Dying Light 2’s Lead Developer Discusses Upcoming Title

Dying Light 2’s lead designer, Tymon Smektała, recently took part in an interview with Digital Foundry to discuss the sequel to the 2015 open-world zombie game, including the game’s brand new engine.

“It’s called C Engine. We changed the name on purpose because some time ago at Techland we decided we wanted [to make] first-person, open-world games. We wanted to create games that deliver high fidelity graphics so that you can really be immersed in that world,” explains Smektała.

“So for that we knew that we needed to create a new engine – new technology – so we took all of the smart minds from our company, all of the people that worked on Chrome Engine, and we told them, ‘hey guys, we will be making these kinds of games in the future. So we need that kind of engine to be able to create those worlds,’ and the they gave us just this with C Engine.”

The AI has also been improved from the first game, making the sequel that much more exciting for fans of the popular title.

“So the AI algorithms for humans got way more complex, and we also introduced something called the moral system which tries to simulate how a person will behave, and they can pull off something quite unexpected when they fight you.

“So for example, you fight a guy, you’re pressing on him, he’s really down on his knees, and then he understands that it’s his last moment – perhaps his last chance to save his life – so he gathers his strength and then answers you with a flurry of furious attacks.

“And to give you another example of the moral system, sometimes a person who’s pressed by you can just grab his weapon, throw that weapon at you, and start escaping, hoping that you will take interest in that weapon and pick it up, and this will give him [the chance to escape].

“So there are a lot of those things that make the combat emergent and unexpected.”

Along with other changes, and the goal of the console version of the game to reach the PC version of the game running at 60 fps, the animation system has been reworked.

“The new animation system allows us to create a lot of custom looking animations with ease, because all of the animations of characters are combined, from small moves, small emotions, small reactions, and our level designers [and] story designers can now put those things together to create a quite realistic-looking animation and behaviour on the NPC side.”

You can see the interview below: