Open world games are not about scale. Dying Light: The Beast creator explains what he thinks is most important
The director of the Dying Light series believes that the scale of the world is less important than its proper density. The developer wants players to be constantly occupied with something.
The upcoming Dying Light: The Beast will offer a smaller world map than the sequel released a few years ago, but according to Techland, it gains a lot thanks to manual crafting. As a result, players will have more fun on it than on much larger areas.
Big maps don't matter
Open worlds are not about scale. They're about your feeling of being there. So we can create an open-world that's maybe not as expansive, but if it's hand-crafted, if it feels real, the player's satisfaction of being in that world is much bigger.
The above words belong to Tymon Smektala, the director of the Dying Light series, who recently spoke with GamesRadar+. He pointed out that in other games, "there are usually activity centers," between which not much really happens. Techland, on the other hand, wants the player to be constantly occupied.
We were trying to make Dying Light games open-world games where you are constantly playing, where you are constantly interacting with the controller, where you're constantly pushing buttons.
Such a solution made Smektala believe that "Dying Light is probably one of the most dense open-world games on the market." Of course, it will be no different in The Beast - according to the developers, the game will offer a world in which "we constantly look around ourselves." Considering that it's filled with hordes of zombies, it really shouldn't be any different.
Dying Light: The Beast will be released on August 22, on PC, PS4, PS5, XOne, and XSX/S. Techland assures that the game will avoid the mistakes made in Stay Human and will keep the essence of the first installment of the series.
- Dying Light: The Beast won't repeat Dying Light 2 mistake. Techland remembers for what fans loved this post-apocalyptic universe
- „Flawed but fun” Dying Light: The Beast Summer Game Fest demo
- „Our fans would kill us.” Dying Light: The Beast director says there are „areas of perfection” that Techland can't mess up
