Tymon Smektała, Dying Gentle 2 Lead Recreation Designer
Dying Gentle 2 Keep Human was launched on February 4 to largely constructive opinions and big participant rely numbers, particularly in comparison with that of the primary Dying Gentle. It stays one of many highest-scoring video games Recreation Informer has reviewed this 12 months, receiving a 9.5 out of 10, and in lower than 24 hours after launch, Dying Gentle 2’s PC participant rely peak surpassed Dying Gentle’s all-time excessive peak.
By all accounts, Dying Gentle 2 was a large success for Techland, which had been engaged on the sequel for years. Attending to that success wasn’t straightforward, although. After its indefinite delay again in 2020, The Gamer launched a brand new report that painted an image of a scarcity of management, a scarcity of path, and a demoralizing environment on the studio. Lower than a 12 months prior, the studio launched an announcement asserting it had parted methods with narrative designer Chris Avellone after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced.
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With the sport now in and out the arms of gamers who will, ideally for Techland, proceed to play the sport for at the least the 5 years the studio has content material deliberate for the zombie parkour title, the workforce has crossed over from the nervous pleasure and anticipation felt pre-launch right into a state of elation.
“I feel everybody is admittedly, actually completely satisfied that we have been in a position to launch the sport,” Dying Gentle 2 lead sport designer Tymon Smektała tells Recreation Informer. “The sport has been obtained very properly. We introduced that throughout the first weekend, it reached greater than 3 million gamers and that was an astonishing quantity. As you possibly can think about, the quantity is just rising and it has been a protracted journey.”
Smektała mentioned Dying Gentle 2 was a troublesome challenge because of its sheer dimension and complexity. Not solely was it a follow-up to the shock 2015 hit Dying Gentle, which has obtained assist from Techland for greater than seven years, nevertheless it wanted to up the ante in each manner.
“It actually took the very best of us, however we're completely satisfied it’s on the market and we're feeding on the constructive suggestions that the neighborhood is giving us,” Smektała says.
He mentioned the workforce took its break following the launch however is now again to work on post-launch content material. As talked about above, Techland has a five-year post-launch DLC plan for Dying Gentle 2, however Smektała tells Recreation Informer that the workforce already has plans to create and add extra content material to that timeline than what’s been introduced. It was by no means a query for Techland to assist this sport for a few years after its launch, however the “five-year” quantity wasn’t locked in till the top of final 12 months.
“There are a whole lot of the reason why we really feel [supporting the game extensively after launch] is vital,” Smektała says. “One of many causes is that I feel we've got realized we've got invented, or possibly found, a system that truly being on good phrases along with your neighborhood and dealing along with your neighborhood and supporting your neighborhood…is extraordinarily helpful to you as a sport developer. And as a writer, we're very fortunate to have the ability to personal Dying Gentle and develop Dying Gentle as our personal [intellectual property]. So…each side of our group are supported and get advantages from us supporting the sport for therefore lengthy.”
When the workforce determined it could assist Dying Gentle 2 closely after launch, they felt frozen at occasions, Smektała says. Nevertheless it was equally as encouraging as a result of the workforce knew that if the content material was there, the neighborhood would present up, simply as they did with Dying Gentle. It additionally inspired Techland to employees up, which finally created a studio higher ready for the lengthy, Viral-ridden street forward of it.
“We have now grown lots as a corporation and as a studio,” Smektała says. “We perceive our craft higher, consequently, however we've got additionally invited a whole lot of new folks to hitch our ranks – folks with experience in experiences from totally different studios and totally different tasks – so I feel we have been and are higher ready to deal with an even bigger challenge like this.”
With launch day behind them, Smektała says the largest shock for Techland was how shortly some gamers have been in a position to put in 100, 200, and even 300 hours of time into the sport. Maybe simply as stunning have been the requests for brand spanking new content material from people who performed a lot of Dying Gentle 2 so shortly. A number of the greatest requests the workforce has heard embody a New Recreation Plus mode, a Photograph Mode, and extra tiers of issue.
“These are positively issues which might be on the desk presently and which might be being labored on,” he says. “I don’t need to go into too many specifics here…however very quickly, folks will begin seeing these issues being added in a single kind or one other into the sport.”
One problem Techland, and finally each studio that finds success, is dealing with with post-launch plans is discovering a option to fulfill not simply this part of the participant base or that, however ideally, each a part of it. Smektała says it's a must to consider every part, and varieties of content material that can fulfill the totally different wants of the whole “very various” neighborhood. That’s what the subsequent 5 years of Dying Gentle 2 are about, however proper now, Techland could be very centered on Yr One.
“We have now already revealed a really high-level roadmap for the primary 12 months, however as gamers will quickly uncover, we are going to add extra to that first-year roadmap..and we are going to invite them to really uncover extra content material that can drop inside the first 12 months,” Smektała says.
Talking in broad strokes, he says the primary 12 months of content material will embody some focus on online play, some focus on single-player content material, and a few on the sport’s narrative. Different drops shall be associated to the sport’s platforming parts, like the brand new parkour trials just lately added to the sport in an replace, whereas others shall be in regards to the melee-focused fight. Smektała hopes all of this and every part else deliberate for Dying Gentle 2 is, above all else, stunning. He likens the workforce’s hopes for DLC to Forrest Gump’s well-known “field of goodies” line in that ideally, with Dying Gentle 2’s DLC, you by no means know what you’re going to get.
“We don’t need to fall into this repeating sample the place gamers will type of know what to anticipate from us,” he says. “Having mentioned that, for instance, the primary story DLC that we've got promised, I’ve seen a whole lot of hypothesis online about what will probably be and I can say confidently that they…weren’t near the mark.”
Anybody that’s accomplished Dying Gentle 2 is aware of that its story concludes with some definitive decisions. These decisions are as much as the participant, after all, nevertheless it leaves protagonist Aiden and his allies and enemies in some attention-grabbing locations, particularly when you think about the place to go together with story DLC. The workforce is sidestepping that problem for now by growing narrative content material that occurs “sideways to the primary occasions.”
“In some unspecified time in the future, we are going to really begin including to the occasions that occurred on the finish of the sport,” Smektała says. “We have now some concepts. On paper, as they're carried out proper now, it appears promising, however positively, this shall be a problem.”
Regardless of the challenges dealing with the workforce, Smektała says the phrase he’d use to explain what everybody’s feeling is “pleasure.” Pleasure that the sport is out, pleasure that it’s resonated with followers, and pleasure about what’s to return in Dying Gentle 2.
“We actually simply can’t wait to see folks which might be interacting with these things and a number of the concepts that we've got as a result of a number of the issues we're including is, merely put, fairly distinctive,” Smektała says. “A few of it's us betting on concepts which might be possibly a bit of out of the field. We’ll see what the neighborhood thinks, however I’m feeling actually constructive about it. All of it will unfold inside the subsequent, as I mentioned, few weeks and shall be in participant arms inside the subsequent one to a few months.”
