Why I Love Dying Light but will Never Play it

Anyone who knows me well will know that my favourite series of games is Saints Row. It’s a simple pleasure, made easy to enjoy thanks to developer Volition. They clearly love what they’ve created and it shows in every aspect of the game, from the script to the fact that one of the character creation voice options is labeled “Nolan North”.

What does that have to do with Dying Light? Well, I have no idea whether developer Techland have given it that amount of detail, what the story is or even whether there is character customisation! I couldn’t tell you whether you can choose the sex of the character, or what the default is! This is because I’m terrified of scary games. I’ve written about it before, but the TL;DR of it is -- I don’t mind zombies eating other people, I do mind them eating me. I can watch Friday The 13th, but I can’t even play the 2D sprite game Lakeview Cabin Collection without quitting the moment a maniac shows up.

Awesome, dune buggies?!

So no, I don’t know anything about Dying Light, and I will never buy it on PC or console. I won’t watch a Let’s Play and will most likely run away if you try to play it in front of me. So why on Io would I claim to love it with a devotion that has my finger near the Purchase option almost weekly?

I already mentioned the developer Techland, who created the Call of Juarez series, and the original Dead Islandamongst many others. I’ll admit that they didn’t really cross my radar until Dying Light was out, and it appeared that they were going to crack down on modding. However, that turned out to be false, and they went ahead with releasing developer tools!

Since I was reporting news at the time, I managed to keep an eye on Dying Light without any effort. Ever since they launched, where it was well received pretty much across the board: just not on my personal scoring system, of course, where even the trailers got “ARGH! ZOMBIES! ARGH! HELP!” out of 10.

Pictured: Not a zombie because eff that noise

For this article, I did some looking back at what we have covered news wise, and I lost count of how many times GameGrin wrote a news piece on Dying Light. Trailers here, #DrinkForDLC there, rewarding modders in a third place… It’s been quite staggering how much Techland pumped Dying Light.

With most games, it’s quite a fanfare when they announce DLC or new editions. Dying Light: The Following actually came as a surprise to me, because I thought it was another one of their usual press releases! But no, it was a massive DLC, which I didn’t actually realise until Techland announced that they were going to reveal the map piece-by-piece, thanks to a Twitter-powered Scalextric!

I like to imagine they made scale models to race on the track

Nowadays, I pretty much have to take a deep breath before opening one of Techland’s press emails. I never know whether it will be Techland teaming up with Psyonix to have a Dying Light buggy in Rocket League or a $10million special edition! But damn, I really want to find out… They clearly love what they’ve created -- and I can’t help but love it too.