During last night’s VGX festivities, hosts Geoff Keighley and Joel McHale (Community) completed a live interview with a member of Techland’s Dying Light development team. Therein, some visceral, action-packed and brutal gameplay was shown, and we have it for you here.
Coming to current and next-gen devices, as well as PC in 2014, Dying Light is a zombie adventure/survival game that apparently makes combat optional. Its main character, who seems to have a good grip on how to use melee weapons effectively based on what we saw in the aforementioned demo, is also a parkour enthusiast. As such, he’s able to climb and/or jump onto just about anything in the environment, and can also take advantage of zombies in order to do so, via springboard means. It’s an interesting twist on a genre that traditionally favours slower, less capable and unwitting protagonists, especially since said abilities can be used during combat.
Although the aforementioned combat is apparently somewhat optional, for the most part, the game’s developers look to have put a lot of effort into making it interesting. A few different melee weapons were shown and utilized during the several minute-long preview, including a heavy duty sledgehammer, which is capable of breaking undead bones. When those types of hits land, the game takes a moment to let its users revel in their accomplishments, by showing the bones snap and crumble with a red highlighted hue around them.
It’s worth mentioning that what you’ll see below is merely a daytime demo, meaning that there are few zombies on-screen, with most of them being a bit hazy. Nighttime is more of the opposite as you’d expect, but it was not shown.
Dying Light is definitely looking great and, being that I’m a big Dead Rising and even Dead Island fan, I can’t wait for it.
Check out the video below and let us know what you think.