Dying Light 2 - Flipping the RPG Script

Remove all ads!

VG24/7 talked to Chris Avellone and Techland about Dying Light 2.

​

Some of this was helped along by Avellone, who has learned a thing or two over his years of working on RPGs about the unexpected things players can do to mess with your carefully crafted narrative.

"The big one is learning that you shouldn't funnel the player - they're here to explore the space; let them, don't shackle them," Avellone says. "It can be a challenge to tell an open-world story if you're not considering what the player brings to the equation and allowing them to assume an equal role in the events taking place and even better, causing the events that lead to the story progression.

"It's easy to imagine a story that takes from A to B to C with a set series of events, but in an open-world game, you have to put the player agency and their ability to affect the world at the forefront. So for example, rather than A to B to C, you take a step back, assume the player starts at 'A', and then can do all manner of events to cause 'B' to come to them through the actions they do in the open-world - or, a number of different 'B's, not just one. Or even better, the player creates 'B' all on their own, and the entire world reacts to it. When a player can literally see themselves as an agent of change, it empowers them even more."

[...]