What’s Next For Dying Light 2: An Interview With Its Lead Game Designer

Dying Light 2 Stay Human was released on February 4 to largely positive reviews and massive player count numbers, especially compared to that of the first Dying Light. This is still one of the most popular games. Game Informer has reviewed this year, receiving a 9.5 out of 10, and in less than 24 hours after release, Dying Light 2’s PC player count peak surpassed Dying Light’s all-time high peak. 

Techland had worked on Dying Light 2 for many years. It was an overwhelming success. Getting to that success wasn’t easy, though. Following its delay in 2020, GamerThe studio released a report that revealed a lack in leadership, direction and demoralizing environment. A year earlier, the studio issued a statement in which it announced that Chris Avellone had been fired as narrative designer. 

The game is now available and players can play it for as long as Techland has planned. This shift has brought the team from nervous anticipation and excitement to a sense of exhilaration.

“I think everyone is really, really happy that we were able to release the game,” Dying Light 2 lead game designer Tymon Smektała tells Game Informer. “The game has been received very well. “The game reached 3 million people in its first weekend. That was astonishing, we announced. As you can imagine, the number is only growing and it has been a long journey.”

Smektała said Dying Light 2 was a difficult project due to its sheer size and complexity. It was a sequel to Dying Light (2015), which Techland has supported for over seven years. But it also needed to be more ambitious. 

Tymon Smektała, Dying Light 2 Lead Game Designer

“It really took the best of us, but we are happy it’s out there and we are feeding on the positive feedback that the community is giving us,” Smektała says. 

The team was given a brief break during the launch, but they are now working on new content. As mentioned above, Techland has a five-year post-launch DLC plan for Dying Light 2, but Smektała tells Game Informer that the team already has plans to create and add more content to that timeline than what’s been announced. It was never a question for Techland to support this game for many years after its launch, but the “five-year” number wasn’t locked in until the end of last year. 

“There are a lot of reasons why we feel [supporting the game extensively after launch] is important,” Smektała says. “One of the reasons is that I think we have realized we have invented, or maybe discovered, a formula that actually being on good terms with your community and working with your community and supporting your community…is extremely beneficial to you as a game developer. As a publisher we feel very fortunate to have Dying Light to ourselves and to develop Dying Light. [intellectual property]. So…both sides of our organization are supported and get benefits from us supporting the game for so long.” 

When the team decided it would support Dying Light 2 heavily after launch, they felt frozen at times, Smektała says. It was also encouraging, as the team understood that the content would be shared by the community, as Dying Light did. Techland was also inspired to hire more staff, which eventually led to a better-prepared studio for the Viral-ridden, long road ahead. 

“We have grown a lot as an organization and as a studio,” Smektała says. “We understand our craft better, as a result, but we have also invited a lot of new people to join our ranks – people with expertise in experiences from different studios and different projects – so I think we were and are better prepared to handle a bigger project like this.” 

With launch day behind them, Smektała says the biggest surprise for Techland was how quickly some players were able to put in 100, 200, and even 300 hours of time into the game. Not surprising was the number of requests from Dying Light 2 players for additional content. The team heard the most popular requests for a new game plus mode, a photo mode and more difficulty levels. 

“Those are definitely things that are on the table currently and that are being worked on,” he says. “I don’t want to go into too many specifics here…but very soon, people will start seeing those things being added in one form or another into the game.” 

Techland faces a challenge with its post-launch plans. This is the same problem that every studio finds success. Smektała says you have to think of everything, and types of content that will satisfy the different needs of the entire “very varied” community. That’s what the next five years of Dying Light 2 are about, but right now, Techland is very focused on Year One. 

“We have already revealed a very high-level roadmap for the first year, but as players will soon discover, we will add more to that first-year roadmap..and we will invite them to actually discover more content that will drop within the first year,” Smektała says. 

Speaking in broad strokes, he says the first year of content will include some focus on online play, some focus on single-player content, and some on the game’s narrative. Other drops will be related to the game’s platforming elements, like the new parkour trials recently added to the game in an update, while others will be about the melee-focused combat. Smektała hopes all of this and everything else planned for Dying Light 2 is, above all else, surprising. He likens the team’s hopes for DLC to Forrest Gump’s famous “box of chocolates” line in that ideally, with Dying Light 2’s DLC, you never know what you’re going to get. 

“We don’t want to fall into this repeating pattern where players will kind of know what to expect from us,” he says. “Having said that, for example, the first story DLC that we have promised, I’ve seen a lot of speculation online about what it will be and I can say confidently that they…weren’t close to the mark.” 

Anyone that’s completed Dying Light 2 knows that its story concludes with some definitive choices. These choices are entirely up to the player. However, this leaves Aiden (and his allies) in some very interesting spots, especially when you think about story DLC. The team is sidestepping that challenge for now by developing narrative content that happens “sideways to the main events.” 

“At some point, we will actually start adding to the events that happened at the end of the game,” Smektała says. “We have some ideas. On paper, as they are implemented right now, it seems promising, but definitely, this will be a challenge.”

Despite the challenges facing the team, Smektała says the word he’d use to describe what everyone’s feeling is “excitement.” Excitement that the game is out, excitement that it’s resonated with fans, and excitement about what’s to come in Dying Light 2. 

“We really just can’t wait to see people that are interacting with this stuff and some of the ideas that we have because some of the things we are adding is, simply put, quite unique,” Smektała says. “Some of it is us betting on ideas that are maybe a little out of the box. We’ll see what the community thinks, but I’m feeling really positive about it. All of this will unfold within the next, as I said, few weeks and will be in player hands within the next one to three months.”