Dev Blog #2

Hi, it’s Tymon, your friendly neighborhood Dying Light Franchise Director – again! Today, I’ve brought two of my friends with me, so we can talk a bit about the upcoming For Honor crossover, which is starting very soon - November 21st! 

But before we begin, let me start by saying that we’re constantly learning and trying to make these events better for you, as we understand there’s always room for improvement. We hear you on that one – and that’s why getting to know your thoughts is so important for us. If you share your feedback and ideas, we’ll definitely take it into account when planning a new happening in the beautiful world of Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

And right now we’re pretty excited, because our next collaboration is not only coming out very soon but it’s also a very special one! This time, we will delve into the quasi-medieval world, where we’ll clash with the iconic warriors of For Honor.

Why did we choose to team up with For Honor? Well, when we’re looking for potential partners, we take into account titles that are either very close to us in terms of the gameplay feel (horror vibes, night as a gameplay mechanic, etc.) or the IPs that we’re especially passionate about as gamers. With Vampire: The Masquerade it was the best of both worlds: dark, tense atmosphere of that universe and the strongest representation of vampires in modern pop culture. In the case of For Honor, it’s a win-win situation once again. This time, we’re dealing with a melee combat game that has similar mechanics to ours and, on top of that, we’re huge fans of the medieval fantasy created by the team at Ubisoft.

So what can you expect? Without spoiling the whole event, let me say that one thing I can reveal is that you can look forward to some new, tough enemies! For Honor is built on the foundation of grueling duels between seemingly invincible medieval warriors from different factions and cultures. We couldn’t possibly think to rob you of that thrilling sensation of clashing blades and battle frenzy!

Ok.. I will spill more beans… For this collaboration we worked on 3 new enemies and 3 skin bundles! A little sneak peek below:

We first started talking with Ubisoft about the event about 6 months ago. As the initial brainstorm and exchange of ideas went really well, we quickly moved to defining the elements of the event – and especially the For Honor heroes that we’d like to feature in our world. Clearly, we had to make some adjustments when it came to introducing these enemies into our game, because recreating each and every behavior would be far, far out of the scope of an event. But we came up with a smart solution, where we decided to choose several key movements, taunts, and attacks from the For Honor warriors, and combined them with the ones already existing in our game.

Dominik Wasieńko, our Lead Character Artist, remembers the preparations:

“We had a couple of challenges when it came to adapting For Honor characters into the Dying Light world. These characters had to align with our C-Engine, as the originals were created a long time ago, on a different engine. We had to modify the models themselves, their proportions, details, what we see as a player from the first person perspective – with For Honor being a TPP game. In our case, because Dying Light is in FPP, we know that we needed a good focus on hands, so we had to add the appropriate finishing touches and details, so that it could look as realistic as possible.

“A lot of the pieces were recreated in order to get the highest quality. We’ve modified or sometimes even re-textured the characters to be compatible with our technology and visually fit the world of Dying Light. For example, we couldn’t choose characters with long, flowing robes, because they would interfere with the locomotion animations.

“It was an interesting experience, to be able to adjust the characters coming from a totally different universe to our post-apocalyptic world.”

Just look at one of the For Honor heroes with the beautiful city in the background:

It all clicked thanks to the wonderful work of our animators, designers, and AI programmers – among others. What’s more, we also got huge support from the Ubisoft team – they provided us with visual assets, textures, character models as well as sound effects and tracks, such as shouts, taunts, and yells of the enemies. Obviously, we couldn’t hope to bring For Honor warriors to life in our game in their heroic entirety, but I, for one, think that the final effect is pretty, pretty cool. I’d like to see the looks on your faces when you go mano a mano with the Warden for the first time!

Naturally, like it is the case with every event, you can expect new weapons – medieval style, as you can probably imagine. But we won’t spoil all of them now, because the event is going live very soon. Be ready!

Below you can see a new weapon in the game. But can you see the mix of Berserker’s outfit and Warden’s sword? How cool is that?

Our Game Designer, Daniil Shek, talks about the process:

“After our dev team agreed with Ubisoft which characters we were going to use, I started to play For Honor to come up with a list of moves and behaviors that are the most typical for them. I recorded some combos in the game – those references were later used for motion capture sessions. The actors did a really good job of capturing not just the moves themselves, but also the spirit of For Honor warriors!

“There were a bunch of things that we had to work out, like the fact that each warrior in For Honor has their own distinguishable fighting personality. We approached it by boiling them down to certain traits. For example, Warden is heavily armored, but slow, while Berserker is a furious warrior who attacks rapidly, using cheat tricks to break the flow of the fight – but it all comes at the cost of his survivability. Below, you can see a short clip showing Berserker in action!

Image not representative of final quality.

“Even so, for me, the most challenging thing was balancing these enemies. Dying Light 2 Stay Human has a pretty diverse player base, with different skill levels, but I, personally, love to challenge players of all kinds. And the only way to cover as much player needs as possible is through playtests. This aspect of balancing involves reaching as many players as possible and collecting their feedback and data meticulously.

“One more thing for you to know: For Honor warriors are not always hostile to players. For example, if you help one of them in their duel, there's a chance that he won't attack you. These honorable moments can happen in the For Honor game as well, I love them! So, if a situation like that takes place, I’d say don't kill the non-hostile warrior – show them some mercy!

Once again, please let us know what you think of this event as soon as you have a chance to participate. To be completely honest, working with Ubisoft – similarly to our previous partners – has been a whole lot of fun, so we’re not-so-quietly counting on more! We already have some very exciting projects lined up for the next year, so keep your eyes and ears open.

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