GDC 2022 returned to San Francisco this year after a two-year COVID hiatus. While there, I sat down with Tymon Smektała, the Lead Designer for Techland and Polish Rapper, and Christina Omelchenko, Director Of Communications at Techland, for an in-depth interview to discuss what Tymon sees and wants for the future of Dying Light 2. The one thing that was abundantly clear is that player feedback is paramount to the direction of future content, tweaks, and updates, and fans will likely be pleased with what Tymon has to say about where the game is headed.
Spoilers below for Dying Light 2!
PlayStation LifeStyle: I know you worked on the first Dying Light. Did you work on Dead Island?
Tymon Smektała: Not really. I joined Techland because I was a game journalist when Dead Island was released. They liked my review of it and the dialect I used which was quite analytical. They wanted someone who could be the spokesperson for the new game they were making, which turns out to be Dying Light. So they invited me and I passed some job interviews and I joined when they had maybe one year of work already done. So it was kind of in the beginning. The thing that was solved mostly was traversal. At that point, the general direction where we wanted to go with traversal and parkour was already there, but the rest of it wasn’t defined and I had to define it.
PSLS: Where are we going with Dying Light 2?
Tymon: We are going on a very long journey.
Dying Light 2 DLC will be ‘a new story’
PSLS: Dying Light 2 ended with Aiden walking off into the distance, with the possibility of multiple endings. Where are we going to start with the next DLC?
Tymon: Okay, so first of all, I think we will not really touch on the main story for some time. We want to give more players a chance to actually finish the story. Maybe replay the story again, because the game has different endings and you can shape the story and the world around you how you see fit. So we want to give players the space and the time to actually see those differences. See those different endings and maybe decide for themselves which one is the one they want. So, for starters, and for some time, we are not touching the main story. The first DLC will be a new story that runs kind of parallel to the main game, you will be able to start it as soon as you enter the city. So no matter how progressed you are in the main story, you will be able to interact with the first DLC. I don’t want to like look back too much into the future. Because especially in terms of DLCs which are the big content, we kind of want to keep our the cards close to our chest and reveal it one by one and bit by bit to also to get players more excited. But as I said, the first DLC, it’s parallel stories so you joined the game, you enter the game world, and if you completed the game or if you are just starting the game you will be able to play it.
PSLS: Will the DLC pick up your game world and the status it was in when you finished your playthrough?
Tymon: Yes. So the idea for the DLC is that it is set before the very last moment before the epilogue. So where it fits in the narrative, it’s parallel to the story. It happens at the same time, in a slightly different location. You can expect a new place where this will happen. Of course, the character stays the same. He’s in Villador, but he interacts with some new people and gets taken to the site for this new adventure.
PSLS: Will we get new inhibitors with the next DLC?
Tymon: That’s another question because we started talking about the overall story in the series that we have prepared. For me personally, equally exciting is the other content that we have prepared in terms of free updates and the general title updates that we have planned for the game, something that we are calling post-launch support. It’s not just the DLCs, it is way more stuff. So far, we have announced that this will take five years. And we have also revealed a very high-level roadmap for the first year. So the high-level roadmap wasn’t filled with everything that we have prepared. And in the next week, we will start revealing what we have prepared. The new inhibitors are a part of content updates that the players will get very, very soon within the next weeks.
Basically, what we are trying to do, going back to the five-year plan, we have the difference between the original Dying Light where we were reacting to what was happening, with more new players coming in, and content being created as we were moving along. For Dying Light 2 we have it already planned out. We know where we want Dying Light 2 to be in five years. The first-year plan is very detailed. The second-year plan is detailed enough, and the third, fourth, and fifth years are basically just those high-level things chunks that we want to introduce to the game.
New Game Plus ‘will happen soon’
PSLS: Are we going to get New Game Plus pretty soon?
Tymon: Yes. It’s happening. So it’s not distant future. This will happen soon. The inhibitors that you are missing will also happen soon. Actually, there’s something I wanted to say that the New Game Plus, for example, is proof of us listening to the community. This is something that a lot of members of the community want. They want New Game Plus, they want photo mode, they want a higher difficulty mode. Those are the things that we are actively working on, listening to players and making sure that they will get what they want. I think this will be the plan moving forward for the first year. Actually, what we have designed for the first year of content is that it will be a very concrete plan. It will be content of different types for different types of our players. Some of it will be focused on single player, some of it will be focused on combat, some of it will be more parkour heavy, some of it will require or encourage you to play more in co-op. So we want to test different models, different ideas, different approaches to post-launch content for Dying Light 2 to see what excites the community the most.
PSLS: On the topic of inhibitors, I maxed out one side but I couldn’t max out the other one, because the game didn’t give me enough of them. Why do that? Just to make people want to play through twice?
Tymon: Actually, we thought that this would be a nice, kind of like choices and consequences type of elements where you have to decide which one we want to support. And we also believe that the story of Dying Light 2 actually deserves to be played more than once. So it was a combination of those two factors. It also felt that if you are a completionist, if you really want to get everything, then it’s like you kinda expect to put in some work, like you don’t want this to happen. Just like this. But yes, we have realized that maybe it wasn’t the best of decisions because there are a lot of vocal people who say that they would like to have everything in one go.
No battle royale planned, online play targeted
PSLS: Will there ever be a battle royale mode?
Tymon: Something like this is not planned at this moment. So for the future I can talk about right now, there is no battle royale there. Definitely there will be some models and some content updates that will target the online play, so maybe not battle royale, but something different, which should be exciting for our gamers that want the online experience.
PSLS: What about new zombies?
Tymon: Actually, yes, this was one of the things that we have announced in the roadmap. We are thinking about introducing something which we are calling like mutated infected or like mutations to our infected so you can expect different variants of our infected plus some new guys as well and those will be added to the game over the whole first year.
PSLS: What about like a super volatile? They’re pretty strong now, but can they get stronger?
Tymon: About specifics, which I am not really allowed to say, but what I can say is that this is also something that a lot of people are asking about, and we pride ourselves as being a developer that listens to the community. So if you can connect the dots, then you will get your answer.
PSLS: So will there be new cities or is everything going to happen within Villador?
Tymon: What I can say is that you can expect new environments, new types of environments, new shapes of environments that will, I hope, radically impact the gameplay of the game. Dying Light 2 is actually a game-world traveler. So that is a very important part of the experience because it’s an active traverse, which makes you use the environment. So if the environment changes, the traversal also changes and with that also combat changes because quite often, those two things are connected and quite locked together in nightlife.
PSLS: When we get to the DLC, will we also get new perks for the factions? I personally went for survivors because I’m a parkour guy.
Tymon: Okay, so this I cannot speak on at this moment, but as I said we want to support and we want to give something to every type of player. So if there’s a player like you who’s more into parkour, you will get stuff from us that will make your parkour more exciting, that will test your parkour skills, that will allow you to use parkour in different and new ways. If Christina is a combat girl, then she will get whatever she needs to explore herself. Express herself better in combat, new weapons, new attacks, new offensive skills, new offensive options, new weapons as well. So, as I said, the first year is a year of us trying to service all kinds of our players. I think we have the preferences and different, like subgroups within our community that are quite well defined, but maybe something surprises us, and this is also a way to find if there are maybe some player types that we didn’t think about. Every player group, everyone who has at least minimal interest in Dying Light 2, should get some stuff that will excite them.
The max player level will be raised
PSLS: Will the overall player level be raised with the DLC?
Tymon: Yes, so what I can say is that if you have Maxed the game, we will give you new player progression to develop your character further, maybe it will not be as you expected, maybe it will not be numbered 10, 11, 12, but there will definitely be new access for you and new directions for you to grow your character. You will be able to grow your character in terms of his abilities of his skills of his stats of tools he has access to as well as the visuals of a character, the cosmetic items that can make your character look more like a badass synth and cooler generally. There’s still more to come. So there’s still space for us to add to new stuff. I hope that players will get as excited about them because they can really radically change how Aiden looks with some of the new stuff that we are adding.
PSLS: What about vehicles? Bicycles? Dirt Bikes?
Tymon: What I can say is, you mentioned bikes for example, right? So we have bikes and hoverboards as Easter eggs hidden in the game. But we are also seeing how excited people are getting over them how they like them. So you can also expect us using that.
PSLS: Like the broom?
Tymon: Exactly, exactly. So you are very well prepared. So thank you for that. We will be using those elements and make them maybe a little more visible to the bigger majority of players because like if it’s an Easter egg, it’s hidden and it’s used by the hardcore players.
Will there be DLC Easter eggs?
PSLS: Can we expect Easter eggs with the DLC as it comes out like the developers’ room for the Korek charm?
Tymon: Yes, yes, exactly. I hope this is something that will happen. The fun thing about our Easter egg process is that we are working on the game and as the game gets closer to our release you don’t need the whole team working on it, more and more people can just say okay, I have done my job. So now I don’t want to mess with the core part of the game anymore, but this is the moment where a lot of the team members are actually free to come up with Easter eggs. So I hope this is the process that will happen again with the DLC. We kind of understand that Easter eggs became almost like this DNA element of Dying Light 2 and the Easter eggs became an essential part of the gameplay.
PSLS: Everybody needed that Korek charm because that’s the only way to keep your weapons from being destroyed. You get this cool machete or this cool sword but if you destroy it, it’s gone. You lose it forever.
Tymon: So again, I don’t want to promise too much and I don’t want to spill the beans too much, but definitely we understand that this is something that is on a lot of our players’ minds. The aspect of losing your favorite weapon. So at some point in the future, not far from now, we will actually add something to the game that I think will solve this problem.
Dying Light 2 to add something ‘way more interesting’ than weapon repair
PSLS: Weapon repair like what we had in Dying Light 1?
Tymon: I think something way more interesting. Again, so the thing I have on my mind is not actually weapon repair. It’s something else. But sorry, I cannot really reveal at this point.
PSLS: We need that. I’ve had some pretty cool weapons that I had to just leave by the wayside because I smashed too many heads with them.
Tymon: So as I said, the first year will be quite full of surprises. And I think one of those surprises will be something that answers directly to that question.
Christina Omelchenko: Can I ask, do you have your own Easter egg?
Tymon: Not really. No. The thing is that I’m busy with is the release of the game, basically till the very last day. So I’m not one of those people, one of those team members that has the benefit of the luxury of having time to spend on an Easter egg so I don’t have anything that I have created myself aside from supporting, for example, the developers’ room. There is actually one Easter egg with me. In the developers’ room there’s a poster from a made up concert and there’s a photo of me and Olivier Derivière our composer. We were giving the concert together because I have a history as a rapper. I was one of the first Polish rappers and I have recorded for LPS for albums, so that’s why they put me together with Olivier our composer for the game on this poster. So yeah, that’s my Easter egg but it’s not an Easter egg I have made, but maybe for the DLC, I will actually have the time to put something interesting.
PSLS: I’m looking forward to finding it.
Tymon: Hopefully you will.
PSLS: As a game reviewer who gets early access to a game, guides or videos for Easter eggs are nonexistent, so I have to go in blind. I didn’t even know about the Korek charm or the developer’s room until a week after the game was released after 90+ hours of personal gameplay.
Tymon: One thing that surprised me for sure about the release of the game is how quickly all of those Easter eggs were found. Because like when we were working on them and hiding them we were thinking okay, so this will take them like two years to find all of them. I was even saying you know, guys, maybe we should do like a website with clues, at least have the numbers of the Easter eggs and empty spaces and we will be uncovering each one when it’s found but if we had made that website, it will be all uncovered within the first week or so. So it was really like surprising this is like a developer lesson that we have to take from this, that if you make any mistakes you have to hide them even more because yeah, it’s crowdsourced.
Will there be more guns?
PSLS: I know a lot of people talk about guns in the game. I know you have the finger gun now. Are there any plans to have any other type of guns in the game other than a disposable shotgun
Tymon: That’s a tough question. We call this setting the modern Dark Ages. The idea is that it shows humanity and civilization that has gone back to medieval times, but it all happens in the modern geography of a modern city. There were no guns in medieval times. You were just using bows and crossbows and stuff like that. So that’s the design and that’s the direction for the game. But we have also created this mystique, this mystery about ‘where did the guns go? Are they hidden somewhere in the world? There’s several little things lying around. So being hidden somewhere. When you work on a game and you put things in, you put them in on purpose. So I cannot rule out that at one point this stash will be found. And as I said, we have a five years plan of content already.
PSLS: You may have hidden the stash well enough that nobody can find it. Maybe that’s the ultimate Easter egg. The Korek charm was easy to find, the guns not so much. That’s a whole nother animal. Nobody can find them.
Tymon: Exactly. Exactly. As I said, this is this is a world where guns are hidden for a reason and we explain this reason in the game. We also understand that it might be an exciting mystery for players to search for and maybe find that that at one point.
PSLS: There’s no player versus player, so I don’t need a gun. I’d rather just keep smashing and chopping, that’s more satisfying to me than mowing people down with a machine gun. I don’t need a machine gun for zombies.
Tymon: That’s was also one of the reasons why we don’t have guns because there are a lot of games that have guns so we could have guns but it will be just like another game with a gun and it wouldn’t add much to the experience and actually guns aren’t even working that well with parkour, our gameplay pillar, because Parkour is a tool which allows you to get close to an enemy with your agility or escape from enemy which is too strong for you, using your agility using your parkour skill. So it’s not an accident that Dying Light 2, by and large, is a game which uses mostly melee weapons.
But as I said, we listen to our community and we understand that there are different voices within the community. And we try to listen to all of them.
Will there be a Dying Light 3 or a switch to a live-service model?
PSLS: Is there another plan for a Dying Light 3, six years down the road?
Tymon: Definitely too early to say at this point. At Techland we have already announced some time ago that there’s another game that we are working on which is like a fantasy open world RPG AAA game and I think we will focus mostly on the new project for some time, giving five years to actually brief. If there will be Dying Light 3 it’s definitely too early to say at this point but if Dying Light 2 is pretty successful and if there’s interest in that kind of game, after five years then of course why not? This is our baby like this is really a game that we love. So we would like at some point for sure we would love to go back to it.
PSLS: Developer Bungie took their series Destiny away from the sequel model and into the expansion model. Is that something y’all might do later? Full expansions where you get a whole new world and new content?
Tymon: As I said, it’s really too early to say at this point. For now, we need to focus on the release of Dying Light 2. The opening weeks were very successful to us. We have already announced that the game has reached more than 3 million players within the first week, basically the first weekend. So it is an amazing number and of course it keeps growing. But it’s still too early to rest on our laurels to just say okay, we have done our job.
We understand that to make this the success and the success story that we have envisioned when we started working on the game, we need to build an even more solid foundation for those five years and we need to kick start the post launch support on a very strong note. So this is the focus right now and this is something we are focusing on. We’re not thinking about any other creative endeavors. Because we don’t want to get distracted I think for the at least for the next few months, for the next half year. The whole team will be focused on making sure that Dying Light 2 is in a good place. That it’s stable, it’s set. It’s engaging to people after the release, it has the potential to invite new people even by the end of the year, next year, etc, etc. We hope that within that first period we’ll build a foundation which will likely be strong enough and big enough for us too for the five years to make sense and that will also keep inviting new players. This is also what made Dying Light 1 successful, people were playing the game were spending more and more time with the game, and as time went on, they started recommending the game to their friends. And it was like a snowball that kept growing and growing. And we want to do the same thing with Dying Light 2 but we understand that to achieve that, we need to be very focused and keep working.
PSLS: Thank you both for taking the time to talk with me.
