The Long Dark | Controls Walkthrough Video

The Long Dark is a first-person survival game. In this video we’re going to be having a look at the controls and also a few of the features that you can use to help make the game a little bit more accessible.
There is a story mode and a survival mode. In survival mode one of the main ways that you can help make the game a little bit more accessible is to customize some of the features. There are several difficulty levels.
The first one is “Pilgrim” which is a more passive way to play the game as animals don’t attack you.
Although the challenge of the game is still based around survival there are several different difficulty levels within the game and you can customize these further.
The first difficulty setting is Pilgrim this makes most of the survival elements a little bit more forgiving and also the animals will only attack you if they’re provoked.
There are similar difficulty settings within the story mode. For example, you could select Green Survivor which is similar to the Pilgrim setting from the survival mode.
In survival mode you can also customize difficulty levels by changing certain settings such as how quickly your character will lose health from the cold or from hunger or from thirst for example. There are lots of settings that can be changed so it’s worth having a look at these. Another way to customize the difficulty level within the game is by the region that you select to start in.
Some parts of the game have more shelters resources and wildlife for example.
In this video we’re playing the PC version of The Long Dark whilst using an Xbox One controller. The controls are the same for whichever console you’re playing on.
As with many first-person games you use left stick for walking and the right stick for aiming the camera.
You also have to use the camera to look around for when picking up items for example and you do have to be quite accurate to do this.
Many of the interactions involve pressing the “A” button on the XBox controller or the “Cross” button on the PlayStation controller.
For certain actions you do have to hold a button down. So here we’re having to hold down “A” to open the door.
If holding down buttons is difficult there’s a way that you can change this to a button press within the settings.
Although the menu does say that you can convert all press and hold actions into press actions, there are some other parts of the games where you do still have to hold down buttons or triggers however.
Now that we have changed this setting, you’ll see that we only have to press the A button to open the first aid box for example.
One example of an area where you do still have to hold a button down is for the item wheel where you have to hold down either “LB” or “L1” and then use the left stick and the “A” button to select an item so with the lantern that we’ve just found, you do need to hold down “RT” to ignite it and you do need to hold it down throughout the action to ignite the lantern.
So with some items that when you pick them up you can press X to equip them straight away.
If you want to use them there and then this would save you having to go to the item wheel to find it. If you have a stone then you can select it from the weapon area in the item wheel.
Use the triggers to aim and throw.
There’s no cursor so you do have to aim quite carefully by aiming with your hand.
So here we’ve managed to stun a rabbit you have to then press the interact button to pick it up, but you do have to be quite quick to be able to grab it before it gets up and runs away.
There are also other weapons that you can find and you will need to be able to react quite quickly if you’re under attack by an animal.
The weapons include bows and rifles that you can use to either hunt or to defend yourself.
To shoot the bow, aim and hold the right trigger to draw back the bow and then release the same button to shoot.
You can scavenge meat and other materials from the animals but you do need to check how long this will take as you can still die from hunger thirst or the cold.
Some animals such as wolves and bears will attack you in the game.
When a wolf attacks, if you press the “A” button at the right time you can quickly fight them
off.
If they manage to attack you successfully then you need to rapidly press “A” to fight them off you can turn these types of attacks off in the game by choosing a more passive game mode.
Another button is to use the right bumper which you use for sprint this is a button that you’re not going to have to use too often because you do run out of energy very quickly and it takes quite a long time for your energy to come back up so you’re going to want to have to save if when you need it in the game you will have to light fires quite regularly.
To do this you can select fire from the item wheel and use the right stick to aim and find a suitable place.
Press the right trigger to select a place and then press “A” to start the fire. Once you’ve selected what material you want to use you then have to wait for the fire to light.
You don’t have to hold the button down or press anything whilst this is happening. Sometimes the fire won’t start first time and you need to start the process again once you started.
You can add fuel to make the fire last longer you can use the fire to cook meat and also craft water from snow once crafted you will then need to boil it to make sure that it’s safe to drink.
Another way to access some of the more commonly used items on your item wheel is to use the D-Pad. Left on the D-Pad brings up the fire.
Up on the D-Pad allows you to cycle through your light sources.
Right on the D-Pad lets you cycle through the weapons and down on the D-Pad lets you drop the decoy.
If playing the game with mouse and keyboard, it is worth knowing that you can remap the keyboard bindings.
A nice feature is that you can use a standard controller alongside the keyboard.
This can be especially helpful if you’re using a switch interface that emulates keyboard presses, such as a Don Johnston.
Thank you for watching this video and there’s anything that we can do to help, then please do get in touch.