Coinciding with advancing technology available to developers, single-player titles continue to grow in scale between the size of the world and the characters inhabiting it. Titles like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Fallout 4 exemplify this growth by having large places to explore with dozens, or even hundreds, of characters inhabiting it to make it feel alive. Developer Techland is highlighting this epic scale for its latest title, Dying Light 2, by sharing the amount of dialogue it has written for the new zombie game.
Picking up 20 years after 2015's Dying Light, Dying Light 2 puts players in the boots of Aiden Caldwell as he fights to survive in an unnamed, zombie-infested European city. Caldwell will need to navigate both the undead and various factions trying to survive which will rise and fall based on players' choices. The game will feature parkour traversal like the first game, along with an updated weapons system where melee weapons will degrade with time and use while players rebuild and upgrade their arsenals.
Given the aforementioned impact player choices will have on Dying Light 2's characters and factions, it was fair for players to suspect the game would be very dialogue-heavy to account for choices. However, the amount of dialogue was previously unknown given what Techland has shown thus far in previews. Techland decided to pull back the curtain on Twitter, though, and has revealed the game's roughly 350,000 written words, making up 40,000 lines of in-game dialogue.
Techland commented further in the tweet's replies by pointing out Leo Tolstoy's epic novel Anna Karenina also has 350,000 words. Highlighting the amount of dialogue present in the game is a unique way of highlighting the apparent scale of the game's world, characters, and overall narrative ahead of release. Studios will regularly highlight a game's world, specifically, to sell players on the sense of scale it is going for in the release. Techland has used this tact previously when talking about Dying Light 2 compared to Dying Light, pointing out that the city is four times larger than the first game's zombie-infected island.
By revealing the amount of dialogue, Techland is also showing how much thought it has given to the potential impact players may have on the world. The developer has regularly spoken about how important Dying Light 2's factions are to the city, the game's narrative, and how players actions will affect their place within the city. If players' decisions are that impactful to the world, the game would require a large amount of dialogue to account for all possible outcomes before the credits roll and incentivize players to jump back in for another playthrough to see how different choices can shape the experience.
Dying Light 2 is scheduled to release on February 4, 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.