The Hinterlands Expansion, "The Feathered Line" (Build 0.6.2), is coming out this Friday, October 14th, at 5PM UTC.

You can check more or less what 5PM UTC means for your time zone on the image below.

Because of real life circumstances, it took us a while to get this update out, but now we can safely say it's here. I think it's fair for us to take a minute to refresh your memory.

When we started writing the Hinterlands we weren't sure what the reaction would be like. It was a big departure from what the story had been like up to that point. Putting it kindly, it was a bit bold of us to take the focus away from Asterion and the MC to show this seemingly unrelated story about Storm and P searching for the hotel. But we thought we could pull it off, and the emphatically positive reaction to it assured us that we did.

However, in reality we had to cut out a few good pieces of the story. Strictly speaking they were not essential, but they contained some of what we thought were our strongest ideas. In a way it raised my spirits a bit that people liked the story so much even in its "incomplete" state. It only made sense to put in the effort to finish it.

We were missing five events:

THE WHOREHOUSE

THE CAVE

RETURN TO THE COLONEL'S ESTATE

THE PARADE

...and, as required of all stories involving the supernatural...

THE CEMETERY

(we also wanted to overhaul T̴̠͓͐̑̄H̵̦̤͖̪̾̓̿͆̕E̴̛͇̋̒́͗ ̸̨̺̙͇̲̈́̀̒̈͆͘͝Ȁ̸̱̺̈́͋͝Ǹ̴̰̘̙̮̎̽́͠Ṫ̷̡̫̹̠͜H̸͉̳̠͔̘̜̼͌̃Ì̷̻̺͔͊̉̒̆̑̕ͅĻ̷̪͇͓̭͈̈̇̑̓͠L̶̞̒̐̚͝)

On top of that, for a while now nanoff wanted to redo P's and Storm's sprites, to better match the current level of quality we see in Kota's and Khenbish's sprites. This gave him a good chance to do it, and I hope you'll appreciate it.

So, here we are. With this update, which we are calling The Feathered Line, I can say that the Hinterlands III segment is well and truly complete. This expansion is a love letter for all who played it putting themselves in the roles of detectives, trying to piece everything together — the plot, folklore, mythology, Latin American magical realism and, of course, Storm's story. Speaking as a writer, I think I did some of my best work with it, and I feel indescribably honored and blessed seeing how it had such a strong impact on people. I hope you will enjoy what we prepared for the expansion, and that it will provide you with an unforgettable experience — both of seeking out the truth as a detective should and gaining a deeper understanding of Storm.

Speaking more specifically about Storm, the The Feathered Line fills in some gaps about his story and personality which weren't put there intentionally. If you aren't much of a detective but you love Storm, then you can consider this expansion as outright essential. I feel that not only is his character fully fleshed out, so is his arc with P. I think people might come out of it with a new kind of appreciation for him.

The Hinterlands Expansion is also a love letter to some of the games that most influenced me as a, shall we say, "game designer" — namely, Bloodborne and Dark Souls. You can even think of it as our attempt at a FromSoft-esque DLC. It's an addition to the base game that gives a yet more challenging experience to those who wanted more. In order to access it you will also have to follow some instructions, but don't worry;  we'll publish them in a spoiler-free format along when the game comes out next week.

And, in a truly Fromsoft-esque fashion, we just had to give this DLC a cool-sounding name. You know, like Artorias of the Abyss, The Old Hunters, The Ringed City... And so... Well, now you know why we gave this update a name. As a cute little look behind the scenes: we were split between calling it The House of Ill Repute or The Feathered Line. In the end we did a cheeky thing and decided to go with whichever one fit with what dilukha chose to illustrate. So, The Feathered Line it is.

I am as proud of The Feathered Line as I am of the "Original Hinterlands". Like everything in Minotaur Hotel they were written with love, but they had a special kind of love that connected to my heritage, my culture, the folklore my father used to tell me as a boy and the love for literature he gave me.  The only way I'd be prouder is if we had released it on September 7th, which is a day featured in the story itself — but I think we can be forgiven for that, considering we were dealing with real life circumstances.

As usual we will do a Q&A SESSION to get everyone hyped up for what's to come.

We are doing it on our forum this time. Just head on to this thread and send us your questions! We'll be answering them over the week so the sooner you post them the sooner you'll get your answer.

To close it off, in case you were impressed by dilukha's work, here's his art without the text.