EmuGlx: How are you and the team feeling now that Dying Light is finished?
Techland: I’m great. I think that whole studio is great at the moment. Dying Light is a tremendous success. We have over 5 million players who played the game legally, so that’s great news for us, and that was when we decided to follow up the game with a huge expansion Dying Light: The Following, which is a very cool expansion and also a big “thank you note” to our fans.
EmuGlx: Yeah that’s awesome. I saw it’s $14.99, so it is pretty cheap for a that big expansion.
Techland: It is cheaper if you have the Season Pass. When we announced Season Pass, we included four expansion DLCs that we announced with the game. But when we realized that we have so many fans and such a great community, we wanted to give something back. So thats why The Following will be free for all our Season Pass holders.
EmuGlx: That’s awesome. What made your mind to make a proper expansion, and not smaller DLC, because you know, most people in the industry are making DLCs that are shorter. You are one of the rare companies that are making proper expansions, like you and CD Projekt Red, both based out of Poland. What a coincidence!
Techland: [laughing] Three things. First you have to be from Poland. Then I think that all Poles are ambitious. We like to challenge ourselves. We don’t like to do something easy. That’s the second reason. And the third reason is that we think of Dying Light as the ultimate Zombie experience, like, that should be the game where you can have everything related to the Zombies that fans of that genre like. One thing that we did not deliver in the base game was fantasy of driving over zombies with cars. Now we are giving the fans of the genre and fans of Dying Light just that. Now you will be able to drive over zombies, kick them, upgrade your car, to make it even better killing machine.
EmuGlx: How big is the customization of the car?
Techland: It will be easy to install many parts of the car to make the car go faster, steer better, land from bigger jumps, but you will also be able to install upgrades that allow you to basically kill zombies with style or more efficiently. So you will install ram bars, spikes, electrical cages, UV lights, and things that will just make your life easier and more cool in the countryside.
EmuGlx: After Dead Island, that game had cars from the beginning if I remember well, what was your state of mind with planning Dying Light? Did you know back then that you will introduce the car in Dying Light over time, or was something that happened spontaneously.
Techland: That was one of the ideas. But we looked at the forums, websites, comments, youtube channels, we were looking and trying to find the things the people would like to see in Dying Light. We had all those things, and we had all our ideas. We would clash those two lists, and basically with those cool lists we decided what will we do in Dying Light: The Following.
EmuGlx: Did you honestly expect such a big success of Dying Light, I mean it was for the month the best selling game in the UK and Europe?
Techland: We were expecting success, but not the success on that scale. I think it surprised even us. We knew that it is a good game, so we knew it was going to be successful, but to have more than 5 million players within 5 months, that’s just crazy. And that kinda surprised us. We are thankful to our community, we communicate with the fans daily through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other places. As I said before, The Following is a big thank you note to those guys.
EmuGlx: What about multiplayer? Game has coop of course, are there any plans for multiplayer?
Techland: So, “Be the Zombie” mod will be available in The Following as well. We want to make it work well in Following as well. We had to tweak the game, change the night hunters, so now zombie players can fight against players who are driving their buggies.
EmuGlx: Yeah, that is what I wanted to ask. How did you mange to make the zombies traverse quickly in an open map, where humans are on buggies and zombies are on foot.
Techland: We used some development tricks, but let me assure you that zombies will still be a challenge for you even if you are in buggies, especially at night.
EmuGlx: I can’t wait to see that, because in the demo we played only in the dayight.
Techland: We need to keep something a secret for future presentations.
EmuGlx: We saw that the map was practically a valley. Is there a vertical part of the map?
Techland: Parkour and natural movement is an important part of Dying Light. Basically that is a foundation on which Dying Light was built. We looked at places were we can use parkour, and as you saw with the pipeline in the demo, places like that could attain that kind of parkour flow even when moving through countryside environment.
EmuGlx: One question though regarding gameplay. In Dead Island there was a bug that allows you to copy your items, and that bug was present in the Dying Light as well. Did you do that on purpose?
Techland: I cannot unveil all our development tricks in this interview, so maybe ask me next time. [laughing]
EmuGlx: Is this the only expansion that you are planning, or do you want to expand the Dying Light universe even more?
Techland: We want to expand Dying Light universe as much as possible, though it is too early to say will it be though more expansion packs, or more sequels, or other games set in that universe. We strongly believe in this universe, we believe in IP, and we want to expand it as broad as possible.
EmuGlx: What is the story of this DLC?
Techland: The story of Dying Light: The Following is of this mysterious cult whose followers are seemingly immune to the virus. So you will want to understand why that happens, are they immune, or they have a cure, or maybe there is something supernatural going on. You want to get to the leader of the cult to ask those question, but to do so you need to gain the trust of the followers, but you don’t need to do that in a linear way. There are lot of missions for you to choose from, and for each of those activities you get trust points, basically you earn the trust of the locals and if they are impressed enough they will give you where the “mother” is and how to contact her. Then you will be able to ask her your questions and experience the conclusion of the Dying Light: The Following.
EmuGlx: How long is the story mode?
Techland: I’d say it is a 10 hours minimum, but we keep adding, and adding, and adding. Everyone in the studio is so excited about the expansion so it might be even longer than 10 hours.
EmuGlx: Are you gonna put more focus on the gunplay than in the base game?
Techland: Yes, that makes sense. DLC will have more firearms, more ammo so that you don’t need to be stingy with protecting it. You will really be able to shoot zombies and not only zombies in this expansion pack.
EmuGlx: Did you think about community-made content, being able to craft personal weapons and weapon effects?
Techland: Yes, so we introduced mod tools for Dying Light a couple of weeks ago, and with it we enable players to put their own models and customizations into the game. Now they can create any mod they want with any weapons and content they want.
EmuGlx: Will those mods be playable in the expansion?
Techland: It depends on the quality of the mods. If someone modify the expansion then yes, but to make it official, to make it presentable to everyone, we would need to contact the makers to make sure their own egos are taken cared of, but we will try and see what will community create.
EmuGlx: What was the reaction of the community when you announced the expansion?
Techland: Great. I think everyone went crazy. When we browsed for comments everyone seemed to like it, and I think after GamesCom when they see through your eyes what really happens in the game, they will become even more excited.
EmuGlx: Do you have an estimated release date for the expansion?
Techland: We are not talking about that just yet. We need to save something for the future, but it is not going to be that far away. Basically it will be soon.
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