One thing that's great about zombie movies is that while they certainly show the visceral horror of flesh-eating zombies, the best ones focus on the horror of the survivors losing their humanity. When society breaks down and you have to do anything you can to survive, what does that do to you? What kind of person does that change you into and if it's something awful, what was the point of surviving in the first place? This new trailer for Dying Light, the latest game from Dead Island developer Techland, wants to examine those very horrors.
While the outside world is teeming with zomies the humans have set up a shelter, a quarantine zone, but every day is just as much a struggle. The nights are even worse, because that's when the zombies go berserk, and these suckers are strong and fast. But in the quarantine zone how do you rest when you know what's taking place across the planet? How do you sleep knowing the awful things you've done and seen?
Of course, will the game deal with these deep psychological issues? Probably not. It's quite likely that Techland is doing exactly what it did with that famous first trailer for Dead Island, which showcased a family's last moments fighting off a zombie horde and was so touching and affecting that it rocketed the game up the charts from gamers who were soon irked to find nothing close to the kind of emotions found in the trailer. Repetitive, inane missions and characters with all the depth of cardboard cutouts didn't help things, although gamers certainly enjoyed crafting their own weapons and using them to chop zombies into little pieces.
Even still the gameplay for Dying Light looks great, a nice mix of the first-person Mirror's Edge-inspired freerunning that lets you run and jump and hurdle over the tops of buildings to stay away from zombies. The nine minutes of gameplay that we've seen so far shows a far different experience than we've had in zombie games before. We'll just have to wait to see if the story is put by the wayside once again.
Dying Light will launch for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC sometime in 2014. We'll let you know when the release date is nailed down, much like a zombie's brain.
