Announced many moons ago and still awaited, Dying Light 2 has only recently come out of the shadows. We have learned that the title is slated for release this year, but we know little about its content or development.
In a recent interview with WCCFTech, Techland spoke about the technical novelties which marked the development of Dying Light 2, which seems to drag on for some of the public.
First, our colleagues asked Tomasz Szałkowski, rendering director, Łukasz Burdka, Senior Technology Programmer, Andrzej Płaczek, game engine director, to comment on the engine change. Indeed, the Dying Light abandons the Chrome 6 for the second opus in favor of the C-Engine:
Łukasz Burdka: We have upgraded almost all basic engine systems. The new system of game components allows us to offer a large amount of items in the levels. World Streaming technology allows gamers to explore our vast city without having to load up. We’ve upgraded our physics engine to the Bullet Physics featured in some of the most popular open world blockbusters.
The brand new animation and facial expression system allows us to present realistic characters. Thanks to the new AI system, they not only have an appearance, but also a realistic behavior. The new story system helps branch out stories and large-scale changes in the world that players can shape through their choices. The transition to the C-Engine overlapped with the pre-production phase of Dying Light 2. These changes were inevitable in order to create the detailed world of Dying Light 2.
The audio system has also been redesigned, and Dying Light 2 will use WWise, allowing support for interactive music. Finally, Łukasz Burdka indicates that these necessary changes took a long time, and seem to be partly responsible for the successive postponements.
Regarding the C-Engine, he adds that thanks to World Streaming technology, the limitation of the card, still 4 times larger than in Dying Light 1, is a simply creative choice.
The developers explain that filling the world with objects, challenges, and interesting exploration prospects takes time, and that you must therefore know how to limit yourself. Besides Techland specifies that the playing area will be much more vertical.
If Dying Light 2 is expected on PS5 and Xbox Series in addition to the PC, the developers recall that the PS4 and the Xbox One, much more installed, were naturally the reference consoles for the development:
“Main” consoles have long been our priority. We do everything we can to ensure that the quality of play on PS4 or Xbox One is at the highest level. We started testing on older generation consoles much earlier than in other projects. It had to do with the scale of the engine changes and ambitious plans to make a game even bigger and more complex than Dying Light.
That being said, the new generation will benefit from notable improvements, with a performance mode, a resolution mode, and a quality mode (ray tracing). Finally, we have had a few elements that allow us to imagine a little more easily the scale that Techland wants to give to Dying Light 2. On the front line, the question of lifespan :
If you rush you should be able to complete the story in about 20 hours. But to see everything, you would have to spend 2 to 3 times more time there. Our opening area alone can be over 7-8 hours long if you want to explore every nook and cranny, so there is plenty to discover.
As was done a few days ago, Techland assures us that we will learn a lot more in the coming weeks. Communication around the game will naturally accelerate as we get closer to the release.