It’s been a couple of weeks since the release of Dying Light 2, however, the game continues to give something to talk about as players go deeper and deeper into its history and gameplay. To who Atomix we had the opportunity to review it at the time, and now we were able to talk with Thomas Gerbaud, World Director for Dying Light 2about some of the toughest challenges he and his team faced in designing the open world.
How difficult was it to create an open world game that not only felt alive, but had to be extremely walkable?
“These were two of the most important elements that we had to take into account when creating the world of Dying Light 2. Natural movement was a pillar of Dying Light 2. So from the beginning of the project, this was fixed as One constraint: we had to create, first of all, a playing field that would allow us to take advantage of the central toy of Parkour that made DL1 so successful: make it more accessible, more spectacular, more rewarding for the players, all in order to elevate the second by second experience. Then we mixed that constraint with another ambition we had for the world: to make it more believable, deeper, more consistent, more… alive. The latter came a bit later in the process, when the story and our world were finding their ultimate identity, but for most of production these two aspects fed off of each other, with story, story, and world building. bringing ideas for new locations and new Parkour opportunities, and world building also limited by level design and navigation. Constraints are the key to creativity, and in the end, we never reached a dead end where gameplay and worldbuilding were in stark opposition. “
When designing this open world, were there any elements that you had to cut out because it didn’t fit the gameplay?
“We had a lot of ideas for additional gameplay elements, some derived from world logic, that we didn’t have time to fully implement or balance properly and kept out of scope for launch. Fortunately, the Parkour toy is scalable and, just as there are endless ways to climb a building, there is a huge stock of ideas on how to further improve navigation within our teams. That’s what a 5-year support plan is for too 🙂
Also, there are elements in the world that focus more on the Lore aspect than the gameplay aspect – for example, the Storytellers at the Bonfire. We try to find a balance to cater to those of our players who are more of an explorer type and want to learn about what Villedor is without hindering those who play the game primarily for the thrill of Parkour and Combat.”
At any point during development, did you feel that adding tools to the mechanics of parkour could somehow backfire?
“As has already been said, the mechanics of Parkour are at the core of the second-to-second experience. It is the heart of what Dying Light is. So you can imagine we were extremely cautious about making changes or adding new tools, with multiple reviews and extensive playtests focused on what it feels like to hold a pad in your hand. As the saying goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Also, the parkour mechanic only works because the level design of the city is made for it, so any additions had to serve a larger vision of what we wanted the experience to be. A good example of this is paragliding: in this case, it was about an ambition to get to the next level in terms of navigation, to elevate Parkour with gliding – run, jump, FLY, run, jump, FLY, etc. – all while still flowing: that delicate balance between control/skill and challenge that, when achieved, is so exhilarating that you can spend hours just navigating the City… and time will not pass.”
What was one of the most difficult challenges you had to endure when designing the open world?
“1) High-level intentions = establish what the world should be about and the main creative pillars that will serve as a prism for the experience. In our case, for example, we knew we wanted a world that supported the idea of Choice and Consequence – from the very beginning, for DL2, we wanted to empower the player by giving them the power to shape their experience through their choices.
This drove the way we think about our game, both in terms of technology (C&C is “embedded” in our engine) and Narrative/World. The “Modern Dark Ages” was another powerful pillar that drove many artistic decisions: the context, the setting, the visuals, but also the characters and situations. Every time we had a question or needed to make a decision, we asked ourselves “which option will best convey this Modern Dark Ages feel?” “What would better transport our players to a world about to slide back into barbarism?”
2) The structure / organization of the world at a medium level. At this point, we get more into the details, as we try to nail down the high-level intentions: What kind of factions are there? What is the general history of our city? What are the social groups? How is the architecture, where and why?
It is more about establishing the rules and systems that best convey high-level intentions and define our context.
3) The details: they are what will sell your world to the public. If you don’t have concrete stories, visual cues, anecdotes, background details, etc., that “converge” to concretely illustrate your high-level intentions and mid-level structure, everything will fail.
SPOILER: All 3 layers occur ALL AT THE SAME TIME during all phases of production.
The hardest?
Getting everything to fit together in a way that works in the end, finding the ALCHEMY so that your world feels like a real place, a place that your audience wonders “wait… is there a Villedor? Have they used a real place as a base? I’ve seen some reviewers wonder that in a couple of video reviews. Nothing could make me happier. “
Was there ever talk of adding vehicles to the game?
“Actually we have vehicles: we have bicycles 😉
More seriously, even if we did have vehicles in The Following, the city was designed for exploration on foot (and paragliding). That said, while not our primary goal, we don’t rule out having vehicles in post-launch content. “
Were there other mediums that inspired you to design some of the new enemies?
“There is a lot of post-apocalyptic literature, movies and series. There’s no specific medium that we can cite here, but we definitely wanted to stick to the “grammar” and some of the archetypes of a post-apocalyptic world, just because it makes it more immediately understandable to our audience, especially those who didn’t know the franchise. It’s a matter of being more accessible. And then we tried to transpose and subvert some of the tropes to make them fit into the overall universe of our game and give them the Techland feel. “
The faction system is quite ambitious, was that something you initially thought of?
“The faction system was indeed one of the first design choices, as one of the key systems for conveying the high-level intent of choice and consequences. So we knew from the start that we wanted the player’s decisions to be reflected in some way through the faction system – the exact mechanics of how much they did that was something we tweaked throughout production with the overall experience in mind.”
Was it ever considered to make Dying Light 2 a next-gen exclusive because of the technical limitations of the old hardware?
“No, from the beginning the goal was to have the best experience on all hardware, we have made a lot of optimization effort to make sure the game is fully enjoyable even on the old generation. “
Was there a place in the real world that inspired you to create The City?
“Yes absolutely. We knew we primarily wanted to have the feel of a European metropolis, so some of our main inspirations were Paris and Amsterdam for the Old Villedor, and London (and to a lesser extent: Chicago) for the Central Loop.
We wanted the towering beauty and steeped in history of the Paris building, and part of the history of Paris inspired the story of Villedor and even some of the names of the city. It also helped that we had several French citizens in the main team 🙂
Amsterdam was also an inspiration for the structure of the city at a high level: Villedor is a coastal city with a dam, crossed by a river and several canals. A part of the logic of the city has been drawn directly from the evolution of Amsterdam from the 13th century to the present day.”
Via: Atomix