Techland’s lead designer, Tymon Smektala told in his interview with Gamesindustry that the scope of Dying Light 2 has increased, but the game’s size has not followed it that much.

„It started simpler for Dying Light 2. When we were analysing Dying Light, we realised we had created this quite sandboxy game. It gives you a lot of options on how to solve the gameplay problems. However, the narrative was very linear. Also with the narrative, which was not so cool, the main protagonist [Kyle Crane] was making a lot of decisions that were quite controversial. There were a lot of times in Dying Light where you wanted Kyle to choose something but the scriptwriters had decided something different. So the dream with this game is that we could give you the same amount of freedom in the narrative as we have in the gameplay.

We were initially only thinking about the narrative. But with the technological advancements of our new engine — the C-Engine — we realised we were able to do more. So for instance, what if these decisions didn’t just change the narrative, but the sandbox space itself? We started working on it and we realised it was a powerful feeling for the player because they make that decision and they discover the world around them has changed due to it. They can climb to the top of the highest building, look around and go: ‘Wow, I made this. What surrounds me is the outcome of my choices.’ This excited the heck out of us, and it was an idea that wasn’t designed for the project from the start. But around two years ago we realised this is something we can and should do,” Smektala said.

Still, Dying Light 2 will not be the size of two games, but it will still be bigger than the first one: „This is a AAA, high budget, open-world game. People will expect it to have a lot of content. Yes, we have to do more than in a regular game, but it’s just us making reasonable decisions over what should be part of the choices and consequences and what shouldn’t be. It is bigger, but it’s not crazy. We are still, subjectively, as a small studio. It’s about 300 people. It’s not Ubisoft, where there are five studios of that size used to create Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry. We did do more content, but not two games, because that would be too much for us to do,” Smektala added.

Dying Light 2 is out in the Spring on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Source: WCCFTech