The original Dying Light game was great for quite a few reasons. Primarily, it’s still one of the best zombie themed survival games out there. It has a huge open world ready for exploration and well-executed FPS mechanics. Following the E3 2018, we got a chance to learn more about the game’s sequel, Dying Light 2. Among the game’s many features, the branching story was highlighted as one of the most crucial parts of the experience. On the technical side of things, we also discovered that the devs are focused on nailing that frame rate.
Veteran game designer and writer Chris Avellone has taken charge of the long-awaited sequel. This was tremendous news, since Avellone worked on some pretty amazing narrative driven classics such as, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 (released last year).
In a recent interview, Chris Avellone explains more about game design and the process of creating a video game narrative. “Working in video games is a lot like being a virtual gamemaster,” he explains, “so many of those techniques for making sure the player is entertained are much the same as being a tabletop gamemaster,” Avellone said.
“I’ve done a lot of branching storylines, branching dialogues, and a variety of reactive events and different endings in most of the titles I’ve worked on, so to be able to apply that to an open-world space like Dying Light 2 is a fun challenge,” Avellone added. “Because I’ve had a chance to work on extremely reactive games, I know some of the best techniques to organise the flow of the plot and characters to account for a wide variety of actions.”
Also, Avellone and the development team at Techland are dedicated to making something that’s far from your average zombie game. The goal is to be unique, and as far as the RPG genre goes, they really want to shakes things up.
“I’m addicted to challenging a lot of tropes, and trying to flip them on their head and see what shakes out story-wise,” Avellone explained. “I also tend to favor antagonists and rivals that have a higher agenda – not because it makes them superior, but because ideally players don’t just want to prove themselves physically superior, but they also want to challenge your enemy’s philosophy to the point where it breaks down… which I see as a far superior victory to simply punching an enemy’s lights out.”
For more details about the game, check out our E3 2018 Dying Light 2 preview.
So, are you guys interested in taking on those nasty zombies, in this parkour-flavored sequel?
[Source: VG247]
