Looking ahead, you’ve promised two story expansions, the first of which arrives in the coming months. Can you share any details on what to expect from that?
What I can say right now is that the first one runs parallel to the main story, so it can be started right after Aiden arrives in The City. Since it’s the first one out the gate, we didn’t want to force players to finish the game before they’d be able to have fun with it. I went through some of the speculations our community has expressed online, but I haven’t seen any of those theories get it right. So I hope that we’ll positively surprise people with this DLC.
Will the story DLC tie into the overall branching narrative? Will you be able to make choices that affect events outside of the DLC’s story?
Its story is centered around a specific place outside of the Villedor city limits. But of course, there will be some choices to make!
Some of the updates for the original Dying Light ventured into new genres and styles of play (the Hellraid DLC comes to mind). Is there anything similar planned for Dying Light 2 Stay Human? I recall you mentioned something about a survival mode during one of the Dying 2 Know shows.
We’ve promised 5 years of support so I expect a lot will happen in the universe of the game. I don’t want to go into specifics as of now, but the first year or two of post-launch content is us experimenting with different ideas, different models, and different types of content. We want to do it like this to see what our community wants and what they hit it off with.
What about co-op? Could we see more content specifically focused on co-op? Or maybe PvP?
Absolutely. Some of the content updates that we’ll introduce this year and next year will be centered mostly on various types of online experiences. We definitely feel that there’s a lot we could do with Dying Light multiplayer, from adding more co-op mechanics to lots of different, fun gameplay modes.
Are there plans to expand the factions system? Could, say, the Renegades become a full-on third faction?
We don’t want to do that with the Renegades, but the factions in general are a very interesting and very scalable system. So who knows…
Probably the biggest real gamechanger in Dying Light 2 Stay Human is the paraglider, in that it totally alters how you play and the way the world is designed. Does Techland have any ideas for other seemingly small, yet disruptive additions to the Dying Light formula?
If you look at our easter eggs you’ll see some signs of it already—the bicycle, the flying broom, the Doom level. We understand that players want a serious, frightening Dying Light experience first… and then they want to demolish it with the craziest ideas and mechanics possible. I hope we’ll make fans of the game happy over the whole period of post-launch support!
Speaking of the world, you mentioned the first story DLC takes place in a new location. Could some of the areas we saw in early previews that ultimately got cut make a return?
It’s not that easy and it’s not really the way to approach game production. Some people don’t understand that when they find remnants of something in the game it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cut content. Usually, it’s just that -- remnants of old prototypes, most often from the pre-production or early production stages, traces of past work that we either missed during clean-ups or left in the game for other reasons. Bringing them back costs more than creating something from scratch, even if the community creates these urban myths about them. New DLCs and other content will definitely bring new areas for gamers to have fun with, but these will be created from scratch or will use the early prototypes more as an inspiration than actual resource.
Could drivable vehicles return at some point? Aside from that bike, of course…
I love James Bond movies so… never say never!
This one’s more a request than a question, but will you let us repair weapons again? Pleeease?
It’s funny since the actual life of a weapon -- the number of successful hits you can perform with it -- it’s roughly the same in Dying Light 1 and Dying Light 2 Stay Human. The only thing we did was remove the hassle of paying for their maintenance, though probably we underestimated the psychological implications of the previous system. It’s a big topic between the game’s designers as the majority of the open world loop in Dying Light is based on that survival aspect of dwindling resources and the player’s need to keep searching for a new arsenal. So will we allow for weapon repair? I can’t promise that. What I can say is we’ll have some updates to the system which will hopefully make the whole thing more interesting.
Dying Light 2 already supports DLSS and FSR, so are there any plans to implement Intel's XeSS upscaling technology?
I can’t comment on the topic right now, but rest assured that Intel is one of our closest development partners and the cooperation so far has been amazing for us.
I played Dying Light 2 on PS5. I was wondering if some PC features and options might eventually make it over to Xbox and PlayStation. I’d love to see a FOV slider, for instance.
That’s definitely the plan; we just didn’t want to make things more complicated than necessary for the initial release. Since a FOV slider on next-gen consoles was one of the most requested features from our community at launch, we’re adding it with the newest patch.
Note: This interview was conducted before a FOV slider for next-gen consoles was officially announced. Thanks, Techland!
You’ve promised 5 years of support for Dying Light 2, which is obviously great for the community, but it’s also a long time for developers! Do you plan to add anything else to your plates in that time?
As a company, we have announced that we’re working on another game -- a AAA open world in a fantasy setting. It’s being built by our Warsaw team, without any rush -- building a completely new IP brick by brick. It has the potential to be an amazing game and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for it. Actually, I’d love to work on it. 5 years is a long time, so I think players can expect even more surprises from us… But no matter what happens, Dying Light will be our beloved baby. It’s a game where you can dropkick a Biter off a rooftop! How can you not love that little brat?
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!
Dying Light 2 Stay Human is available now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5. The game’s first story DLC is slated to launch in June.