Dying Light: The Beast won’t let you steer the story as Dying Light 2 did heavily, but that’s actually a good thing, according to franchise director Tymon Smektała, who thinks players shouldn’t have their choices discarded when a sequel canonizes an alternate version of events.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Smektała said that there will be “no choice” this time around. “I think [linear storytelling] also allows us to be kind of a little bit more hands on and canonical in how we steer the future of the series,” he explained. “When you give players choice, actually, to be fair, you shouldn’t be saying what’s canon and what’s not.”
“You shouldn’t be forcing your canon on the players if you give them choice[…] if you say to players, ‘hey, like, this is a game with choices’, you have to live by the fact that for each one of those players, the canon will be different.” Essentially, it’s the Gears 5 dilemma. If players choose one of two endings to a game, by continuing with a sequel that only canonizes one of those endings, you’re somewhat disregarding the decision that half the playerbase made, rendering the whole exercise pointless.
“I think moving forward, we would like to be a little bit more canonical,” Smektała continued. “We would like to be a little bit more [in] full control over what we do with each and every next Dying Light game, especially since we have quite a lot of plans for the future. So we kind of want to be able to be sure that it drives where we want it to drive.”
Dying Light: The Beast is now coming in September after a delay to allow for more polish.
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