The zombie genre has seen a variety of games over the past few years, but Techland’sDying Lightoffered a fresh take on the familiar formula. Released in 2015,Dying Lighthelped to alleviate zombie fatigue with its challenging open-world environment and a fluctuating day-night cycle. Players could traverse the urban environments with ease thanks to the dynamic parkour and had a few options when it came to either fighting off the undead hordes or fleeing across the rooftops.
While some thought the main character was a bit too much of a blank slate and the story was slightly predictable,Dying Lightstill found its fansthanks to its original features and fun gameplay, and a sequel was released earlier this year which saw a switch up of the game’s setting and a new cast of characters. Before the sequel launched though, there wasDying Light: The Following, an expansion pack released in 2016 which managed to breathe new life intoDying Light’s mechanics and offered a new take on the gameplay.
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What The DLC Entailed
The base game was by no means perfect. It had a long list of uninspired fetch quests, and even though the day-night cycle helped ramp up the difficulty in interesting ways, it took a while to actually get good at the game and really enjoy everything that it had to offer. One ofDying Light’s best features was the tightly-packed urban environment in which players could flip, run, and climb their way through withDying Light’s great parkour. It seemed like an incredibly bold move, then, for the developer to essentially do away with this element in the game’s story DLC.
The Followingmoves theDying Light’s action to some wide-open farmland with buildings few and far between. Instead of free-running their way across the landscape, players were able to utilize a dune buggy to travel around and even mow down rambling zombies. The buggy was completely upgradable and even had its own separate skill tree, making it a truly versatile and formidable weapon as well as a mode of transport. This, along with some other gameplay changes that helped to polish what the base game had to offer, reallymadeThe Followinga must-play experienceforDying Lightfans.
Why It Was Such A Triumph
Techland took a risk withThe Following, but it definitely paid off. It took elements of the base game and improved them, offering a more balanced, expansive, and enjoyable experience. The change in environment really put players to the test, especially when they could no longer beat a hasty retreat in the dense cityscape and couldn’t as easily break line of sight with the vicious enemies. The new Nightmare Mode extended the perilous nighttime and even made the zombies more formidable and deadly, adding another layer of terror to the survival horror.
Keeping the expansion separate from the main campaign in terms of area and plot was also a smart move, and allowed the developer toexperiment withThe Following’s features and try new things. The Countryside –The Following’s new area – was massive, and really made use of the new buggy mechanic. It also made players feel more vulnerable and exposed, even if they could move around much more quickly in their new vehicle. ButThe Following’s biggest success, and the thing that made it an instant classic, was that it was just a fun expansion. It’s hard to deny how appealing it is to run down zombies in the buggy, and while this might get old for some players, the ways in which the vehicle could be improved and upgraded ensured that this new feature never got too stale.
Dying Lightis available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
