While delays of new games are nothing new it often has to do with several factors. When I worked in the game industry I used to joke that whenever a release date was announced; add three to six months to it in order to get a better release window.
As the internet expanded it became more and more common for unfinished games to be released with patches available at or soon after launch to add stability and features as in many ways the public have become a frontline source of Beta Testing as no matter how much you test; there will always be things that the public finds that slipped past the developers.
With that in mind let us look at the pending Dying Light 2 which has seen its planned release moved back to an unknown date. This was of course before all the chaos the world finds itself in erupted. I saw the game being demoed last year at E3 and Techland put on an impressive showcase for the game which looked very fast, smooth, and impressive.
When I did an interview for the game recently I posed the question that is the delay for the game due to it coming for the next generation of consoles.
My reason for this was that those who remember the first game will likely remember how it was promised to be available for the current and next generation of consoles. After releasing on the new generation systems and PC; Techland later stated that they were not going to release the games for the prior generation systems as the limitations of their technology limited what they wanted to do in the game and they did not want to release a scoped down version of the game.
Which takes me back again to my idea that Dying Light 2 may be coming for the new consoles as well as the PC.
Here is part of the interview that I did where I ask about the delay and possibility of next-generation release.
What is behind the recent delay of the game?
Sometimes, a gift can be a curse, and a lot of those new things implemented into the game have also caused us headaches. The new technology presents challenges, we had to spend time getting to grips with it. New moves and features improve the gameplay a lot, but it also means we cannot use the old approach to things like balance for example. But, the fact that in Dying Light 2, you really do shape The City and the environment around you in a multitude of ways, means that we need to take the time to make the best experience possible for our players. See, usually you just need to test and polish one game, but in Dying Light 2 players can generate hundreds of states… and we have to make sure all of them are up to par. So please, bear with us a little bit – we just want to make sure that you’ll get a high quality product that you deserve and we’re proud to give you.
Will the game be available for Next Gen systems as well as current Gen?
We’ll have more to share on this in the near future!
I had at first dismissed this as the standard issues with pushing the envelope of any new game but the phrase “new technology” caught my attention. Sure it could simply be a new gaming or physics engine or the countless number of algorithms that go into making a game.
I ruled out GPU and graphic card updates as those have not caused too many issues with the new hardware that has been released and the hardware in the PS4 and Xbox One have not changed. So what exactly is the new technology?
I think it could very well be the PS5 and the Xbox One X as any new system does require a learning curve for developers to work with an understand. The PS3 was noted for being difficult to work with and as developers became more comfortable with it, the quality of the games and features improved significantly. Also with the game not having a definite release date and so many delays arising from the current world situation; would it be too far off to assume that the game has now become a next-generation and PC release and Techland is simply waiting for the approval from Microsoft and Sony as well as the right timing to announce it?
We will find out in time but for now the impressive looking game is one of the more anticipated releases to come.
