Developer Techland's Dying Light 2 has sparked a reinvigorated interest in fans lately, mostly pertaining to the developer's breaking of silence regarding the project. As rumors started to spread, ranging from a potential Microsoft acquisition deal, to the project being canned, Dying Light 2 is still very much on the way.
Techland has now reassured players about the project, and that new information on Dying Light 2 is due very soon. While fans wait out on the game with bated breath, Dying Light 2 might need to avoid a well-known open world trope to ensure delivering on its promises, which is the sense of scale.
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After a long and arduous wait on behalf of zealous fans, developer Techland has finally doled out some information about Dying Light 2 that should reassure fans of the game's development. The developer has recently claimed that Dying Light 2 would feature an open world four times the original game's size. Techland also goes in-depth about how making a big open world isn't as big of an issue, mostly due to the C-Engine, which allows for the rapid creation of assets within an open-world space.
The C-Engine features a tool named "CityBuilder," which supposedly allows developers to draw up a full city map without laying down each individual wall. Additionally, the tool contains a lot of features that should allow the developers to easily tweak any changes to the map, which should result in the team focusing more on creative design rather than technical competency.
Developers tend to focus a big chunk of development resources on creating huge, seamless spaces for players to get lost in. However, as Techland admitted, technological advancements have allowed such fantasies to be easily achieved. It's more important than ever to keep the scale of the world limited to a degree where the available content can easily be spread all across that world.
Dying Light 2's developers have seemingly kept such a thing as its focus, with the team's senior programmer touting the C-Engine as a driving force for level designers to easily flex their creative muscles. The game has a heavy focus on parkour, so it makes sense to create a plethora of different movement routes throughout the city, which should ideally make use of the game's parkour mechanics fully.
In addition to this, Dying Light 2's open world is touted to be directly reactive to player choice. The gameplay trailers and interviews suggest the narrative setup to be the biggest evolution for the series, and thus the open world should be restricted to a scale where changes can be tracked and tangibly felt by the player. 2017's Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2 are great examples of how to make a large-scale open world that is as rewarding to explore as it is grandiose in scale. Hopefully Dying Light 2 and it's open world can join the ranks as being one of the better open-world games in the last few years.
Dying Light 2 is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.