Update: The original report had the incorrect interviewee name and designation. This has been corrected.
Original Story:
Dying Light 2 was announced recently at E3, and while we would have all been perfectly happy with a sequel that did more of what the original did (but, you know, better), Techland went above and beyond and delivered a game with branching narratives and reactive player choices, all of which is helmed by the writing mastermind Chris Avellone.
Interestingly enough, and as you would expect, this is also going to help the game’s co-op experience in multiple ways. We recently spoke with Techland’s Lead Game Designer Tymon Smektala, and in our conversation, he gave us several interesting details about the game’s co-op experience. For starters, we found out that if you play co-op in someone else’s world, when you return back to your own game, you will get to keep all the items you collected.
“Yes,” was Smektala’s answer when we posed the question of items to him. “You will get some benefit out of playing with your friends. Aside from that, you’ll also be able to experience other versions of the story, other directions the narrative can take you.”
That sounds interesting, right? Smektala went deeper into that particular tidbit when we asked him what multiplayer options there will be in Dying Light 2, giving us a lot of great sounding details on the co-op. Basically, thanks to the game’s branching paths and choice-based mechanics, when you go into some other player’s world, you might be able to see it in a completely different state than your own game’s world based on any different choices they may have made.
“We believe co-op is deep in the Dying Light DNA,” Smektala told GamingBolt. “So you’ll be able to experience all of this in co-op. And the cool part is that each player can create his own version of the city. So if I play my game in my world it will be different than the things I will see when I visit your world.”
It should be interesting to see, but I guess it depends on just how different the consequences to a player’s choices might be, and just how branching the branching paths will truly be. Given the fact that Chris Avellone is the game’s lead writer, though, I’d assume they’re going to be pretty damn branching. Dying Light 2 is slated for a launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, though a release date for the game hasn’t yet been announced.