she says.

Fourth, and this actually also applies to episode three, how are the local phones all working still? These things absolutely run on electricity, and should be blacked out as much as anything else. Even a throwaway line about the phones being low-voltage enough to not be affected would satisfy me, even if it isnt a good answer, but its just never addressed.

Finally, why is Jace on the point of death after thirty seconds in the water? I totally understand that it would be a rough experience, but I feel like her already going into late-stage hypothermia and essentially giving up is waaaaaay too early, if anything the should be running about mad to try and warm up at this point. Also, Mackenzie repeatedly saying he’s going to do something and get a fire started, while once again just standing there listening to her mumble is so strange. Mackenzie is a pretty pragmatic guy, so why he isn’t springing into action is beyond me.

These might seem like minor gripes, but for me it really frustrated me that the explanations I was getting just didn’t actually explain anything at all.

There is also gameplay issues with this episode, and my biggest gripe is the lack of free roam space in the map. You are basically forced through pretty narrow corridors, with maybe one or two little shortcuts that save some time and cut a corner here or there. The most significant is the footbridge to the barn, but honestly you only use it once or twice at the most. Other than that you are just following almost linear level design, which I feel ruins a bit of the feel of the earlier episodes. If you wanted to walk in a straight line from mollys farm to the crossing you could! It was a terrible idea, but you could go where you wanted from where you wanted. I think this might have been done to funnel you more into wolf encounters to give it that added difficulty, but removing choices from me doesn’t improve my gameplay experience. I love this series for its open world aspects, removing them only hurts the game.

Also, as a final plot issue, WHY IS ASTRID JUST FLOATING ON A BOAT. I hope this has a damn good explanation in Episode 5, but curling up in a boat and just hoping to float in the right direction is a very strange choice for her to make. Don't give me no bullshit about how she was trying to row to perseverance mills, there ain't no oars in that boat.

Again, I know a lot of these criticisms may seem harsh, or nit-picky, and honestly for episodes 1-3 they really aren’t huge deals, but I feel 4 really dropped the ball on what has been a fantastic season, and didn’t at all deliver on a fantastic premise. While it was still enjoyable, I feel it lost a bit of the magic that made the first three so enjoyable, and I wish it had done it justice.

Anyway, this unhinged ramble had gone on far too long as it is, so I’ll leave it here. I hope at least some of the issues I raised are actually explained in game and I just missed them, so please correct me if so! I did 100% episodes 1&2, but for 3 I missed one of the “residents side of the story” caches and there was 0% chance I was going to wander for hours in the hope of stumbling across a random note somewhere with no direction.

Let me know what you all think! Or if you have any suggestions beyond what I’ve mentioned here! To leave you with a question: Im planning on trying out a long term survival mode game, but is it worth getting Far Territory? is this another story driven DLC, or just added flavour for survival mode?

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