It’s no secret that when Dying Light released in 2015, it sold really well. Ever since Techland released the first announcement trailer for Dead Island back in 2011, they’ve been killing it in the zombies genre.
Some consider the trailer to be the best video game trailer to ever be created, and it certainly went mega viral for the time. It was so unforgettable, that it’s stayed with many gamers, including myself, all these years. A quick rewatch might be in order:
It was such an effective and successful marketing campaign in fact, that it set the Dead Island name in stone, possibly to the detriment of developer Techland. Many of us had been waiting for Dead Island 2 for so long, that we kind of gave up and missed the boat on the Dying Light franchise entirely.
Which is strange because looking back, Dying Light is so clearly the true Dead Island 2 we were all waiting for, but the whole “creative differences” thing happened with their publisher Deep Silver and they diverged the project into its own IP (although I’m shocked Deep Silver didn’t try to sue them — maybe they did?).
Can you imagine if Rockstar was developing a new GTA game, but because of creative differences with their parent company, Take-Two, they renamed the game to Crime Simulator and just left? It would be scorched earth.
Even without all the lawsuits (which maybe did happen, but because of NDAs and a private settlement, was never made public, who knows?), it was still a messy and wild ride to get to Dead Island 2 finally releasing. IGN released a mini doc about it that is definitely worth a watch:
I played Dead Island day one back in the day and loved it, but after the franchise got put on ice, I didn’t follow Techland into their Dying Light franchise, and let me tell you, it was my loss. That said, playing it for the first time in 2025 certainly has its perks.
It doesn’t feel like playing an old game. Techland has continued updating and supporting the game all these years, and it recently received yet another update. Not officially a remaster, but remastered to some extent for sure. If you’ve been waiting like me, there’s no better time to jump in.
Some final thoughts on developers updating their games. I always found it somewhat odd that if a developer could update a game, why wouldn’t they? Like most things, it’s a little more complicated than that. First, console gaming is only in recent years starting to catch up to what PC gaming has always been. Second, I think it’s complicated concerning copyright and ownership.
I think that’s one unique thing about developers who outright own their own games; they can update them to their heart’s desire and add new content in whenever they feel like, and not just for profit (although being a good shepherd for your games is good business), but just because you care about improving the quality of something you built, even though you don’t have to and people would still like the thing just fine.
Now onto the game itself. Many consider Dying Light to be a masterpiece of open-world zombie apocalypse storytelling. There are so many zombies in all media now, but Techland was there even before The Last of Us and just about the same time The Walking Dead came out in 2010, though I have to imagine they were working on Dead Island well before that.
The fact of the matter is that the developers clearly had a deep love for George A. Romero long before The Walking Dead reignited interest in zombies. They even updated the game to memorialize his death in 2017:
Techland took everything they learned from their experience making Dead Island and perfected it in Dying Light. The game’s atmosphere, as difficult as it is, captures the dread of Romero movies perfectly, from the eerie daylight zombies shambling in fields (especially in “The Following” DLC) to the depressing score, which is heavily inspired by Day of the Dead.
One thing that really makes you care about Harran and its people, is the kids. While most violent games shy away from children even existing in their worlds, Techland leans into it heavily. Babies and children die and turn into zombies, cry, deal with their trauma through drawing, and many side quests involve doing things including either literally saving children or just making them feel safe by bringing them joy.
One quest involves collecting crayons for the kids and another involves finding a Christmas gift lost through the postal system when the world shut down. You find actual lost children in the open world, which can be safely returned to their parents, or in another quest, you escort a teenage girl who actually wishes to leave home.
Now let’s talk about Hellraid. Almost as infamous as the development hell that Dead Island 2 went through, we have another game that fans were excitedly waiting many years for:
While not ever officially cancelled (and its website is even still live), the fact that it was finally released as a DLC for Dying Light, it’s pretty clear that that original game at least is no longer happening. At this point, they would likely need to just rebuild the entire game from scratch, engine, graphics, and probably story too.
That said, the DLC is pretty neat. Originally described as Doom meets Elder Scrolls, I was always very excited for this game. To finally get to play it in any form was a treat, and it’s actually pretty scary and fun.
Maybe it’ll still finally happen one day, but Techland has pretty much only been in the business of Dying Light for the past decade, and ya know, that’s okay with me. After finally playing Dying Light and loving it, I’m very much looking forward to playing Dying Light 2 and the upcoming Dying Light: The Beast.
Snaps of My Journey Through the Game
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