YMMV / The Long Dark

• Angst? What Angst?: The player character is remarkably nonchalant about all the corpses they stumble across.
• Demonic Spiders: Bears. There's not a whole lot you can do against them unless you've got a safe place to shoot them. Or run. Wolves used to be this until a patch changed the close combat system since it was hard to figure out what to do with the wolf attacking you.
  • Timberwolves, which are wolves but far worse - they'll attack you in a pack of two or more and aren't easily scared off by fire or even bullets. Defending yourself with a close-range tool isn't reliable as they may instead circle around you and take turns performing Hit-and-Run Tactics against you instead of jumping on you to cause a struggle. Tossing marine flares (not normal flares) and shooting them repeatedly (possibly even if you manage to flat out kill one in a single shot) will be necessary to get them to quit bothering you. Them attacking you in packs also makes it a lot harder to slaughter and harvest them for resources since it's pretty likely they will absolutely be back if you stay around any dead timberwolves so you'll only be safe after killing off the entire pack.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The wolf who formerly spawned inside the Carter Dam building is called "Fluffy" by the Hinterlands forum community. She was removed when the dam was filled with props, because the AI pathfinding couldn't properly function inside the new interior. She has since relocated to the cannery workshop in Bleak Inlet.
  • Similarly, the Old Bear that appears in The Hunted challenges is sometimes referred to as Smokey.
  • Pleasant Valley is sometimes referred to as Unpleasant Valley for its unpredictable weather.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The player can obtain a massive amount of meat by shooting a bear once while near shelter, going inside and sleeping for an hour while the bear bleeds to death, and then going outside to harvest the several days worth of meat it has. It makes the Whiteout challenge a breeze, as food is the hardest thing to obtain to complete it.
  • A lit torch and sticks allows you start a line of short campfires, leveling up your fire-starting skill extremely quickly.
• Goddamned Bats: While zombies are explicitly not in this game, wolves fill their role and become this if you're prepared. If they attack you, they need to be dealt with immediately, but if you've got the supplies, they won't ever be fatal unless they gang up on you. Wolves will also more than likely die if you have a Survival Knife equipped because they will bleed out after a few hours.
  • The biggest annoyance of wolf attacks for a prepared player is the torn clothing affliction. While any lost health can just be regained by sleeping and bandages for bleeding is easy to obtain, having the condition of all your perfect clothing go down by 30% is a serious pain.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Given that the voices of the sandbox character are Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, this has led to the meme: "Save the galaxy from the Reapers, died in Canada." ^note Meer and Hale were the voices of Commander Shepard, the hero of the Mass Effect trilogy. It's also implied that Earthborn Shepard is of Canadian descent due to them mentioning Montreal in a conversation.
  • "Hope nobody needs this anymore." ^note Some "inspect" voice lines by the survivor indicate that they're still irked by the prospect of stealing in a survival situation, even if said item is scrap metal or a stick on the ground. Expect to hear this a lot with all the stuff you'll be picking up.
• Narm:
  • Near the end of Episode 2, there is a secret where Jeremiah reveals a radio hidden in the floorboards of his cabin. However, this is lifted straight from the in-game engine, so if something has been dropped over-top accidentally (like a hide for curing), the clipping makes things look ridiculous or downright odd. This was fixed in the Redux version, as the radio is always on Jeremiah's table, and using it during the Aurora is a plot point.
  • Some of the survivors' voice lines seem a bit inappropriate for the dire situations you often find yourself in. Hearing Astrid declare "The guy who drank his own pee doesn't seem so crazy right now!" while being attacked by a wolf kind of ruins the tension.
• Nausea Fuel: The December 2023 update added new harvesting animations, so you now have the pleasure of seeing your survivor stick their bare hands into a rotting deer carcass. The accompanying fleshy sounds don't help, either.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Reviewers have reached a consensus that the journeys the player takes while going from Point A to Point B is the game's selling point, and the plot is little more than a vehicle.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Archery. The only way to level the skill up is to either make arrows (good luck finding all the materials) or actually hit an animal. But unless your level is high enough, you can only fire it while standing up, which means you can't get as close to the animal as you need to; also, the string creaks when it's being drawn, also scaring the animal; and the bow sways from side to side which makes it difficult to aim. Oh, and you can't repair the bow. You just have to keep making them.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The Custom difficulty allows players to change a wide range of settings to their liking. The fanbase often uses this to create challenges that are even harder than Interloper:
  • Dead Man Challenge (DMC): No health recovery allowed except with rare and finite stims. All settings are changed to be even more difficult than Interloper.
  • No One Gets Out Alive (NOGOA): Basically the same as Dead Man, but the player also spawns at midnight in a blizzard and is not allowed any feats.
  • Deadworld: No animals of any kind and few natural resources. Other settings are the same as DMC or NOGOA.
  • Outerloper: Interloper, but the player isn't allowed to enter any indoor locations.
  • Pacifist: No killing animals. This one is actually officially in the game as an achievement, but some players take it one step further than the required 25 days and try to survive indefinitely.
• Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: Five, six, pick up sticks. And feathers.
• Spiritual Adaptation: It's either the best videogame adaptation of The Grey (man survives plane crash, is hunted by a pack of wolves, and must survive a cold unforgiving Canadian wilderness) ever, the best videogame adaptation of The Revenant (man is left for dead after a bear attack and must survive a cold unforgiving American wilderness) ever, or the most faithful adaptation of To Build a Fire (a man desperately tries to build a fire before he freezes to death) ever.
• That One Level:
  • Timberwolf Mountain. It has only one true shelter and a few caves. Other than that, There's nothing but cliffs, cargo crates (that need heavy items to crack open but are filled with supplies), and lots of predators.
  • Forlorn Muskeg. It's a frigid level with little shelter, lots of weak ice. And bears.
  • Bleak Inlet. Bitterly cold, timberwolves everywhere and high winds. Rope climbs are necessary to unlock the workshop with its ammo workbench and milling machine, which is only possible during auroras that make the timberwolves that hang out in the cannery even more aggressive. You only have to unlock it once and can come back at any time, but as a final "fuck you," there might be a wolf in there.
  • Ash Canyon. Lots of rope climbs and difficult to navigate with scarce shelter. For most players, it's get in, get the crampons and backpack, and get out.
  • Hushed River Valley. No man-made shelter on the entire map, and lots of predators. A true test of your survival skills as you scramble for the moose-hide satchel.
  • Pleasant Valley, surprisingly. Long walks between shelters and contemptible weather make getting lost potentially fatal if visibility drops.
  • For the story mode, the Bear Cave level when MacKenzie is in a No-Gear Level against the Old Bear. The last section in particular can be a challenge, because the bear's AI has it wander at random until it hits a wall, which often puts it right in the path of the player for some time, in addition the Scrappy Mechanic of stealth sections in non-stealth games.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Many a player has been hit by a wolf while admiring the setting.

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