Dying Light Doesn’t Require You To Kill Zombies

In a chat with AusGamers, Techland Producer Tymon Smektala talked about Dying Light, the new zombie game being published by Warner Bros. If you didn’t read our hands-on preview, take a look now, as the game looks very interesting indeed. Surprisingly enough, Smektala announced today that it could very well be possible to finish Dying Light without killing zombies at all.

I think the thing that’s lacking the most, in our opinion, is the fact that the only thing that you can do in zombie games really, is kill zombies. There aren’t that many games where you can proceed within those games without killing zombies. Even if you look at a game like The Last of Us — which was a great game, and a game that many people consider being a game that changes the whole zombie formula — even in that game, there are sections which you just have to kill zombies to proceed, even if those sections are smaller than the actual story and the setting up of the characters.

So we wanted to create a game that really gives you these options; that really gives you that freedom to choose your own way around the world. I’m not sure if I explained or revealed this in your session, but we have a couple of guys in our studio, in our QA team, playtesters that just play the game without killing zombies at all. Their only job is to complete the game, and complete each of the missions without killing zombies, and they are able to complete the game without doing that.

Actually, at the moment, to be extra-specific and precise there, the guys that are doing that they have to kill some zombies in a few instances, because of how the story missions go. But I think in the final game, we will look at these missions and we will try to tweak them in a way that they will not have to do it. It’s not official and not confirmed — it’s still work in development — but I think it will be possible to finish the game without killing zombies if you’ve rescued enough players.

Dying Light is scheduled for release some time in 2014 for PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.