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'Dying Light 2' Director Says Open Worlds Should Be Better, Not Bigger

Ewan Moore

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'Dying Light 2' Director Says Open Worlds Should Be Better, Not Bigger

Featured Image Credit: Techland

Open world video games have to continued to evolve and expand at an impressive rate over the last few years. The map in Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, is estimated to be around four times the size of its predecessor, which itself was unthinkably large at the time of release.

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With this most recent generation in particular, open world games have really started to balloon. The likes of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, GTA V, and Just Cause 4 all feature absolutely huge lands to explore and get lost in.

Does a bigger world always mean a better game though? We're surely at the point where open world games have gotten as big as they need to get. Just because we have the technology to make realistically massive worlds now, does that mean we should? After all, what good is a massive space if you don't have enough interesting ideas to fill it?

Dying Light 2 / Credit: Techland
Dying Light 2 / Credit: Techland
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Dying Light 2 Director Tymon Smektala recently expressed a similar sentiment when asked about the future of open world games. Speaking to Official Xbox Magazine (issue 185), Smektala explained that he doesn't think worlds will get bigger. He thinks they need to simply be better. Quality over quantity.

"I'm not sure [worlds] will get bigger," he said. "I think what will change is the fidelity of everything. I don't think people really need bigger worlds, they need worlds that are of better quality and that they feel more immersed in what surrounds them."

"You can create big worlds that don't really impact the performance. What impacts performance is the number of NPCs you see around you, the variety of them and how they behave, and the number of animations. The improvements in the next generation will allow us to go further in that direction."

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This is something Smektala wants to achieve with Dying Light 2. By all accounts the much-anticipated 2020 zombie game is going to bigbig. We know that the game will feature dozens of branching paths that reward multiple playthroughs, and that it's not possible to see everything the game has to offer in just one or two goes.

Credit: Techland
Credit: Techland

That doesn't mean the map itself is necessarily that huge, though. Instead, Smektala and developer Techland opted to focus heavily on one sprawling city that could densely pack with engaging content, interesting characters, and immersive details. This, rather than attempt to replicate an entire country filled with wide open stretches of nothing.

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"This is basically our mission as a studio," Smektala said. "We want to create first-person open-world games with high-fidelity graphics and with high-fidelity immersion, where you feel like you are really there."

Topics: Dying Light 2, Techland

Ewan Moore
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