Dying Light’s Success Gave Techland Confidence In Ambitious Ideas For Sequel

Dying Light 2 is coming to us next year, and you can tell Techland is swinging for the fences. It’s got a mishmash of a lot of big ideas and ambitions that could make for one incredibly interesting title should the developer manage to grab that gold ring. And it was thanks to the success of the first game that the company felt bold enough to make that jump.

The first Dying Light came at a time when Techland was less sure of how viable their vision would be, according to a private Q&A that was transcribed by OnlySP. While Dead Island had been a success, they weren’t sure if the spiritual followup would hit quite the same way since the tone was much different. But since it was a huge success both critically and financially, they decided to trust their vision on Dying Light 2 and all their biggest ideas.

“Before the release of the first one, we were really, really nervous to see how the game would be received. We tried to do a couple of different things: we had open-world parkour, which basically allows you to climb anything and anywhere; there was the focus on melee combat. These were new ideas back then, so we didn’t know how it would be received by the community, but because the reception was so warm—it was a business success, it was a critical success—we got confidence to follow our own ideas and our own instincts.”

Dying Light 2 will release in the Spring of 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It’ll definitely be interesting to see if Techland lives up to their admirable ambitions. And if you want a little extra faith that it will, check out our interview with Lead Game Designer Tymon Smektala about the game.