Techland is a publisher but perhaps what they're best known for is for developing Dying Light and Dying Light 2. Both very community driven open world titles, they have cemented a lot of goodwill for the developer over the last half a decade. Now, they have set their sights on a brand new project. Here's what we know about it so far.
New Techland AAA Open World Action-RPG
Recently, Techland Games' Twitter account put up an announcement showing they are looking to hire for an upcoming project. That project is an "unannounced AAA Open World Action-RPG in a fantasy setting". Given the size and scope of a AAA game, this must be a pretty huge undertaking. With Dying Light 2, they proved they can handle the world but a more involved RPG system may take some time.
Dying Light 2 had a big focus on story and even attempted to offer some hard moral choices. It seems this project will likely tackle a lot of the same themes but likely from closer on the ground. Dying Light 2 did away with ranged weapons, for the most part, focusing on traversal mechanics and melee combat. It seems likely the next project will do the same. The roles they are hiring for gives us a little extra insight into what we may see.
In the job listing for a Senior Writer / Narrative Designer, it names a few tasks that are important for the project. They are:
- Independent creation of narrative content (story, scene and dialogue writing, creating interesting characters, co-creating the "lore" of the game and making additional narrative assets,
- Creating non-linear stories and constructing emotional choices relevant to the game flow,
- Creating multi-dimensional characters that follow and fit into the plot guidelines. Skilful selection of traits, motivations, conflicts, reliable psychological situations and personality transformation processes of the heroes,
- Creating credible elements of the represented world (history, sociology, psychology, economics, politics, geography, languages etc.),
- Creating documentation about the presented world (a World Bible),