As if you needed any further proof that Dying Light 2 is going to be an insanely, embarrassingly massive game, developer Techland has now revealed that they still can’t quite decide how many endings to include in the hotly anticipated sequel.
We’d already heard that the game would boast multiple endings, and that it would take multiple breakthroughs to really see everything Dying Light 2 has to offer, but Lead Designer Tymon Smektala told UNILAD during a hands-off demo of the game that the studio hasn’t yet settled on the final count when it comes to multiple endings.
This, Smektela tells me, is for various reasons. Some of the currently proposed endings are apparently perhaps too controversial, while others might not necessarily represent the overarching theme of Dying Light 2 in a satisfying way.
He explained:
We have the story quite well worked out, but there are some outcomes that we still don’t know if we want to introduce. Some of them may be slightly controversial, and some of them are maybe not supporting the meaning, the theme of the game.
The theme of Dying Light 2, according to Smektela, is about finding a “balance between selfishness and collectiveness.” This balance is something players will encounter a ton while exploring the game’s vast open world, as they continually find themselves choosing between what’s good for them as a player, and what’s good for the overall outcome of the open world.
We’d previously had confirmation that choice and consequence would run through Dying Light 2 of course, but I saw it in action today during the demo in impressive fashion. Aiden, the game’s protagonist, storms a compound on a quest to take down the supposed tyrant who has been denying an area of the city access to clean water.
In the demo, Aiden chose to take out the tyrant and release the water, rather than trust his pleas that not everything was what it seemed. This resulted in an entirely new region of map appearing, as the pumps drained the water to reveal the remains of an old city block. We’re told this completely optional new region will have its own quests, items, and enemies.
We were also told that a typically playthrough could take around 20 to 30 hours, but the sheer amount of choice in Dying Light 2 means you’ll only be seeing around half of the content even if you try to catch everything.
It’s clear that Smektela and the rest of Techland is putting a ton of effort into making Dying Light 2 the best game it can be, and it’s certainly shaping up to be one to watch. Roll on 2020.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.