As a selling point, that now-infamous E3 trailer for Techland’s zombie RPG Dead Island was an all-timer. Unfortunately, the game itself fell a fair bit short of expectations.
It’s not to say Dead Island was particularly bad. It was disappointingly ordinary and riddled with technical hitches, but there was something in its island resort setting, co-op action, and reliance on makeshift weaponry to shatter festering skulls that showed promise. That promise never really came to Dead Island’s follow-up Riptide, and certainly wasn’t found in the miserable cel-shaded spinoff Escape Dead Island. It’d be generous to say the jury is still out on development hell resident Dead Island 2 coming good if it ever resurrects, so it’s somewhat fortunate Techland headed off to make Dying Light; a spiritual successor that proved to be everything Dead Island promised, except maybe fulfilling the artful melodrama of that trailer, but honestly, that’s a bit of a relief.
Such were the lowered expectations set by the Dead Island deflation, Dying Light sort of crept out quietly by comparison, and happily, it gradually gained recognition and grew as a game as the years went on. It wasn’t just a spiritual successor, it was almost an evolutionary leap forward in so many ways.
Sailing away from the tropical sun-kissed shores of Banoi, Dying Light brings the undead to the fictional Middle-Eastern city of Harran, where a viral outbreak has been contained via quarantine, leaving its remaining resident surviving on supply drops from the Global Relief Effort, and embroiled in a constant life or death struggle against both the undead and vicious mercenaries. Harran’s housing is packed together tightly, leading to narrow pockets in which to move at street level, with plenty of obstacles, both inanimate and flesh, to navigate.
The player enters the fray as GRE operative Kyle Crane (voiced by regular zombie slayer and boulder-punching enthusiast Roger Craig Smith) who is sent into Harran to retrieve delicate files that could lead to a cure for the virus. Unfortunately for Crane, he gets infected not long after arriving, and finds himself working with various factions to not only complete his original mission, but to maintain levels of the Antizin suppressant that stop him from becoming another of the walking corpses stumbling around the streets of Harran.
So far, so Dead Island, but two major aspects separate and elevate Dying Light from its past self. The day/night cycle, and parkour.
Firstly, parkour. Outside of Mirror’s Edge, games hadn’t really tried to tackle first-person parkour. Techland had to rework the entire original story to better suit the newfound verticality, which turned out to be a smart move as the precision movement system works wonderfully in tandem with the agile melee-based combat. The risk/reward of climbing higher and higher to be relatively safe is that, initially at least, a drop is fatal, and even if by some miracle you do survive it, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled into a street full of shambling infected. In the daytime, it’s a good way to avoid getting into a brawl with the plodding populace, at night, the floor may as well be lava for how deadly it is.
You see, the night changes the infected. They become quicker, more alert, and more aggressive, so the last thing you want to be doing is faltering in the dark as unknown numbers of tetchy rotting mouths loom in the inky black of night. If that was the only problem, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but a particularly nasty kind of light-sensitive infected emerges as the sun sets.
The Volatiles are fast, strong, and ridiculously agile. If one spots Crane, it will go hell for leather to turn him into a red smear on the tarmac. Crane can keep them at bay using a UV flashlight (which has limited uses) or flares. The first time the story introduces them is one of the most intense and horrifying sequences of the entire game, as Crane scrambles across the rooftops of Harran’s slums in darkness, while all manner of screeching monsters bay for his blood. In the distance is the safety of a tower block the majority of the last vestiges of Harran’s living population have turned into a fortress, but between Crane and there is a sea of obsidian night, where gnashing teeth and nightmarish brutes lurk beneath the murky surface.
That introduction to Harran’s nightlife places a greater emphasis on avoiding it and returning to a safehouse before nightfall. It uses the fading of hazy daylight to emphasize the terror of the encroaching darkness. Even as Kyle Crane’s roster of abilities, and an arsenal of badass makeshift weaponry grows, there’s still something to fear when the nights draw close.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in Dying Light comes midway through the story when not only does Crane acquire a grappling hook to aid his multi-tiered traversal, the introduction of the upper-class side of Harran changes the way parkour and infected combat works. The narrow, claustrophobic slums are left behind for a more modern, open map that sees plenty of heights to climb to and new depths to plummet into. It’s a clever change of pace that utilizes everything the player has learned in the opening half whilst introducing fresh elements.
After the goofy splatterfest of Dead Island, Dying Light felt somewhat somber, from its plot of corruption and survival, the menace of the night, to its sublime synth-heavy soundtrack that evokes the Euro-horror of the 80s. It still allows you to revel in silliness, like dropkicking undead from rooftop terraces, but it’s ultimately a dangerous, volatile place that’s out to murder Crane at any moment.
In the seven years between its release and that of its upcoming sequel, Dying Light repeatedly added to that captivating original package. Multiple free and paid DLC packs dropped over the years, and a brand new expansion, The Following, brought a whole other area to explore alongside vehicular combat. There was even a medieval-themed bonus mode based on an unreleased Techland title called Hellraid thrown in for good measure. Add in the fact you can tackle Dying Light with three other friends or even be invaded by one in ‘Be the Zombie’ and there ended up being plenty of legs in Dying Light, and hopefully plenty of insight that helped in the development of Dying Light 2.
The one thing Dying Light 2 has to do better is with the story and characters. While not terrible, in Dying Light they often felt undercooked and riddled with cliches. That was offset by the actual game’s overall quality, but given it’s been seven years and narrative quality is generally higher in horror games, it’d be the final piece of the puzzle.
The post The Night Comes For Us: Why Techland’s Zombie RPG ‘Dying Light’ Delivered on the Promise of ‘Dead Island’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.