Dying Light studio remembers it's working on an 'exotic open world' fantasy RPG a mere 7 years after announcing it

A man hangs off a huge tree branch and gazes over a fantasy vista. A moon broken into several parts hangs in the sky.
(Image credit: Techland)

Hey, remember how Techland is working on a new fantasy RPG? No? Me neither! Probably because it was announced literally seven years ago at the same time as Dying Light 2, which got much more attention both from audiences and Techland itself. But I guess the company is ready to focus on the game it's had in the oven for the last near-decade.

In a tweet posted yesterday, Techland gave us a few precious crumbs of info about just what the heck this RPG is going to be. I'm gonna level with you, folks, it ain't much, but we do at least know that Techland is aiming for a "story-focused" game set in an "exotic open world," which we got a glimpse of in a piece of art shared alongside the post.

So we learned that Techland is on the right track, because it's clearly internalised Shenanigansen's first rule of good worldbuilding: making the moon fucked up. It's worked wonders for The Elder Scrolls (which has an incredibly cool secret third moon rumoured to be the corpse of the dead god Lorkhaj), so I can only imagine the shattered planetoid lingering in the sky of Techland's concept art will do good work for that studio, too.

The tweet says that the unnamed game will combine and refine the "best aspects of gameplay that Techland is known for". To me, that sounds like we can expect an agile, first-person adventure in the mould of Dying Light—especially since we can clearly see a little guy up to some arboreal parkour in the image—but I stress that's just my speculation. In mid-2022, Techland's CEO said it was making a "brand new IP that is vastly different from what we have been doing for the past several years," which doesn't exactly jibe with the wording of the tweet.

Techland had already been working on this game for a year before it was announced in 2016, so it's had a lot of time to figure out what the heck it's gonna be. Back around the announcement, it said it was hoping to implement both co-op and single-player gameplay. But a lot of time has passed since then: more than enough for the project to undergo a radical overhaul several times over. Techland didn't say when we could expect to hear more, so I'll meet you back here in 2030.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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