Will Mackenzie

Will Mackenzie works as a pilot for Jackrabbit Remote Transport prior to the First Flare event. He is the ex-husband of Dr. Astrid Greenwood.

When Astrid approaches him as her last hope of reaching a patient in an isolated region of northern Canada, he hesitantly accepts and agrees to fly Astrid to Great Bear Island.

After a tense conversation between Will and Astrid about a shared, traumatizing loss, the plane goes crashing down into the northern Canadian wilderness of Great Bear Island after a mysterious geomagnetic storm knocks out all power to his instrument panel.

Stranded far from the closest human civilization while being lost, wounded and alone, Mackenzie must quickly master basic wilderness survival skills if he's to last long enough to find Astrid and understand how his world has just changed forever.

Age: 44 years old
Hometown: Blackcreek, BC, Canada
Relatives:
Astrid Greenwood (ex-wife)
unnamed child (deceased)
Jack (father - deceased)
Occupation: Previously Bush Pilot, now a survivor in the wilderness
Apperence: Will has short, brown hair and blue eyes. He also sports a relatively unkept beard and a faded red toque. He wears a light green sweater underneath an orange and blue parka, he has greyish black pants and brown leather boots.

After waking up and recovering from the plane crash a day after the First Flare occurred, Mackenzie makes his way out of the ravine he was stuck in, looking for Astrid along the way. He finds his way to a road leading him to the Town of Milton.

He arrives to find the town abandoned. Only one structure show signs of life.

He meets Grey Mother, an elderly, seemingly blind woman, in her home after she fires a warning shot at him. She explains to him how all the residents have fled after the storm, fearing they might become trapped in the town after the First Flare and a serious storm hit the town.

After she tasks Mackenzie with fetching her firewood and food, she explains to him how the power went out and people started to get cold, hungry, and scared, and, how, eventually, the few remaining fled. She mentions how a stranger (suggested to be Astrid) passed through the town with "angry voices" trailing her. Grey Mother tells Mackenzie to go investigate the tunnel at the end of the road.

Mackenzie arrives at the tunnel to find it collapsed. A crashed prison transport bus shows signs that Astrid may have passed through. In the bus the word "Perseverance" is written on the floor is what is presumed to be blood.

Mackenzie goes back to Grey Mother, and she gives him one final task, to visit the old farmhouse and retrieve a key to her lockbox in the bank. After Mackenzie retrieves her safety deposit box he finds out it was all for a piece of jewelry special to Grey Mother.

She tells him to bring the pearls to "Lily" at the graveyard. At first, Mackenzie is confused, but eventually realizes that Lily was Grey Mother's daughter.

Upon returning, she tells him the story of how her daughter died. Grey Mother gives Mackenzie the key to her daughter's trunk, where he finds climbing equipment. She tells him how to leave the area and to leave her behind, as she cannot escape the town, even if she wanted to.

Mackenzie bids farewell to Grey Mother and leaves Milton through the back mountains. His rope snaps on the way down, but he recovers and continues on to a cave. Upon entering and going through the cave he finds his way to Mystery Lake, where he encounters Jeremiah, the old Trapper, being attacked by the Old Bear. He grabs the Trapper's rifle and fires at the Old Bear, ending the episode.

After helping Jeremiah to his cabin and healing him up. Mackenzie awaits the Old Trapper's awakening. After Jeremiah wakes up, he tells Mackenzie to go search for better medication at the Carter Hydro Dam.

Mackenzie makes his way to old Carter Dam where he learns that it's been abandoned for a while. He finds the Control Room to be locked and that it needs power to be turned on. Mackenzie finds the meds and returns to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah awakens once again, after Mackenzie gives him the meds he assures Will that the only way they'll survive is if they kill the Old Bear. Mackenzie then asks him if he saw the Aurora when the First Flare event happened. Jeremiah says he has never seen anything like it before and that the wildlife has been acting strangely. Jeremiah proposes that the two help each other survive.

After that, Jeremiah tells the tale of the Old Bear. We get to know, that the bear can only be killed by a spear, which has been used by the Spencer family. By the legend, the Bear Spear is still in the Spencer family Hunting Lodge. On the way to the other side of Broken Railroad Mackenzie encounters the bear twice.

Mackenzie travels to the Lodge and finds the spear, then goes back to the Maintenance Shed to repair it. After accidentally falling over a dead survivor he finds a note from a group called the Forest Talkers.

Mackenzie then travels back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah declines Mackenzie offer to leave and suggest Jeremiah's Survival School as a means to help Mackenzie learn to survive. This is currently a side quest in Episode 2.

When we get back to Jeremiah, he tells Will, that he could turn on the radio, but couldn't get any useful informations, the old device is barely caught a bit of music and talking. We have to get some radio parts, from the signal towers in Forlorn Muskeg. The 3 towers are marked on the map. 2 of the 3 towers are guarded by the Old Bear.

On the way back to Jeremiah Mackenzie gets attacked by the bear at the tunnel between Mystery Lake and Forlorn Muskeg. (This is a scripted part, can not be avoided) The Bear attacks Will, knocking him unconscious, and then drags him to his den, which can be found at the top region of Forlorn Muskeg (yes, the map is still available). This interrupts the quest Signal to Noise and starts the quest What One Man Can Do. Will has to navigate trough the labyrinth-like den, to find his spear, and kill the bear finally.

Then Mackenzie gets back to Jeremiah, and gets immediately unconscious again. When wakes up, an Aurora is in progress, and the radio seems to work. Will sits down to the radio, and starts finding a frequency to communicate. During his tries, the radio breaks, and cannot be used again. Jeremiah of course, gets mad, but then reveals the sad truth: the radio is unusable, Mackenzie has to deliver the message. Relay a message. Jeremiah tells Mackenzie about a person, who lives near Perseverance Mills and an important message that he needs to receive. That message is Wintermute. Soon after they say their goodbyes and Mackenzie is on his way to the Dam.

When Mackenzie reaches the Dam when the Aurora in the sky he encounters Methuselah who invites him to sit by the fire and talk a bit. He warns Mackenzie about the changes the world is going through and how humanity is paying the price. Mackenzie is confused but soon realizes the answer to the question "How Far Will You Go to Survive?"

He leaves Methuselah behind and enters the Dam. He makes his way through the Dam into the back room where he is hit on the head and knocked out. He awakens to find Mathis standing there, he begins to interrogate and punch Mackenzie, questioning him about Astrid's locked case. Mackenzie responds with some snarky comments just before Mathis reveals he may have encountered Astrid. After responding with desperation, Mathis picks up a hatchet and knocks him out. Ending Episode 2.

At the start of Episode 4: Fury, then Silence, Will awakens on a stretcher being carried by two convicts, Heller and Vachon. Led by Mathis, the gang makes their way to Blackrock Prison before being ambushed by timber wolves. During the scuffle, Will falls down a cliff, and manages to escape the convicts temporarily, before being caught by Mathis to end the prologue.

The first chapter finds Will locked up inside the prison in a cell. When he wakes up, the man in the cell next to Will reveals himself to be Franklin, the warden of the prison. He tells Will about the history of the prison and its notoriety, before telling Will that the reason Mathis has come here is to free his son Donner, a psychotic criminal who wants nothing more than to kill everyone on Great Bear Island. Mathis then returns with Heller and Vachon, and beats Franklin within an inch of his life. As Franklin lays on the verge of death, Will strikes a deal with Heller and Vachon to go retrieve the prison infirmary's emergency medkit, which contains strong enough medicine to save the warden. Will then leaves the main prison building, and upon arriving at the infirmary talks with a mysterious stranger over the landline phone. He then retrieves the emergency kit from a dead guard near Cutty's Cave, returning to the prison to save the warden.

The second chapter starts with Mathis threatening to kill Franklin unless Will does his bidding. He then sends Will through the western part of Blackrock in order to reach the power plant, so that power can be returned to the prison to free Donner. Once Will arrives at the plant, the mysterious stranger directs him over the phone to destroy the mechanism that provides power to the solitary confinement wing. Will does so, seemingly thwarting Donner's release.

The third chapter begins yet again in Will's cell, with Mathis revealing that he found out about Will's sabotage, and is now aware of the stranger directing Will.

His new plan to free his son is to use dynamite taken from the Last Prospect mine. He sends Will to retrieve the detonators needed to utilize the dynamite, under threat of the warden's death. As Will makes his way through the mine and retrieves the detonators, the mysterious stranger calls again, now revealed to be Jace, a grad student who was caught out on the roads by the First Flare and is now holed up in one of the prison watchtowers. She tells Will that she is now going to pursue the "Nuclear" option, before Will returns with the detonators to the prison.

The final chapter of the episode begins with Franklin's corpse being wheeled past Will's cell, as Mathis reveals that Franklin told him everything that Will had done and how Jace had guided him the entire way. Before Mathis can execute Will, however, the detonators set the dynamite off prematurely, engulfing much of the prison in flames. Will escapes his cell, and Jace blocks Mathis from getting to Will via manipulating the prison doors, as an Aurora has provided temporary electricity to the prison again. Will then runs through the prison, retrieves the hardcase from the warden's office, and escapes into the steam tunnels from earlier. He then meets with Jace at the power plant, before they are cornered by Mathis and his gang. After a struggle with Mathis, Will and Jace dive into the river running through the plant, and wash ashore downstream. Will offers to start a fire to warm the half-frozen Jace before the episode ends.

The Long Dark is a first-person survival game set in the frozen, post-disaster wilderness of Northern Canada on a fictional location called Great Bear Island. Following a global electronic failure known as the "Quiet Apocalypse," players navigate, and survive in a hostile, snow-covered environment filled with abandoned towns, forests, and icy, coastal landscapes.
Location: Great Bear Island, a remote, rugged, and heavily forested Canadian setting, inspired by British Columbia.
Atmosphere: A "Quiet Apocalypse" where all technology has been disabled, creating a silent, isolated, and, hauntingly beautiful landscape.
Environment: Extremely cold, with varied, terrain, including the town of Milton, coastal, highways, mountains, and icy, lakes.
Environment: Extremely cold, with varied, terrain, including the town of Milton, coastal, highways, mountains, and icy, lakes.
Time Period: Likely set in the near future (around 2020-2030), yet featuring a, mix of modern and, outdated, technology due to, the, isolation of the, island.

Astrid Greenwood is the deuteragonist of the story of The Long Dark. A researcher wishing to travel to Great Bear Island with a mysterious Hardcase, Astrid is separated from Mackenzie after their small plane crashes to the ground in the northern Canadian wilderness. The two are separated and forced to survive in the unforgiving reality of the Quiet Apocalypse, as Astrid is forced to continue her journey to Perseverance Mills alone and without the Hardcase.

An old, blind women living alone in the Milton House, Grey Mother is the only survivor found in Milton after a nearby Crashed Prison Transport Bus containing several Convicts abducted everyone in town and forced them into the Old Schoolhouse before it burned down with everyone inside. She successfully defended herself with a Hunting Rifle and slowly helps Mackenzie find Astrid after warming up to him. Grey Mother keeps her eyes covered by a cloth behind her head.

In Survival Mode, Grey Mother's home is ransacked, with knocked over furniture and several bullet holes in the wall facing away from her overturned rocking chair and blanket suggesting that she was taken by Convicts and placed with the other residents of Milton inside the Old Schoolhouse before it burned down.

A mysterious old man that seems to be able to travel around the Island with no difficulty despite its treacherous conditions, Methuselah is a "guardian angel" that appears to Mackenzie multiple times after he crash lands on the Island. He explains to the Mackenzie that the world is changing, and that human acts of neglect towards nature are being repaid by the onset of the "Quiet Apocalypse," and that he must condition himself to survive in this new world.

An old hermit trapper living within the Trapper's Homestead in Mystery Lake, Jeremiah is found being mauled by a bear at the end of Episode 1 and is saved and nursed back to help by Mackenzie. He is the deuteragonist of Episode 2, tasking Mackenzie to kill the Old Bear stalking them if they are to ever leave the area. He ultimately tasks Mackenzie with delivering a message to his friend Atwood at Perseverance Mills; Wintermute.

Jeremiah's homestead is vacant in Survival Mode, suggesting that he may have been successfully killed and eaten by the Old Bear.

Mathis is the central antagonist of Wintermute. Found at the end of Episode 2 taking Mackenzie hostage, he is revealed to be the leader of a gang of Convicts in Episode 4, who have made their home base of operations inside a Federal Penitentiary in the Blackrock region. Cold and unempathetic to the suffering of others, his current goal is to free his son Donner and escape the Island, possibly with his Convict army in tow to conquer other parts of the world.

2 Convicts that serve as the right and left hands of Mathis, Vachon and Heller serve as the secondary antagonists of Episode 4, taking orders directly from Mathis himself to keep an eye on Mackenzie.

A young graduate student in astrophysics, Jace has become trapped in a guerilla war against the Convicts of Blackrock Prison, teaming up with Mackenzie to prevent their further expansion into the nearby wilderness. She is ultimately rescued by Mackenzie, and the two journey to Perseverance Mills in search of Atwood at the end of Episode 4.

Astrid Greenwood and Will Mackenzie had a son at one point in the past, with his death affecting the two and causing a divorce (and Astrid to reclaim her maiden name).

The son's name is never mentioned, but is brought up the start of Episode 1 during Will and Astrid's conversation about flying to Great Bear Island. Mackenzie initially mistakes Astrid's desire to fly to the Great Bear as a way of bringing their son back, but Astrid rejects this idea, starting an argument between the two that neither feels empathy for the mourning of their son.

Despite the divorce, both Will and Astrid kept their wedding rings, possibly to remember the good times they had with their son and former spouse. Will later sympathizes with Grey Mother's predicament regarding her own daughter after having lost his own, saying that "Losing a child is like..." with Grey Mother finishing him, "Like losing your life".