Hey Techland, are you absolutely sure Dying Light isn’t supposed to be the next installment in the Dead Island franchise? After watching the new 12-minute gameplay walkthrough, I quite honestly don’t see much of anything that distinguishes it from that other open-world zombie game. Sure, there’s the night/day cycle and the parkour stuff, but with zombies to kill and seemingly so many things to stop and explore, the sense of free-running momentum of true parkour appears to get a bit lost–though the ability to improvise movements and choose different, unrestricted paths through the world is pretty slick.
It remains unclear whether or not Dying Light will have any sort of RPG leveling mechanics, but so far the combat and weapon systems and the overall design aesthetic look just like Dead Island. Not that that’s a terrible thing, but I’m kind of hoping for more than that from a game that’s not supposed to be the next Dead Island. But hey, that’s all semantics, and there’s no point rushing to judgment too quickly here. Dying Light isn’t out until next year, the footage shown is pre-alpha (and still looks pretty damn impressive), and Techland has a lot still to explain. I’m not completely blown away, but I like what I see so far.